Toronto has a bachelor's degree in creative writing and literature and currently works as an editor. In the following essay, Toronto considers why Grahame chose to write a story about animals that behave like humans.
Grahame's The Wind in the Willows is one of the first English examples of a novel using animals as protagonists. Using animals that talk and behave like humans in storytelling is by no means unique to Grahame; the tradition of using anthropomorphized animals dates back thousands of years, appearing in the mythology and tales of many ancient cultures. In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, published more that forty years earlier, Carroll had a talking rabbit and a talking cat, among others. However, Grahame's novel is distinct from Carroll's in that the animals are the protagonists, with well-developed, complex personalities. They.....
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