Classic Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams | Kansas City Public Library Home | Latest at the Library | Kc Unbound | Classic Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams The Westport Branch will be closed from January 17 – 19 to upgrade our checkout system. Read more about why we're doing this » Classic Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams Classic Review: Watership Down by Richard Adams Thursday, October 4, 2012 8:24 am Richard Adams' classic novel Watership Down isn't just about rabbits. Tackling the big ideas, including the importance of storytelling to society, Adams weaves an adult tale of human struggle cloaked as a book about bunnies. When I was at college, a fellow student told me that I had to read Watership Down. When I asked what the book was about, I remember him telling me “rabbits on the move trying to find a new home.” Rabbits? My eyes started to glaze over. He started to summarize the story, but all I recall was that the main rabbit was named Hazel, and that there were some other rabbits named Bigwig, Dandelion, Fiver and Pipkin.

The glazing process was complete – the rest of the pitch came across as blah, blah, blah blah. This year, as I had decided to read and write about books involving travel , “rabbits on the move” came immediately to mind and I added it to my to-read list for KC Unbound. And I must say that this book has probably been the biggest pleasant surprise I’ve had in reading in the past decade. The book turned out to be so much more than “bunnies on a trip,” or even “bunnies on an exodus of survival.” If I had to categorize the book, I’d probably group it with epics of travel. Some reviewers compared it to Homer’s Odyssey, but I think Virgil’s Aeneid would be a more apt comparison, because of the emphasis on personal responsibility to the group. Richard Adams says that the story began as a series of stories he told his little girls as they traveled on long drives in the English countryside. That may be, though these stories, at least as presented in the completed novel, are not for kids. And parents, who may be thinking of checking out the animated film of Watership Down for your kids – watch it first yourself.

The film should have gotten a PG-13 rating (what would have been a GP at the time of release) instead of G, in my opinion – there’s a fair amount of violent action, and the mood of most of the narrative is rather unsettling. [video:youtu.be/xZcHLpjiEdw align:center] With rabbits on the cover, Watership might seem to be a children’s book, but its themes and presentation are much too complex for that. This is a book that has a lot that would traumatize a youngster, especially if s/he were expecting something more along the line of Max and Ruby . Older audiences can handle the tough subject matter (loss, terror, and death) and appreciate what is mainly a tale about the importance of community, the importance of story in fostering community, and the value of a brave heart in a dangerous world. One of the peculiarities of the book is that certain words are given in lapine, the language Adams imagines for the rabbits. This is somewhat similar to what Anthony Burgess did in A Clockwork Orange, where the narrator, Alex De Farge, uses the teen slang of his day, Nadsat, to tell his story.

The difference is that where Alex’ whole narration is done in this Slavic-rich slang, Adams uses only a relatively few lapine words sprinkled through the text. My favorite of these is hrududu, the rabbits’ word for any motorized conveyance (because of the sound). I can imagine Adams’ daughters giggling every time he has a rabbit refer to a hrududu. Adams also suggests that other animals (mice and birds are singled out) have their own languages, distinct from lapine, though the animals can communicate with one another using some kind of pigeon or Creole – strangely enough, Adams gives the mice a French accent, but gives Kehaar, the gull who gets the closest to the rabbits, a Scandinavian accent. Of course, animals don’t “speak” with one another in a way that humans do – there is no evidence that animals have a real sense of “past,” or that they narrate stories, whereas human knowledge of the world is very much affected by our being the animals who tell (and listen to) stories.

Other than the use of language, Adams chose not to change the behavior of the rabbits – in other words, his rabbits do not act like the animals in Aesop’s Fables, or like cartoon animals, like humans in animal form – consider the bipedal Bugs Bunny. Adams based his rabbits’ behavior on that of real rabbits from his own observation and from reading books such as R.M. Lockley’s The Private Life of the Rabbit . Adams places, however, a great focus on story, something that rabbits don’t, so far as we know, have. But story permeates this work. When the going gets tough and the rabbits with Hazel need reassuring, their own storyteller, Dandelion, tells stories about El-ahrairah (“the prince with a thousand enemies” – the mythical trickster rabbit). Not only do they have stories about the mythical El-ahrairah, but, by the end of the novel, it is clear that in their own world, the adventures of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Dandelion and the like are already in the process of becoming stories that rabbit parents tell their kittens, and that will be part of rabbit lore for future generations.

The chief villain in the book, a very violent rabbit called General Woundwort, himself becomes a figure of story – a boogey rabbit that rabbit parents use to keep their kittens from misbehaving. In what, for me, was the strangest and scariest part of the story, Hazel and his followers, who have escaped their warren just in time to avoid the disaster that destroyed it, have come to a place that appears perfect for their needs – it is spacious, the rabbits living there are all well fed, and they appear ready to welcome the exiles. Their even temper, which approaches apathy, seems odd, and Fiver, a rabbit with second sight, is panicked by this unusual behavior. This group of rabbits has become accustomed to a local farmer putting out farm waste for them to eat. Wire traps have been set up about the field, though, which catch and kill rabbits, which then become food for the farmer. The rabbits in this peculiar warren have grown accustomed to this arrangement. They have lost the wariness that helps rabbits survive in the wild; they have no chief rabbit to lead them (for no leader can defend against the random death of the wire traps); and they never speak of rabbits who have gone missing.

