Friday, April 01, 2005
Kenneth Grahame
Not long ago we adopted the habit -- well, it may be too early to call it a habit -- of my reading to Judy for a while before we go to sleep. The first book was one of my all-time favorites, which she had not read: The Wind in the Willows.
Now, this is not a book that I fell in love with as a child. In fact, as a child I was only aware of the Disneyfied version. (This, along with a passing friendship with Daniel Pinkwater, has led me to teach my students that DisneyCorp. is The Great Satan.) Only as an adult, when I was asked to write a computer text adventure game (a genre now, sadly, dead) about a classic children's book, did I encounter the full text. Since I wound up doing the game on this book, I studied the text pretty closely at the time, and have since used it in a course (Major Literary Types: pick five books you want to talk about in class, and have the students read them). So I was hardly coming to this cold.
Still, the great pleasures of this book persist, no matter how many times I read it. Forget about trying to make sense of the world in which these animals live. Sometimes Toad is treated as a person (he gets service in a pub, and is large enough to drive an automobile), sometimes he is treated as an animal (the barge woman grabs him by one arm and one leg and flings him into the canal). The animals have animal senses and instincts, but Water Rat writes poetry and has a small arsenal in his home. There are no female animals (except, mentioned but not seen, Mrs. Otter). No one works for a living (except the rabbits and mice, who seem to be a peasantry). No, the world of the Riverbank simply doesn't hold together logically. And there's no real reason why it should; it's a fantasy of an ideal life in rural Edwardian England.
Perhaps my long bachelorhood helps me to relate to these animals living happy bachelor lives. (Sex, of course, is simply not an issue.) I immediately connected with Mole, breaking out of his secluded underground life to set the novel in motion, encountering the world with fresh eyes and growing into an accomplished and adventurous animal. (Not that that would be a fair summary of my life, or any part of it.) Mole is, in some ways, an ultimate outsider. He lives underground, for one thing, and is thereby isolated from all who cannot find his home (even he has trouble finding it after a few months away). He knows next to nothing of the Riverbank (where he is soon living) and less about the Wide World and the Wild Woods. He seems to be poorer than the other animals (among the gentry, that is: Rat and Toad and Badger and Otter). He is the outsider coming into the group of friends. And when he and Rat have their encounter with the divine (the central episode of the book), it is Rat who senses most acutely what is happening, and retains contact with it longer (although Mole retains his memory a bit longer). Mole is, until the last chapter, always a little off-balance.
But my ability to relate to a character doesn't make it a great book. The characters do that on their own. They are real people, as well as being real animals (remember, these are animals who are Edwardian gentlemen, not realistic animals). They speak differently, they think differently, and they are clearly individuals. And they behave consistently (well, except for Toad) within an ethical position that the book espouses. (Oh, yes, it's also beautifully written and hugely entertaining.) The book is, quite simply, a paean to pantheistic paganism. Even the carol that the mice sing in the forecourt of Mole's house is not Christian, although it relates to (even depends on, in some ways) Christmas.
And if there were any doubt about the paganism of the book, the great central chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," would put it to rest. (One of my great regrets about the game version is that I was not allowed to include this chapter.) (Another is that it was never published, although the coding was completed.) For those who are unfamiliar, here is the rough outline: Rat comes home and tells Mole that Otter is worried about his son, young Portly Otter, who has wandered off. The two friends decide to go out in the boat to look for Portly, and spend a lovely night paying attention to the world as it appears under the stars. As dawn approaches, they are drawn by an indefinable impulse, later with music, to the island near the weir (the most dangerous spot on the river). On the island, they find Portly in the company and under the protection of the great god Pan. They gather the young otter and, in order not to blight the rest of their lives (since nothing can compare to the glory of the divine presence), they are granted the boon of forgetfulness.
And this is no odd quirk. According to a biography I read while preparing for the game version, Grahame was a leader in a paganist movement that had some influence in Edwardian England. (This should not be confused with modern paganism and Wicca. It's more a late Romantic efflorescence.) The whole book is about the essential goodness of one kind of life that is placed in opposition to human life with its jobs and banks and industry and change. The Badger points out that the tunnels to which his home is connected predate not only him, but the human city that once occupied the site. There were badgers there before there were humans, there are badgers now after the humans, and the humans may come and go again. Human history may have its cycles, but nature persists.
