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Watership Down

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Watership Down
First edition cover
AuthorRichard Adams
LanguageEnglish
GenreFantasy novel
PublisherRex Collings
Publication date
November 1972
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typePrint (Hardback and paperback)
Pages413 (First edition, hardback)
ISBN[[Special:BookSources/ISBN+0-901720-31-3%3Cbr+%2F%3E%28First+edition%2C+hardback%29 |ISBN 0-901720-31-3
(First edition, hardback)]] Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
OCLC36359929
Followed byShardik 
For other uses, see Watership Down (disambiguation).

Watership Down is British author Richard Adams's first and most successful novel, a heroic fantasy about a small group of rabbits, published in the UK by Rex Collings Ltd in 1972. Although the animals in the novel live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphized, possessing their own culture, language (Lapine), proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel recounts the rabbits' odyssey as they escape the destruction of their warren to seek a place in which to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.

The novel takes it name from the rabbits' destination, Watership Down, a hill in the north of Hampshire, England, near the area where Adams grew up. The story is based on a collection of tales that Adams told to his young children to pass the time on trips to the countryside. Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were much influenced by The Private Life of the Rabbit, by British naturalist Ronald Lockley.

Though it was initially rejected by thirteen publishers, Watership Down has never been out of print and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. Adapted into an acclaimed classic film and a television series, it is Penguin Books' best selling novel of all time.[1][2] In 1996, Adams published Tales from Watership Down, a follow-up collection of 19 short stories about both El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.[3][4]

Publication history

Watership Down began as a story that Richard Adams told to his two children, Juliet and Rosamund, on a long car journey; in an interview, Adams said that he "began telling the story of the rabbits… improvised off the top of my head, as we were driving along."[5][2] His children insisted that he write it down—"they were very, very persistent"—and though he initially delayed, he eventually began writing in the evenings, completing it eighteen months later.[5] The book is dedicated to both daughters.[6]

To Juliet and Rosamund,
remembering
the road to Stratford-on-Avon

Dedication, Watership Down

However, Adams had difficulty finding a publisher; his novel was rejected 13 times in all, until it was finally accepted by Rex Collings, a small publishing house.[2] The publisher had little capital and could not pay Adams an advance; but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered."[5]

Adams's descriptions of the factual aspect of wild rabbit behaviour were influenced by and based upon The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley.[7][8] The two later became friends and went on an expedition to the Antarctic, resulting in a joint writing venture, Voyage Through the Antarctic, published in 1982.[7]

Plot summary

The real Watership Down, near the Hampshire village of Kingsclere, in 1975.

In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a young runt rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. When he and his brother Hazel fail to convince their chief rabbit of the need to evacuate, they set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, barely eluding the Owsla, the warren's military caste.

The traveling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, previously an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory, with Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla, as the only significantly strong rabbits among them. Fiver's visions promise a safe place in which to settle, and the group eventually finds Watership Down, an ideal location to set up their new warren. They are soon reunited with Holly and Bluebell, also from the Sandleford Warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans.

Nuthanger Farm, Hampshire, England, in 2004.

Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realises that there are no does, thus making the future of their new home uncertain. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does. Hazel sends a small emissary to Efrafa to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel and Pipkin successfully raid the nearby Nuthanger Farm to rescue a group of hutch rabbits there, returning with two does. When the emissary returns, Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort; Hazel's rabbits barely return alive. However, the group did manage to identify an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay who wants to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join. Hazel and Bigwig devise a plan to rescue the group of rabbits from Efrafa to join them on Watership Down. The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but soon Woundwort's army arrives to attack the Watership Down warren. Through the bravery and loyalty of Bigwig and the ingenuity of Hazel, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort.

The story's epilogue tells the reader of how Hazel, dozing in his burrow one "chilly, blustery morning in March" many springs later, is visited by El-ahrairah. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with El-ahrairah, slipping away, "running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."[citation needed]

