Creativity: Making Connections, Part III

Last blog, I talked about how one of the earliest creative leaps the human race made was the equation of animal behavior with human behavior. From the trickster stories of coyote and fox the native American tribes told, to the “brother rabbit tales” originally from Nigeria, to Aesop’s fables and onward, the obvious connection between human and animal traits were exploited in story. One of the best examples of this, and one of the most instructive for creative writers, was Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows.

If you haven’t read this story, it is about a group of animal friends. Okay, that’s easy enough, but Grahame performs a tour de force by carrying the story much further than the simple correlation that has been the mainstay of storytelling for millennia. He expands links between human and animal behavior in ingenious and innovative ways.

His characters have personalities, as we might expect. But he weaves his characters out of traits that are already there. Water Rat, his main character, is “cool”—not in the slang sense we use it today, but he is calm, even, and temperate. Rat befriends Mole. Mole is a bit obtuse (moles are almost blind), stodgy, and plodding, but has a great heart. They meet Rat’s friends: Badger, who, in his own way, is vicious (badgers are not nice animals if you encounter one). Last of all, there is Toad. Toad is an egotist. He is “puffed up,” as toads will be.

All the creatures, then, take on personalities suggested by the appearance or behavior of the animal they are. But Grahame goes further. He places them in a social setting. They live in the woods, but not entirely. Rat has a boat. The animals live in houses. Mr. Toad is rich and lives on an estate. Apparently (though you don’t get a lot of information on this) they interact with humans and the humans don’t seem to think their presence odd. The animals constitute their own little society. In fact, Toad’s out-of-control behavior is, according to Badger, “giving us a bad name.” He is harming the social reputation of the animals in England.

This is funny, and the animals cross backward to remind us of human types we know. A sequence of hilarious events unfolds. Toad, who is wasting his money on gadgets, becomes enamored of the newfangled motorcar, gets in accidents, and eventually steals a car and is thrown in jail. He escapes and gets home only to find his estate has been taken over by unseemly animals—weasels, stoats, and foxes—and he must fight to get it back. His animal friends help him.

The theme of the book is friendship. The animals care for each other. They are considerate of each others' needs and feelings. They love each other.

I like art about friendship. Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption, and Tombstone are three of my favorite films because they are largely about friendship. There is no better book on friendship than The Wind in the Willows. It is not only funny, but a touching and moving tale about human (in the guise of animal) friendships.

What is the ultimate experience of friendship? One afternoon, Mole and Rat are out in Rat’s boat and

experience the ultimate:  they see God. The god of animals is Pan and the two of them encounter him. In a magnificently written piece that stuns me with its creative imagery, the little creatures are overwhelmed by Pan’s presence. The god—knowing that nothing in life will be wonderful for the two animals after the supreme experience of seeing him and being in his presence—makes them forget what they have just known so they can go on being happy. Instead of hearing Pan’s pipe and his song, they only hear “the wind in the willows” as they go their way.

How did he think of that?

But if you’re making a story out of connections between humans and animals, humans have always been religious. They have always had “theodicies,” moments when they see God or the gods or the spirits. Why not animals as well? And what would it be like to see the Supreme Being? It would be difficult to convey that via a human character, but an animal character opens the door to such a description. And Grahame does with a masterful hand.

So, I’ve made the point in three blogs that one facilitates creativity by seeing connections, links, and analogies—between the homeless and supernatural creatures, between animals and humans, between the content of rock songs and the paranormal. Add whatever else presents itself to your imagination. Look for the connections. This is one path to writing creatively.

Next, I want to look at other ways writers have been creative in what they did with genre, subject matter, and other literary conventions. Stay tuned.

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