I suppose this connects, on a deep level, with my own belief that humanity is just a passing fancy, and that extinction is not too far off for us. Grahame, however, is more optimistic, believing that goodness will survive in the animals, even if we manage to remove it from our own characters.
dmh
Now, this is not a book that I fell in love with as a child. In fact, as a child I was only aware of the Disneyfied version. (This, along with a passing friendship with Daniel Pinkwater, has led me to teach my students that DisneyCorp. is The Great Satan.) Only as an adult, when I was asked to write a computer text adventure game (a genre now, sadly, dead) about a classic children's book, did I encounter the full text. Since I wound up doing the game on this book, I studied the text pretty closely at the time, and have since used it in a course (Major Literary Types: pick five books you want to talk about in class, and have the students read them). So I was hardly coming to this cold.
Still, the great pleasures of this book persist, no matter how many times I read it. Forget about trying to make sense of the world in which these animals live. Sometimes Toad is treated as a person (he gets service in a pub, and is large enough to drive an automobile), sometimes he is treated as an animal (the barge woman grabs him by one arm and one leg and flings him into the canal). The animals have animal senses and instincts, but Water Rat writes poetry and has a small arsenal in his home. There are no female animals (except, mentioned but not seen, Mrs. Otter). No one works for a living (except the rabbits and mice, who seem to be a peasantry). No, the world of the Riverbank simply doesn't hold together logically. And there's no real reason why it should; it's a fantasy of an ideal life in rural Edwardian England.
Perhaps my long bachelorhood helps me to relate to these animals living happy bachelor lives. (Sex, of course, is simply not an issue.) I immediately connected with Mole, breaking out of his secluded underground life to set the novel in motion, encountering the world with fresh eyes and growing into an accomplished and adventurous animal. (Not that that would be a fair summary of my life, or any part of it.) Mole is, in some ways, an ultimate outsider. He lives underground, for one thing, and is thereby isolated from all who cannot find his home (even he has trouble finding it after a few months away). He knows next to nothing of the Riverbank (where he is soon living) and less about the Wide World and the Wild Woods. He seems to be poorer than the other animals (among the gentry, that is: Rat and Toad and Badger and Otter). He is the outsider coming into the group of friends. And when he and Rat have their encounter with the divine (the central episode of the book), it is Rat who senses most acutely what is happening, and retains contact with it longer (although Mole retains his memory a bit longer). Mole is, until the last chapter, always a little off-balance.
But my ability to relate to a character doesn't make it a great book. The characters do that on their own. They are real people, as well as being real animals (remember, these are animals who are Edwardian gentlemen, not realistic animals). They speak differently, they think differently, and they are clearly individuals. And they behave consistently (well, except for Toad) within an ethical position that the book espouses. (Oh, yes, it's also beautifully written and hugely entertaining.) The book is, quite simply, a paean to pantheistic paganism. Even the carol that the mice sing in the forecourt of Mole's house is not Christian, although it relates to (even depends on, in some ways) Christmas.
And if there were any doubt about the paganism of the book, the great central chapter, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn," would put it to rest. (One of my great regrets about the game version is that I was not allowed to include this chapter.) (Another is that it was never published, although the coding was completed.) For those who are unfamiliar, here is the rough outline: Rat comes home and tells Mole that Otter is worried about his son, young Portly Otter, who has wandered off. The two friends decide to go out in the boat to look for Portly, and spend a lovely night paying attention to the world as it appears under the stars. As dawn approaches, they are drawn by an indefinable impulse, later with music, to the island near the weir (the most dangerous spot on the river). On the island, they find Portly in the company and under the protection of the great god Pan. They gather the young otter and, in order not to blight the rest of their lives (since nothing can compare to the glory of the divine presence), they are granted the boon of forgetfulness.
And this is no odd quirk. According to a biography I read while preparing for the game version, Grahame was a leader in a paganist movement that had some influence in Edwardian England. (This should not be confused with modern paganism and Wicca. It's more a late Romantic efflorescence.) The whole book is about the essential goodness of one kind of life that is placed in opposition to human life with its jobs and banks and industry and change. The Badger points out that the tunnels to which his home is connected predate not only him, but the human city that once occupied the site. There were badgers there before there were humans, there are badgers now after the humans, and the humans may come and go again. Human history may have its cycles, but nature persists.
I suppose this connects, on a deep level, with my own belief that humanity is just a passing fancy, and that extinction is not too far off for us. Grahame, however, is more optimistic, believing that goodness will survive in the animals, even if we manage to remove it from our own characters.
dmh