Characters

Main article: List of characters in Watership Down
  • Fiver – A small runt rabbit; his Lapine name is Hrair-roo, which means "Little-five" or "Little-thousand". As a seer, he often receives visions and has very strong instincts. He is quiet and intuitive, and though he does not directly act as a leader, the others listen to and follow his advice.
  • Hazel – Fiver's older brother; he leads the rabbits from Sandleford and eventually becomes Chief Rabbit. Though Hazel is not particularly large or powerful, he is loyal, brave, and a quick thinker. He often relies on Fiver's advice, and trusts in his brother's instincts absolutely.
  • Bigwig – An ex-Owsla officer, and the largest rabbit of the group. His name in Lapine is Thlayli, which literally means "Fur-head" and refers to the shock of fur on the back of his head. Though he is powerful and fierce, he is shown to also be cunning in his own way when he devises a plan to defeat the larger and stronger General Woundwort.
  • Blackavar – A rabbit with very dark fur, who tries to escape from Efrafa but is apprehended and kept in solitary confinement. When he is liberated by Bigwig, he quickly proves himself as an expert tracker and ranger.
  • Kehaar – A black-headed gull who is forced, by an injured wing, to take refuge on Watership Down. He is characterized by his frequent impatience, guttural accent and unusual phrasing. After discovering the Efrafa warren and helping the rabbits, he rejoins his colony. According to Adams, Kehaar was based on a fighter from the Norwegian Resistance in the World War II.[9]
  • General Woundwort – A hard and brutally efficient rabbit, who was orphaned at a young age, Woundwort founded the Efrafa warren and is its tyrannical Chief Rabbit. Though he is similar to Bigwig in terms of his size and power, he lacks the former's loyalty and kindness. After his apparent death, he lives on in rabbit legend as a bogeyman.
  • Frith – A god-figure who created the world and promised that rabbits would always be allowed to thrive. In Lapine, his name literally means "the sun".
  • El-ahrairah – A rabbit trickster folk hero, who is the protagonist of nearly all of the rabbits' stories. He represents what every rabbit wants to be: smart, devious, tricky, and devoted to the well-being of his warren. In Lapine, his name is a contraction of the phrase Elil-hrair-rah, which means "prince with a thousand enemies".
  • Black Rabbit of Inlé – A sinister phantom servant of the god Frith who appears in fictional rabbit folklore. He is the rabbit equivalent of a grim reaper in human folklore, and similarly ensures all rabbits die at their pre-destined time.

Themes

Watership Down has been described as an allegory, with the labours of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and Silver "mirror[ing] the timeless struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state."[10] Adams draws on classical heroic and quest themes from Homer and Virgil, creating a story with epic motifs.[11] Additionally, some scholars have perceived a strong misogynic element.[12]

The hero, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid

The book explores the themes of exile, survival, heroism, political responsibility, and the "making of a hero and a community".[13] Joan Bridgman's analysis of Adams's work's in The Contemporary Review identifies the community and hero motifs: "[T]he hero's journey into a realm of terrors to bring back some boon to save himself and his people" is a powerful element in Adams's tale. This theme derives from the author's exposure to the works of mythology academic Joseph Campbell, especially his study of comparative mythology, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949). The theory of Campbell's monomyth, also based on Carl Jung's view of the unconscious mind, made Adams realise that "all the stories in the world are really one story." George Lucas similarly based Star Wars on Campbell's monomyth pattern, which, in turn, influenced other film plots.[11]

The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down's characters and those in Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid.[10] Hazel's courage, Bigwig's strength, Blackberry's ingenuity and craftiness, and Dandelion's and Bluebell's poetry and storytelling all have parallels in the epic poem Odyssey.[14] Kenneth Kitchell declared, "Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus, Aeneas, and others..."[15] Tolkien scholar John Rateliff calls Adams's novel an Aeneid "what-if" book: what if the seer Cassandra (Fiver) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy (Sandleford Warren) before its destruction? What if Hazel and his companions, like Aeneas, encounter a seductive home at Cowslip's Warren (Land of the Lotus Eaters)? Rateliff goes on to compare the rabbits' battle with Woundwort's Efrafans to Aeneas's fight with Turnus's Latins. "By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Adams taps into a very old myth: the flight from disaster, the heroic refugee in search of a new home, a story that was already over a thousand years old when Vergil [sic] told it in 19 BC."[1]

Misogyny

Some critics have called the story misogynistic. Exploring the treatment of does in the novel, Selma G. Lanes, a writer and critic of children's literature, is very critical of Adams's work. Lanes points out that the first third of the story is a "celebration of male camaraderie, competence, bravery and loyalty as a scraggly bunch of yearling bucks ... arrive triumphant at a prospectively ideal spot", only "belatedly" to realize they have no females for mating. "Fully the last two-thirds of Adams's saga is devoted to what one male reviewer has blithely labeled 'The Rape of the Sabine Rabbits,' a ruthless, single-minded and rather mean-spirited search for females – not because Watership Down's males miss their companionship or yearn for love, but rather to perpetuate the existing band."[12]

For Adams, the does are needed, but only as "instruments of reproduction" to prevent the males' achievement of reaching Watership Down from turning into a "hollow victory." The book's females are relegated to the sole role of breeder, as evidenced by Hazel's and Holly's assessment of the rescued Nuthanger does' value: " '... it came naturally ... to consider the two Nuthanger does simply as breeding stock for the warren.' " Although Adams draws extensively upon Ronald Lockley's The Private Life of the Rabbit as a basis for his depiction of rabbit society, Lanes emphasizes an important departure from this source. Lockley's description of the rabbit world is matriarchal, even to the extent that new warrens are "always" initiated by dissatisfied, young females. Yet, Lanes avers, Adams's portrayal of females is more suitable to "Hefner than ... Lockley."[12]

