allieinarden:

Oh my goodness. I was going to say “you might have something here,” but what I really should say is “you’re right.” The frog’s a whatchamacallit, that term I learned in drama class. An objective correlative. 

Wirt promised to take Greg frog-hunting and didn’t follow through, so Greg has to go and find the frog himself. (Wirt has good intentions, but Greg has to make all the effort.) Greg loves the frog and pals around with it and holds it in his arms. He calls it “our frog.” Wirt insists, “He’s not my frog.”

After the ferry trip, the frog very nearly stays with his brethren on the boat. But immediately after Wirt and Greg escape Adelaide and have to take to the road again without Beatrice, the frog, who we’ve almost forgotten about after that very intense scene beforehand, suddenly catches up to them again. It’s like a narrative reminder that Wirt and Greg still have each other–in fact, that’s all they’ve got. (And look how they react: Greg is thrilled to see him; Wirt, still racked with betrayal, couldn’t care less. It won’t help them get home any.)

Going off with the Beast, Greg leaves the frog with an unconscious Wirt and asks him to take care of it (he’s sacrificing himself, so he won’t be able to do that anymore). When Wirt goes off into the snow to find his brother, you’d think that he’d leave the frog in Beatrice’s tree and come pick him up later, since it’s a warm, safe atmosphere and he’d just have his hands full with the little guy while trying to rescue Greg. Instead he walks off cradling it like a baby (I cried). 

Greg gives the frog dozens of different names throughout the story, but none of them stick. In the end, Wirt has to name the frog, and his name (a reference to the predicament that landed them in the Unknown in the first place–specifically to his own role in it, since he’s no longer blaming Greg) is the one that stays. The final scene has Greg refer to the frog as his, and Wirt corrects him: “Our frog.”

Also, the frog becomes more humanlike as the story progresses and the events of the Unknown bring the brothers closer–he’s at his most human when Wirt and Greg are on the boat, and it’s potentially the closest we’ve seen the two of them in the story (singing together and dancing around! The frog sings later and it’s like they give the frog a voice). In the final scene with Wirt and Greg we’re reminded that Greg’s frog swallowed the glowing bell that controlled Lorna’s demon, and that it’s still inside him. I think there will always be some element of the Unknown in the way these two relate to each other, since their near-death experience was what made Wirt realize how important Greg was to him.  

And the ending–it turns out the frog was narrating this whole time and we had no idea! The relationship between Wirt and Greg is the heart of the story. It just took Wirt a while to figure that out.