Once a rabbit has “gone,” all act as if s/he never existed. When Hazel and company gather together with these rabbits to hear their teller, Silverweed, they are puzzled. There are no stories of El-ahrairah, or other rabbit heroes. Instead, Silverweed sings songs full of vague statements about the evanescence of life, and encouraging acceptance of a world in which rabbits can disappear like leaves blowing in the wind. Adams does not give us Aesop’s Fables (a book about humans cast in animal form), nor does he give us a book about rabbits as rabbits. If you want that, there are plenty of books available about rabbits. Rather we get some strange mix – a book in which a clear human consciousness, with the human love of, and need for, stories front and center, is grafted onto rabbits behaving like rabbits, but which speaks to much larger questions of bravery, honor, purpose and identity. And if you can get past the strange part – rabbits with human consciousness and stories – you’ll be amazed at the job Adams does with those big questions. There is an audiobook of the novel, very well read by Ralph Cosham.

And the animated film , with the voices of John Hurt, Ralph Richardson and Zero Mostel, is quite a nice adaptation, but not for kids. About the Author Bernard Norcott-Mahany , a library technical assistant at the Lucile H. Bluford Branch, is our resident connoisseur of classic literature. He is also the leader of the Black Classics and In the Heat of the Night book groups . Google+ Sponsor Message <a href="" target="_top"><img style="border:0px;" src="" alt="i" width="300" height="250"/></a> In the mid-1950s, naturalist Ronald Lockley undertook a study on behalf of the British Nature Conservancy, which was concerned about the spread of a rabbit disease called myxomatosis . In a grassy meadow in Wales, Lockley created several enclosures in which tagged European rabbits lived. But rabbits spend much of their lives underground, in a mass of tunnels and rooms known as a warren. So Lockley also created an artificial warren that backed up against a small hut with a plate glass window that let an observer see what the bunnies were doing.

And for four years, Lockley recorded interactions among his rabbit subjects. The result was the first study of life in a rabbit warren, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology in 1961. But soon Lockley, a prolific writer, expanded his findings into a book, The Private Life of the Rabbit , published in 1964. Within the warren, Lockley had discovered a complex society, headed by a dominant male and female who were given precedence by lower-ranked animals. The two were mates, and the top female got the best spot in the warren for her offspring. Dominance was related to age, Lockley found, and rarely did a rabbit reach the top spot before 18 months old. And the male kept his position by patrolling the group’s territory and putting on displays of aggression — or even fighting — to keep the others in line. The complex behavior found in rabbit warrens was unknown when this education film, produced by the British Council, was released in 1945.Tomorrow Always Comes/YouTube Lockley’s work was an important addition to the science of rabbits, and it would soon become immortalized in fiction.

When Englishman Richard Adams sat down to write a children’s tale about a group of bunnies, he turned to The Private Life of the Rabbit “to make the rabbits as convincing as possible,” he wrote in an introduction to his book, Watership Down , published in 1972. For those of you who last read Watership Down in middle school, the book is the tale of a group of rabbits as they leave their home warren, which was soon to be destroyed, to make a new home on the land known as Watership Down, a real hill in Hampshire, England, near where Adams grew up. The rabbits are anthropomorphized, and, as might be expected with a children’s tale, there is plenty that is not based in reality. Rabbit society, for instance, does not have a military caste. But Lockley’s work had a profound impact on the book. Adams even consulted Lockley and asked the scientist to read a final draft. Lockley “contributed several good suggestions,” Adams noted in his introduction. “I remember, in particular, that he devised the passage … in which the rabbits raid Nuthanger Farm” and release some captive domestic bunnies.

The two became friends, and they would walk together through the countryside. They also traveled together to Antarctica (after which they co-wrote the book Voyage Through the Antarctic ). Lockley would go on to write some 60 books, mostly about islands or birds, before his death in 2000. Adams, now 95, still writes every day, he told the Guardian earlier this year. And scientists are still discovering more about the behavior of European rabbits. For instance, there is some evidence that not all rabbits may bother building complex warrens. Group living may be common only in exposed areas where predation risk is high. In such a situation, it can be dangerous for a rabbit to branch off the main group and build a new burrow. Sticking together and living in the existing warren is the safer choice. But when there is ground cover, rabbits can more easily split apart and build their own homes without being seen by something that considers a bunny an easy meal. A few years ago, the BBC produced a series of nature shows that investigated the lives of three burrowing animals — badgers, water voles and European rabbits.