The Puffin Modern Classics edition of the novel contains an afterword by Nicholas Tucker, who writes that stories such as Watership Down "now fit rather uneasily into the modern world of consideration of both sexes". He contrasts Hazel's sensitivity to Fiver with the "far more mechanical" attitude of the bucks towards does, whom Tucker considers are portrayed as "little more than passive baby-factories". In later printings of the same edition, however, this part of the afterword was excised without comment.[16]

Reception

The Economist heralded the initial publication of Watership Down with, "If there is no place for “Watership Down” in children’s bookshops, then children’s literature is dead."[17] Peter Prescott, senior book reviewer at Newsweek, gave the novel a glowing review: "Adams handles his suspenseful narrative more dexterously than most authors who claim to write adventure novels, but his true achievement lies in the consistent, comprehensible and altogether enchanting civilization that he has created."[13] Kathleen J. Rothen and Beverly Langston identified the work as one that "subtly speaks to a child", with "engaging characters and fast-paced action [that] make it readable."[14] This echoed Nicholas Tucker's praise for the story's suspense in the New Statesman: "Mr. Adams’...has bravely and successfully resurrected the big picaresque adventure story, with moments of such tension that the helplessly involved reader finds himself checking whether things are going to work out all right on the next page before daring to finish the preceding one."[18]

The "enchanting" world Prescott admired was not as well received upon its 1974 American publication. Although again the object of general approval, reception in the United States was more mixed unlike the predominantly positive reviews of 1972. Feminists, in particular, found fault with the story's depiction of does, likening its "attitude toward females [more like that] in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy than R.M. Lockley’s The Private Life of the Rabbit."[19] D. Keith Mano, a science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the National Review, declared that the novel was "pleasant enough, but it has about the same intellectual firepower as Dumbo." He pilloried it further: "Watership Down is an adventure story, no more than that: rather a swashbuckling, crude one to boot. There are virtuous rabbits and bad rabbits: if that’s allegory, Bonanza is an allegory."[20]

Despite the criticism, Watership Down was a hit with the reading public. The novel found a spot on the Publishers Weekly’s Best-Seller List in March 1974; it attained the number one ranking on April 15 1974, and remained there for another three months. The book did not drop off the list until February 1975.[citation needed]

Awards

Watership Down won both the Carnegie Medal in 1972 and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize in 1973.[21][22] In The Big Read, a 2003 survey of the British public, it was voted the forty-second greatest book of all time.[23]

Adaptations

Film

Main article: Watership Down (film)

In 1978 Watership Down was adapted into an animated film, written and directed by Martin Rosen. The voice cast included John Hurt, Richard Briers, Harry Andrews, Simon Cadell, Nigel Hawthorne, and Roy Kinnear. The song "Bright Eyes", sung by Art Garfunkel, was also featured, and was later released as a single, becoming a UK number one hit.[24]

Although the essentials of the plot remained relatively unchanged, several side plots and asides were removed to help the storyline flow better, and some minor characters were downplayed. Though the Watership Down warren eventually grew to seventeen rabbits, with the additions of Strawberry, Holly, Bluebell, and three hutch rabbits liberated from the farm, the movie only includes a band of eight. Despite these changes, Rosen's adaptation was praised for "cutting through Adams' book [...] to get to the beating heart".[25]

In 1979, Watership Down was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.[26] In Channel 4's 2006 documentary 100 Greatest Cartoons, it was named the 86th greatest cartoon of all time.[27]

Television

Main article: Watership Down (TV series)

From 1999 to 2001, the book was also adapted as an animated television series, broadcast on CITV in the UK and on YTV in Canada.[28] It starred several well-known British actors, including Stephen Fry, Rik Mayall, Dawn French, John Hurt, and Richard Briers, and ran for a total of 39 episodes over three seasons. Although the story was broadly based on that of the novel, with most characters and many incidents retained, in later episodes especially some storylines and characters were entirely new. In 2003, the second season was nominated for a Gemini Award for Best Original Music Score for a Dramatic Series.[29]

Theatre

In 2006, Watership Down was adapted into a theatrical production by Rona Munro for the Lyric Hammersmith in London. Directed by Melly Still, the cast included Matthew Burgess, Joseph Traynor, and Richard Simons, and ran from November 2006 through January 2007.[30] The tone of the production was inspired by the tension of war: in an interview with The Guardian, Still commented, "The closest humans come to feeling like rabbits is under war conditions ... We've tried to capture that anxiety."[31] A reviewer at The Times called the play "an exciting, often brutal tale of survival" and said that "even when it’s a muddle, it’s a glorious one."[32]

