Adventure

Adventure is a major theme in the novel “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame. Adventures –exciting, unusual, and/or risky experiences and undertakings –populate the entire novel. Each of the animals in the novel has some form of adventure or other, including Mole and Rat. Indeed, Toad not only has adventures, but misadventures –undertakings and experiences that are disastrous or that do not proceed according to plan.

For Mole, adventures begin from the very first page of the novel, when he casts down his cleaning tools and heads out in the world above. Indeed, every step he takes –from the burrow to the town to the meadows to the river –are all adventurous activities to Mole. Attempting to paddle a boat, looking for Little Portly, and taking on the Wild Wooders at Toad Hall are all feats of adventure. For Rat, adventures include spending...