To watch the rabbits, the producers built a warren, lining one end with glass through which they could film. In the show, the host claimed “this has to be the first time that any human being has had this sort of view of a rabbit warren underground.” Well, no, it wasn’t. And if we had to wait until now for such a view, we might not have the book that has entertained so many of us for decades. Top 10 books about intelligent animals | Books | The Guardian Top 10 books about intelligent animals From Watership Down to Animal Farm, here are 10 novels filled with anthropomorphic frailties and fantasies 'Watership Down has the science-fiction pleasures of inventive world building as well as a struggle against invasive totalitarianism'. Photo: Juniors Bildarchiv GmbH/Alamy Top 10 books about intelligent animals From Watership Down to Animal Farm, here are 10 novels filled with anthropomorphic frailties and fantasies Karen Joy Fowler Share on Messenger Close Charlotte's Web was first read to me by my mother.

I can still remember the moment when, having caught the tremor in her voice, I looked up, saw her face, and realised with great shock that clever, generous Charlotte might die. It was the first book in which I experienced the death of a character; I don't think I'd understood such a thing was even possible and I know I couldn't have managed Little Women , much less the relentless Tess of the D'urbervilles , all those years later if Charlotte's Web hadn't toughened me up. Of all the responses I've gotten to We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves , I was most pleased by a reviewer who identified Charlotte's Web as its progenitor. The tradition of great non-human characters has always been a potent oneand it was and continues to be an important book to me. Of course, I must be careful insisting on Charlotte's non-human character. Children's books are filled with humans in animal guise. They take bedtime baths, hear bedtime stories, and kiss their parents goodnight. They play peaceably, predator and prey, in the great fictional kingdoms, or sometimes, as in Charlotte's Web, they try very hard not to be killed and eaten.

Perhaps as a result, it's been easy for our culture to think of sympathy for our fellow creatures as a childish thing. You grow up, and however you might wish it otherwise, fewer and fewer of the books you read feature non-human characters. Of those that do, some remain more human than others. As a quick aside , I note that the great writer Jonathan Lethem, in reference to Dickens' Dombey and Son, has encouraged the reader to imagine Dickens' characters as though they were animals – "clever, eccentric badgers", wily foxes and cats – and all in Victorian costume. The only thing that prevents Dickens from being the greatest animal novelist of all time, Lethem argues, is the lack of animals. Here is my list of some favorite books with animal characters, in roughly the order in which I encountered them. 2. The Once and Future King by TH White Merlin's tutelage consists of lessons in which young Arthur becomes a series of other animals – birds, ants, fish – in order to learn about ethics and politics. The creatures Arthur meets in his childhood are all there, advising and encouraging, at the transcendent moment when he pulls the sword from the stone. 3.

Watership Down by Richard Adams An epic rabbit adventure with a cast of remarkable characters: Fiver, the oracle, Hazel, the thinker and leader, and Bigwig, the warrior. Adams employs many of the science-fiction pleasures of inventive world building as well as a struggle against invasive totalitarianism. For a while, I had a certain fluency in the Lapine language, but this has grown rusty with disuse. 5. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville Gregory Peck stars as Captain Ahab in the film adaptation of Herman Melville's novel Moby- Dick. Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/Warner Bros Perhaps the greatest non-human character book of all time. Funnier than I expected when I finally read it after years of pretending I already had. The white whale functions in the book as many things to many people, including the implacable and mindless maw of nature, but its final reckoning with the Pequod at least leaves open the possibility of intelligent self-preservation or even a focused revenge. 6.

Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller Women all over the world are turning into animals – orangutans, bears, and snapping turtles – but the central character of Emshwiller's book, Pooch, is a dog becoming a woman. This picaresque follows the adventures of an innocent abroad in a dangerous world. Comic, magical and ultimately extremely big-hearted. 7. Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann I've chosen this book to represent the many in which animals solve mysteries, in this case, the murder of a shepherd is slowly unraveled by the flock of sheep he left behind. Admirable efforts are made to keep the logic sheep-like throughout. 9. Fudoki by Kij Johnson A story within a story, as an elderly princess in Heian-era Japan recounts the more adventurous life of a cat who becomes for a time a cat-like woman. Johnson deals often with non-human characters, but this a particularly lovely example of her work, and contains wonderfully imagined, if unlikely, details of cat culture. 10. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski A loose retelling of Hamlet, but set on a dog breeding farm in Wisconsin in the 70s.

The role of Ophelia is taken on very touchingly by the gifted canine and occasional point of view character, Almondine. A review in the Chicago Tribune identified Wroblewski's book as "easily the best work of fiction ever written about dogs". A bold claim, but also a defensible one. Watership Down / The Dissolve by Tasha Robinson From the first paragraph onward, Richard Adams’ bestselling 1972 novel Watership Down politely indicates that it isn’t meant for children. Though it’s a fable-like fantasy about talking bunnies on a quest, it’s written with a rich, sophisticated prose style, and it takes a deep, adult fascination with environmental detail: the specifics of wildflower growing seasons, actual animal behavior, and real-world geography. Martin Rosen’s 1978 animated adaptation, on the other hand, begins with less of a warning about its content. In the biggest opening-scene fake-out until Team America: World Police, Rosen opens with a stylized, cartoony rabbit origin myth that famously failed to tip off parents that this was a graphically bloody grown-up movie, not a kiddie fairy tale.

