The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad includes two distinctly different views, one of nonhuman and the other of human nature. The first narrative constructs nonhuman nature as ultimately good and kind in spite of villains thwarted by the heroes, but the second narrative constructs human nature as calculating and vindictive, with heroes demonstrating more weaknesses than strengths. This contrast is evident in the varying success of each. As A. W. asserts in his New York Timesreview, “the human figures in these adventures are stilted awkward creatures…. But in “Mr. Toad” [Disney] has limned a wondrously blithe bucko from Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows” (18).
The first narrative, the story of Toad, draws on The Wind in the Willows, a classic children’s book in which animal characters play distinctly human roles, highlighting Peter Singer’s claim that “All animals are equal” (1). This part of the film anthropomorphizes animals so much that their actions support Singer’s claim that “to avoid speciesism we must allow that beings who are similar in all relevant respects have a similar right to life” (19).
The second narrative retells The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in which the very human Ichabod Crane “loses his head” (at least figuratively) over a beautiful daughter of a rich farmer. Juxtaposing the two narratives highlights the separation between human and nonhuman nature foregrounded in both Bambiand Dumbo, this time clearly at the expense of the less valorized human nature.
Toad, the hero in The Wind in the Willows, is represented as a lighthearted and carefree aristocrat with a taste for new, again human, technology, so much so that he attempts to buy a car in exchange for his manor house. Toad is accused of stealing the car, is prosecuted and sent to prison but escapes to reclaim the deed to his home and, with the help of his friends Rat and Mole, prove his innocence.
Toad and his friends are constructed as sympathetic human-like intelligent persons, but the weasels and their leader, Mr. Winky, represent more negative human qualities. When Toad escapes, the humane nature of his and his friends’ characters emerge. When they all learn Mr. Winky, a bartender who double-crossed Toad, is the leader of the gang that has the deed to Toad Hall, they agree to help him, “To prove your innocence we’ve got to get that paper away from Winky.” They succeed, but when he is exonerated, the narrator says Toad was reformed by New Year, but now he has a biplane and flies over Toad Hall! The likable Toad maintains his obsession with new technology, but he also represents how effectively he and his friends have been anthropomorphized as a way to draw on human sympathy. Even though Toad is depicted as a flawed character, none of his weaknesses harm others deliberately. The film only constructs the weasels in a negative light, clearly foregrounding the positive human-like qualities shared by all of these lovable animals.
In the story of Ichabod Crane, on the other hand, the narrative highlights the negative human qualities shared by all the human characters in conflict throughout the tale. Ichabod and Bron Bones compete for Katrina’s hand in marriage. But Bron Bones wins Katrina by scaring Ichabod away first by telling stories of a headless horseman and then, presumably, by disguising himself as the horseman to literally chase Ichabod away. In this retelling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollowanimals play only a service role, as horses carrying the headless horseman and Ichabod. The human world is indeed separated from that of nature, even in the agricultural community in Sleepy Hollow. More importantly, the segment highlights a human world of sometimes-violent duplicity with little chance for redemption, a stark contrast to the delightful animal world of The Wind in the Willows.
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