References

  1. ^ a b Rateliff, John D. "Classics of Fantasy". Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Retrieved 2008-03-21. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ a b c BBC Berkshire (2007-03-16). "Interview: Richard Adams". BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
  3. ^ Tales from Watership Down at the Internet Book List
  4. ^ Sally Eckhoff (1996-11-26). "Tales from Watership Down". Salon.com. Retrieved 2008-03-15.
  5. ^ a b c Swaim, Don (1985-04-10). "Audio Interview with Richard Adams" (audio). Book Beat. CBS Radio Stations News Service. Retrieved 2008-03-21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  6. ^ Richard Adams (1972). Watership Down. United Kingdom: Rex Collings.
  7. ^ a b "Ronald Lockley: Find More Like This". Vol. 355, no. 8168. The Economist. 2000-04-29. p. 84. In 1964 he had published The Private Life of the Rabbit. This study of the habits of the wild rabbit gathered by Mr Lockley persuaded Richard Adams to write Watership Down, a kind of Disney story for adults, which became an immediate bestseller. {{cite magazine}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  8. ^ Douglas Martin (2000-04-04). "Ronald Lockley, of Rabbit Fame, Dies at 96". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-04-26. In his acknowledgments, Mr. Adams credited Mr. Lockley's book for his own description of bunny behavior in his tale of wandering rabbits.
  9. ^ Introduction by Richard Adams in Watership Down, Scribner edition, USA 2005. ISBN 0743277708.
  10. ^ a b "Watership Down", Masterplots II: Juvenile and Young Adult Fiction Series, Salem Press, Inc., 1991
  11. ^ a b Bridgman, Joan (August 2000). "Richard Adams at Eighty". The Contemporary Review. 277.1615. The Contemporary Review Company Limited: 108. ISSN 0010-7565. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  12. ^ a b c Lanes, Selma (2004). Through the Looking Glass: Further Adventures and Misadventures in the Realm of Children's Literature. David R. Godine. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help) pp. 194-196
  13. ^ a b Prescott, Peter S. (1974-03-18). "Rabbit, Read". Newsweek. p. 114. {{cite magazine}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  14. ^ a b Rothen, Kathleen J. (March 1987). "Hazel, Fiver, Odysseus, and You: An Odyssey into Critical Thinking". The English Journal. 76 (3). National Council of Teachers of English: 56–59. ISSN 1544-6166. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  15. ^ Kitchell, Jr., Kenneth F. (Fall 1986). "The Shrinking of the Epic Hero: From Homer to Richard Adams's Watership Down". Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly. 7 (1): 13–30. ISSN 0197-2227. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  16. ^ Tucker, Nicholas (1993). "Afterword". In Richard Adams, Watership Down. London: Puffin Modern Classics. ISBN 978-0-140-36453-8
  17. ^ "Pick of the Warren". The Economist. 1972-12-23. p. 47. {{cite magazine}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  18. ^ Tucker, Nicholas (1972-12-22). "Animal Epic". New Statesman. p. 950. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  19. ^ Lanes, Selma G. (1974-06-19). "Male Chauvinist Rabbits". The New York Times Book Review. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  20. ^ Mano, D. Keith (1974-04-26). "Banal Bunnies". National Review. p. 406. {{cite magazine}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  21. ^ "The CILIP Carnegie Medal - Full List of Winners". CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards. 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-28. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  22. ^ "British Children's Literature Awards: Guardian Children's Prize for Fiction" (PDF). Burnaby Public Library. 2007. Retrieved 2008-03-28. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  23. ^ "The Big Read: Top 100 Books". BBC. April 2003. Retrieved 2008-03-28. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  24. ^ Collings, Stephen (2003–2008). accessdate = 2008-03-28 "Watership Down (1978)". BFI Screenonline. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Missing pipe in: |url= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)
  25. ^ Phil Villarreal (2005-07-15). "Phil Villarreal's Review: Watership Down". Arizona Daily Star. Retrieved 2008-05-11.
  26. ^ "1979 Hugo Awards". World Science Fiction Society. Retrieved 2008-05-11.
  27. ^ "100 Greatest Cartoons". Channel 4. 2005-02-27. Retrieved 2008-05-11.
  28. ^ Decode Entertainment. "Watership Down". http://www.decode.tv/index.php?sid=50
  29. ^ "Canada's Awards Database". Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. 2003. Retrieved 2008-04-26.
  30. ^ "Christmas at the Lyric: Watership Down". Lyric Hammersmith. Retrieved 2008-03-28.
  31. ^ "Down the rabbit hole". The Guardian. 2006-11-22. Retrieved 2008-03-21. The closest humans come to feeling like rabbits is under war conditions. Imagine what it would be like if every time we stepped out on the street, we know we could be picked off by a sniper. We've tried to capture that anxiety in the way the rabbits speak—lots of short, jerky sentences.
  32. ^ Sam Marlowe (2006-11-29). "Watership Down". The Times. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
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