For a few minutes, Watership Down does look like a children’s cartoon. Then Rosen pulls away from the story-in-a-story, and enters an Adams-inspired, sophisticated world of naturalistic animation, brought to life with all the realism he and his team could manage. It’s the work of a director deeply enamored of his source material, and determined to do right by it, even if it means frightening kids, baffling parents, and embracing whatever style works in the moment. Watership Down the animated feature was a true labor of love for Rosen, who had never directed a film and had never worked in animation, but learned the business from base principles, and created a studio from scratch, all to bring a book he loved to the screen. In a new interview on the Criterion Blu-ray edition, he talks about the advantage of working from a prestigious bestseller—every British celebrity he approached to voice a character immediately agreed—but admits the film was an uphill climb. Making it was slow and expensive, but it’s also clear, watching it today, that Rosen was operating more from a desire to honor material he loved than any practical efforts to keep costs down, streamline or punch up the story, or make it accessible to a broad demographic.

Watership Down follows a small band of rabbits, led by Hazel (John Hurt) and his runt brother Fiver (Richard Briers) in an attempt to escape Fiver’s premonition of doom coming to their warren. They travel overland together in a way that’s stressfully unnatural for rabbits—like Adams’ book, the film tries to keep close to animals’ biology and instinct-driven psychology instead of heavily anthropomorphizing—but their individual strengths and determination let them bond through a series of adventures. Then, once they achieve safety, they realize they have no mates, and they have to endanger themselves again to solve the problem. The material could easily have been treated lightly—and was, in a garishly perky episodic British TV version of the story Rosen produced in 1999—but what makes the 1978 version exceptional is its gravity and melancholy. Adams’ conception of Watership Down was a story about prey animals with “a thousand enemies,” and the film version in no ways compromises the seriousness and threat of living in a vast world of predators and unknowns, humanity chief in both categories.

The 1978 Watership Down is very much animation of its time, with glimpses of Rankin-Bass’ 1977 Hobbit in the gnarled, abstracted painted backdrops of rabbit tunnels; of 1973’s Charlotte’s Web in the repeated establishing shots of insects and grass in the breeze; and of France’s 1973 surrealistic wonder Fantastic Planet in an early glimpse of a photorealistic rabbit, seen in rigidly elaborate, painted close-up. Indie animator John Hubley worked on the film briefly in the concept stage, and some of his abstraction shows through, but it’s mated with Disney-esque attention to the body language and motion of animals, captured through long study of live rabbits in the studio. And the Watership Down crew went beyond Disney in trying to ground their film in reality. The down Adams wrote about is a real place in England, and he used its real geography. Rosen took a helicopter and an away team of animators there to film it from above, to lock down the realism of their fantastically detailed layouts.

Rosen’s script sticks tightly to Adams’ novel, departing only in small details, and thoroughly embracing its violence: The images of fighting rabbits foaming at the mouth and dripping garish red blood from open gashes are still shockingly graphic, even in a more indulgent age. Watership Down has its notable visual flaws, where budget or talent provided hard limits. And it can be a curiously inert, quiet movie, with only small rises and falls in action, or action that occasionally feels too rushed to connect. But its characterizations, its dedication to detail and to mood, and its uncompromising violence all mark it as something that was rare back in 1978, and remains rare even today: an animated feature meant first and foremost for an adult audience. In some ways, it comes across as a film for an adult audience of one: Martin Rosen, who was driven by his love of the book to create a screen version in spite of his lack of experience or resources. But like so many works of art created for a single audience, its idiosyncrasies are what make it worth sharing. Special features Sadly a bit sparse, but what’s there is worthwhile.

Criterion nabbed Rosen himself for a 15-minute interview during which he tells enlightening production stories, for instance about how Art Garfunkel disliked the song he cut for the film, and left it off his solo album—until the track, “Bright Eyes,” became a No. 1 hit in the U.K., whereupon he recalled and destroyed the album in order to re-release it with the song. Rosen walks through the timeline of the film project, admitting it was an insane idea for a newbie animator to take on—he initially approached the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera Company, as he considered different live-action options. “It’s not a sensible decision that you make, making a film,” he says, explaining how driven he felt to make the movie at any cost. “Because it’s so hard. The work is so consuming that there’s got to be something that takes over at some point.” Ultimately, he gives all the credit to Adams’ story, which helps explain why his only other feature was an animated adaptation of Adams’ novel The Plague Dogs, three years later.

The 12-minute featurette with some of the animators is cute but less informative, though given Rosen’s humility, it’s amusing to see that they’re perfectly willing to take the credit he deferred. There’s also a cute bit where one of them talks about the relief of drawing Kehaar the gull (voiced by Zero Mostel) after a year of drawing rabbits. And there’s also a 12-minute interview with Guillermo del Toro, talking intelligently about the film’s period context, and its themes of technological concern, connection with the natural world, and making peace with death. He acknowledges its visual shortcomings, but says the film never feels “sloppy in a cavalier way,” and that it’s always clear that these were proud artists, working to the limits of their technical capacity, in a “fantastic accident of many many minds colliding.” Finally, there’s a trailer featuring so much rabbit gore, it’s a wonder so many parents complained that their kids didn’t get the calming Disney cartoon they expected. GoWatchIt: Buy. Rent.

Stream Watership Down ★★★★★ SparkNotes: Watership Down: Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Themes Home The idea of home resurfaces again and again throughout Watership Down. The rabbits leave their warren in search of a new home not only because they believe Fiver when he tells them that something terrible will happen to the warren, but also because they think they can make a better home somewhere else. Fiver's only dream is for them to reach Watership Down, where he believes things will be better. But home is not merely the place where the rabbits live. They reach the down relatively early on, but something is missing. They need does, because home also means family and community. Home has permanence; it is not some sort of temporary shelter, which is all it could ever be if it were inhabited solely by bucks. Moreover, there are several different versions of home in the novel. The rabbits in the warren of the snares think that they are at home, but their strange and melancholy behavior shows that they have not truly found a home. A true home is a place where the rabbits can live in harmony with nature.

In this sense, Efrafa is not a true home, because Woundwort attempts to dominate nature. At the end of the novel, when Hazel looks back at his warren, just after he has left his body, what he sees is home. He sees many rabbits running and playing and enjoying themselves. Home is a place in which to take pleasure, not just a place that provides protection or food. Watership Down provides the aesthetic of home, and once the rabbits find does and create a community, it actually is a home. Leadership Hazel, the protagonist of Watership Down, is also the leader of the rabbits, and his ability to lead is continually tested by their adventures. Leadership is a subtle quality. Although Bigwig is stronger and bigger than Hazel, Hazel makes a much better leader because he has the ability to think for the group. He sees immediately how to utilize each member of the group in order to best benefit them all. With a good leader, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Hazel does not let anything interfere with the goals of the warren, and as its leader, he decides what those goals are.

Cowslip seems to be the leader of the warren of the snares, but they cannot really have a leader because no one can offer them protection from the dangers they face. Woundwort is clearly the leader of Efrafa, but he rules like a dictator, and his military regime leaves the majority of his subjects unhappy. Woundwort leads through example only in warfare, and otherwise his power is maintained through fear and force. Hazel, however, manages to do things differently. He is a true leader, unafraid to let others come up with ideas, yet himself often figuring out what should be done. The other rabbits respect Hazel, and after a while their faith in him is unshakable, simply because he acts swiftly and confidently and keeps the entire group in mind when he does so. Nature Nature plays a very prominent role in the novel. Hazel and his rabbits find the warren of the snares unnatural, and they would say the same about Efrafa. Living naturally is the goal of these rabbits, and they cannot comprehend how others could want to live any other way. They want to be free to roam and eat outside and do the things that rabbits have always done.

Of course there will always be predators, but no protection from a predator is worth the loss of the chance to live a normal rabbit life. Woundwort wants to make Efrafa invisible, and he destroys the lives of most of the rabbits there in the process. Fiver acts naturally all the time, never losing sight of who he is or what he wants. Because of this, Fiver sees the warren of the snares for what it is. Motifs Adapting The rabbits are repeatedly forced to adapt to situations that they could have never anticipated, and, to their credit, they do so quite well. Sometimes Fiver helps them when they are afraid of the unknown; at other times Hazel or Blackberry figures out how to deal with the situation. What is important is that one or two members of the group are always prepared to look at things in a different way and figure out how they will do what they need to do. They take a boat ride, befriend other animals, and dig out their own warren—all things that other rabbits have not done, but things that they must do in order to survive.

Trickery El-ahrairah provides the model for rabbit trickery, but Hazel and his rabbits do their best to compete with him. Trickery is often considered wrong because it is deceitful, but for the rabbits it is a matter of survival. Bigwig tricks the Efrafa into believing that he is acting alone and then he escapes with the does. Hazel tricks a cat into attacking he and Pipkin so that they can escape. Trickery does not mean unnecessary deceit; rather, it means using one's wits to escape a situation that is otherwise inescapable. It involves finding a method other than force because sometimes force is not an option. Humanity Humans play a large role in Watership Down, and for the most part this role is a detrimental one. Humans alone, of all the creatures in the world, break certain rules that the rest of nature follows. Humans kill at a whim rather than out of necessity. They decimate populations rather than kill a few at a time. In building up their own habitats, they destroy the very living space that other animals need to survive. However, when the little girl saves Hazel in the end, we see that humans are not unequivocally bad.

They are a step apart from the rest of nature, and they do have tremendous power to destroy, but they can also step in and help in ways that no other creatures in nature can. Symbols The Rabbit Warren The different rabbit warrens in the novel can be seen as different versions of human government. The warren of the snares could be considered socialist, as all the rabbits there are equal and no one has anything more than anyone else. The Efrafan warren represents a totalitarian regime, as Woundwort and a handful of others rule with an iron fist while all the rest are trod upon and abused. Hazel's warren represents a democracy, as it has a leader whom everyone wants making decisions based upon the will of the group. This symbolism clearly carries with it some degree of value judgment, as the first two regimes clearly fail while the third is a smashing success. Adams suggests that democracy—or at least some form of government in which the leader is chosen by the people and acts according to the will of the people—is the best way to organize society. Why we're all animal lovers | Books | The Guardian Why we're all animal lovers From Watership Down to Tarka the Otter, what is the appeal of anthropomorphic literature?

Close A still from the 1954 film of Animal Farm. Photograph: Kobal/Halas & Batchelor Collection It's hard not to stand in a remote field surrounded by rabbits, some alive and some very dead from myxomatosis, and not think of Richard Adams' novel Watership Down. Consistently in print since its 1972 publication Watership Down is of course a novel about the trials and tribulations of a family of rabbits. Imbued as they are with the characteristics of human society - language, culture, mythology - however, it is not really about rabbits at all, but a novel about the journey of life itself, with the same concerns and themes as those explored by Homer nearly three thousand years earlier. In other words, it is the perfect case of literary anthropomorphism - the transference of human traits into animals. Anthropomorphic literature is a sub-genre within itself, but why has it proved so endearingly popular? Why do writers feel the need to imbue animals with human characteristics? The simple answer is: because it wouldn't work any other way. George Orwell used a farmyard setting in Animal Farm to convey his political allegory.

He could have written a novel about a breakaway society of humans left to govern itself, but you suspect it may not have been as been digestible and therefore perhaps not as successful. Let's not forget that Animal Farm manages to tackle such weighty issues as communism, anarchism and the class system without once resorting to such terms. The humans that feature in the book bare similarities to real historical figures such as Hitler and Tsar Nicholas II, but are also deeply flawed characters in their own right, from the heavy-drinking farmer who neglects to feed his animals to the hard-nosed neighbouring landowner. Animal Farm is still taught to school childen, and remains for many the entry point into the political thought processes that shape the planet. It took some talking pigs and horses to achieve that. Perhaps that is anthropomorphic literature's main strength: rather than diluting ideas, it presents them in a new medium. In doing so, it broadens the readership so that books meant for adults soon find an audience with younger readers. So on one level Animal Farm is about a lack of pig-feed, and on another it is an overview of world politics in the first half of the 20th century.

There are many other examples of books that can be read on different levels, by readers of very different ages. Tarka The Otter, Charlotte's Web, or Russell Hoban's symbolically-loaded The Mouse And His Child can all be found in the children's literature sections of bookshops, yet work as allegorical grown up fictions too. Other enduring examples include Jack London's White Fang and The Call Of The Wild , two high-adventure companion tales that concern the civilization and de-civilisation of wild and domestic dogs respectively during the era of the Klondike Gold Rush. As with all anthropomorphic literature, it is through animals that London raises questions about our interpretation of what it means to be civilized and how corruptible a concept that can be. Told from a dog's eye perspective, it turns out man is more violent, greedy and gratuitously cruel than any creature in the animal kingdom. None of which may come as a huge surprise, yet the popularity of anthropomorphic literature as a genre is as strong as ever. As countless examples show, the appeal of these books stems not from the exploration of animals but the social and personal realities they convey.

They may be filled with memorable animal characters, but the feeling of empathy such stories create is uniquely human. Rabbit realism and folklore: Richard Adams’s Watership Down | Tor.com Rabbit realism and folklore: Richard Adams’s Watership Down Jo Walton Tue Oct 19, 2010 10:03am 74 comments Watership Down (1972) is a very clever book. It’s fantasy, certainly, but what Adams does is takes the realistic details of the lives of rabbits and then writes about them as if they were sapient. They talk and tell stories and prophecy (which is what makes the book fantasy rather than science fiction) but they are still and always rabbits and you can’t forget that for an instant. The plot is straight from Livy—it’s the story of the founding of Rome—but the story is so essentially steeped in the natural history of the downland and the rabbits that the allegory never becomes intrusive. This is the story of Hazel and Fiver, not Romulus and Remus, and stealing the does from Efrafa, not the rape of the Sabine women. Or rather it’s both, and the classical resonances give weight and shape to the story of the rabbits.

It’s one of those things where you wonder how anybody could have thought of it. Things I noticed reading it this time—it’s probably ten years since I last read it—this is a very specific moment of countryside, as well as a very specific place. This is forty years ago, it’s 1970, with the myxomatosis plague only just over, and with the methods of farming not yet changed to the agribusiness of today. Also, humans inevitably smoke. I don’t think we see a human who doesn’t smoke—smoking is what distinguishes humans, the white sticks are their spoor. Yes, that was 1970 in Britain, I remember it well. Who says things don’t get better? Even as a child I always found the authorial intrusions annoying. I didn’t want the bit of human point of view. And I liked working out what the rabbits didn’t understand, I didn’t need it explained in human terms. There’s a definite narrator here, and an implied human audience, and I’d prefer not to have that. He stops the story to say that rabbits don’t think about does with human ideas of romance, and it just isn’t necessary.

But I suppose he wasn’t writing for an science fiction reader—goodness knows who he thought he was writing for, with his chapter start quotations. I was also a little startled to find references to the way animals and primitive humans can sense things and feel things that civilized humans have lost. I don’t know who he thinks primitive humans are. Gah. Fortunately, there isn’t too much of this kind of thing. In contrast, I like the way the rabbits do struggle to understand new things, the way ideas like boats and inter-species co-operation are new and frightning to them. I think Adams does very well at conveying the rabbit point of view—alien, but not too alien to identify with. Most books about animals, especially books in which animals talk, and especially books for children in which animals talk, sentimentalise the animals. Adams doesn’t do this, and that’s why it works. He also differentiates the characters extremely well—and they are memorable characters. There are also some beautiful bits of description of scenery—though skimmers can feel free to skim them without being afraid of missing anything except atmosphere and pretty prose. I love the folklore, the stories of El-ahrairah.

The stories feel so real, so much like actual folklore. And the best thing of all is the way that at the end the stories of what the characters have done themselves have become El-ahrairah stories. There’s something about this whole thing, the whole oral storytelling culture of the rabbits, that lifts the book above itself. Of course they have a thousand enemies, of course they have a thousand tricks, of course the Black Rabbit of Inle is in the moon. It all feels absolutely right. I like the way it teaches you some words of the rabbit language, especially because this means that it can have Bigwig tell General Woundwort to eat shit, which isn’t something you usually get away with in a children’s book. I like the other two warrens they encounter, the warren with the snares and Efrafa, and how different they are. Adams may have meant them as parables about decadent America and totalitarian Russia, but that’s too much allegory for me. They work as very different rabbit warrens. I can’t tell how true to life the rabbit lives are, as almost everything I know about rabbits comes from having read this at an impressionable age.

I was walking in the Trough of Bowland at sunset once and rabbits were bounding off all around, and I said to my companion that we’d disturbed them when they’d come out to silflay, and he agreed, because we had. I don’t think I have seen a wild rabbit for the last thirty years without thinking of this book. I’ve used the word “tharn” of people. It’s so wonderfully immersive and atmospheric and real that I can’t really believe that Adams might have got any of the rabbity things wrong. I’ve been to Watership Down, the actual place. I didn’t go there on purpose, I just happened to be there one day. There was a sign there saying it was Watership Down, which considering the ominousness of the sign in the book didn’t seem appropriate to me. There’s also an appalling travesty of a movie—avoid it if you can do so without biting off your own leg to escape. When I was a child this was a long book, and the last time I read it I read it aloud a chapter at a time. So I was surprised to race through it in one day’s lying down straight-through reading. Jo Walton is a science fiction and fantasy writer.

She’s published eight novels, most recently Half a Crown and Lifelode , and two poetry collections. She reads a lot, and blogs about it here regularly. She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal where the food and books are more varied. a Research Paper on English. Essays, Term Papers on Watership Down By Richard Adams Essay, Research Paper: Watership Down By Richard Adams English Free English research papers were donated by our members/visitors and are presented free of charge for informational use only. The essay or term paper you are seeing on this page was not produced by our company and should not be considered a sample of our research/writing service. We are neither affiliated with the author of this essay nor responsible for its content. If you need high quality, fresh and competent research / writing done on the subject of English, use the professional writing service offered by our company. The novel Watership Down by Richard Adams, like Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, is an allegory. Watership Down also embodies many romantic ideas. Fiver, a rabbit who sees visions from Frith, represents the turn toward imagination that occurred in the Romantic period. The rabbits in the novel also value freedom and rebellion against tyranny, two important Romantic ideas.

Many of the rabbits that left the Sandleford warren were unhappy with authority there, and the Watership Down warren helped the rebellion against Efrafa. Hyzenthlay, a doe in Efrafa, questions authority and longs for freedom from tyranny. She embodies the individualism valued in the Romantic period and, like Fiver, sees visions from Frith. The rabbits in the novel search for better ways to live- another important Romantic idea. Fiver leads the search. “I know what we ought to be looking for – a high, lonely place with dry soil, where rabbits can see and hear all round and men hardly ever come. Wouldn’t that be worth a journey?” (Adams 48) Watership Down is an allegory, “a story in which the characters, settings and events stand for abstract or moral concepts” (Sime 1189). The different warrens in Watership Down represent different types of government. Efrafa, a warren run by General Woundwort, is a totalitarian government where the military class rules and the others are oppressed, much like the Khrushchev era in the USSR. In The Faerie Queene, each main character represents a heroic quality.

In the epic poem of knights, dragons and ladies, each part represented a heroic quality that embodied a noble person. During the Romantic period, people “turned away from the... emphasis on reason and artifice. The Romantics embraced imagination and naturalness.” (Sims 630). Fiver, a rabbit from the Sandleford warren, is an example of this Romantic philosophy in the novel. Fiver has an uncanny sense for danger- a psychic sense that the other rabbits do not possess. He speaks of one of his visions, “I know there’s something unnatural and evil twisted all round this place. I don’t know what it is, so no wonder I can’t talk about it. I keep getting near it, though.”(Adams 102). Fiver’s sense of danger proves accurate. He predicted the destruction of the Sandleford warren, imagining “The field! It’s covered with blood!” (Adams 21). This prophecy was later fulfilled when Holly and Bluebell came to Watership Down and told how the men destroyed the warren. Fiver embraces these visions, even in the face of other rabbits that tell him he is not thinking logically. Fiver values his individualism and visions.

The rabbits of Watership Down, like Romantics, “believed in individual liberty and sympathized with those who rebelled against tyranny.” (Sims 630). The rebellion that the rabbits supported came from the tyranny in Efrafa. Holly learned of Efrafa on his arrival, “You cannot call your life your own” (Adams 245). The rabbits in Efrafa are marked, and depending on the mark, have certain feeding times and are only allowed above ground at those times. Blackavar, an Efrafa rabbit, “had been caught trying to run away from the warren.” (Adams 248). Blackavar’s ears were “ripped to shreds” as punishment. (Adams 248). Holly and the other Watership Down rabbits “were sniffling at him; absolutely horror-stricken.” (Adams 248). Strawberry supports rebellion from Efrafa. “There are rabbits there who’d be the same as we are if they could only live naturally, like us. Several of them would be glad to leave the place if they could.” (Adams 265).

Hyzenthlay, a doe in Efrafa, longs for individual liberty and freedom from tyranny. Upon meeting her, Bigwig hears her poem, which, like romantic poetry, “spoke of personal experiences and emotions” (Sims 630). Bigwig also sees her emotions in her poetic gaze. “She turned to him a look of such wretchedness, so full of accusation and suffering, that it was all he could do not to beg her then and there to believe that he was her secret friend and that he hated Efrafa and the authority which he represented... this doe’s gaze spoke of wrongs beyond her power to express.” (Adams 331). Hyzenthlay had told Holly of her attempt to leave the warren. This doe rebelled against the tyranny of General Woundwort. Romantics were often looking for “better- that is, happier, fairer, and healthier- ways to live.” (Sims 631). The rabbits were also looking for a better way to live. A few of the rabbits who left the Sandleford warren did so, not because of Fiver’s warning, but because they were not happy with life at Sandleford.

Bigwig leaves the Owsla by rebelling against the Threarah. “I told him that... a strong rabbit could always do just as well by leaving the warren.... Lettuce-stealing isn’t my idea of a jolly life, nor sentry duty in the burrow.” (Adams 29). At cowslip’s warren, the rabbits thought they had found a better place to live when they saw the carrots available daily. Hazel remarked “What a Country! What a warren! No wonder they’re as big as hares and smell like princes!” (Adams 99). Fiver’s better place is Watership Down, “a high, lonely place with dry soil, where rabbits can see and hear all round and men hardly ever come.” (Adams 48). Although the rabbits have a different idea of a better place, they all constantly seek a better place to live, better things to eat, and better government. Watership Down mirrors many Romantic philosophies. The ideas of freedom and rebellion against tyranny are themes that run throughout the book, just as they were present throughout the Romantic period. Fiver and Hyzenthlay represent the individualism and imagination that were valued by Romantics.

Watership Down also functions as an allegory representing different qualities in humans and different forms of government. The importance of Romantic ideas and their relevance in the modern world is shown in Richard Adams’ 1972 novel, Watership Down. 0 Good or bad? How would you rate this essay? Help other users to find the good and worthy free term papers and trash the bad ones. Like this term paper? Vote & Promote so that others can find it Get a Custom Paper on English: Free papers will not meet the guidelines of your specific project. If you need a custom essay on English: , we can write you a high quality authentic essay. While free essays can be traced by Turnitin (plagiarism detection program), our custom written papers will pass any plagiarism test, guaranteed. Our writing service will save you time and grade. Related essays:

Question: Which animals are the subject of the novel ‘Watership Down’?
Answer: Rabbits