Watership Down

My roommate owns a rabbit who must make an appearance here at some time, and what better moment then alongside Watership Down, Richard Adams' lapine masterpiece? My roommate's rabbit's name is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, or Justice (pronounced Eustace) for short. He spends much of his day in her room, chilling, but in the evening he comes out. He loves to be petted (which I find strange in a rabbit) and he performs the most wonderful little tricks, well not so much tricks as actions: he cleans his ears, wiggles his nose, chews at everything, and when in the right mood will leap twisting into the air or run wildly in circles.

Eustace did not inspire me to finally read Watership Down, I've been meaning to do that since I started working at the bookstore, but living with a rabbit certainly pushed the book to the head of my list. One of the great joys of this novel is that the rabbits are not fully anthropomorphized; they are rabbits. They are given human-like personalities of course, and from time to time allowed to puzzle out things that one would imagine a rabbit never could, but they still retain a distinct rabbitness. In fact, the very societies presented--different as they are--are credibly explained byway of the natural rabbits' lifestyle.

I had always thought of Watership Down as a seventies, hippie-inspired novel, an allegory for what the world may be and what it should be. For awhile, this made me avoid the book; I was generally uncomfortable with allegory (and still am). While Watership Down can be construed as an allegory for peace and love and freedom, it is not necessarily so. Like any great piece of work, the book stands by itself, free of any biased allegories and symbols. Certainly, themes like the quest for peace and prosperity, the importance of individual freedom, or the debilitating features of a rigid society abound. As well, courage, intelligence, daring, and leadership are traits that are exalted through such characters as Hazel-rah and Bigwig; finally, Fiver carries the importance of deeply felt instinct. But none of these themes or traits apply directly to any contemporary society or personages; there is no one-to-one ratio which is what allegory insists upon. Hazel-rah is not Churchill and Woundwort is certainly not Hitler. Such connections can be made, but any surety in making them is nonsense.

One of the aspects of Watership Down that I found so appealing was Adams lush use of language. 'Silflay' became my favorite word of the week; it has a lovely sound and it is employed to full effect, so that both its sound and meaning become delightfully routine by the end of the novel. As well, the addition of 'rah' behind the rabbit leader's name is powerful and beautiful. Just compare the name Hazel to Hazel-rah; the latter has far more maturity and potency. I loved that the rabbits' language often had an almost Arabic sound to it. Aspects like this ground the novel, and make it far more than some kid's story about a bunch of talking bunnies.

In most 'questing' books, which this one definitely is, the quest the heroes undertake is often for a treasure of some kind, to rescue someone, or achieve a special power. Here, the quest proves far simpler, but also far closer to our own lives. Hazel-rah and his disparate, yet courageous, band of followers are not looking for glory; their quest is for a simple life. They--like most of us--want to be safe, loved, and live in the manner they choose. They are, after all, rabbits--meaning they are a prey species --so there is a constant tension in their lives between the level of ever-present danger (real or imagined) and the level of security they have achieved. Their needs are simple, yet in the novel they must go to great lengths to achieve them. And in the end, they do. You come to understand the rhythmic (even harmonious) nature of these animals. Their lives will become routine and yet beautiful: this is what they are striving for throughout the novel, this is why they journey.

Watership Down is a sprawling vast novel. It is a novel that to me connects back to the great novels of the European Nineteenth Century; in those, as in Watership Down, there is a feeling of the story at times careening away from its writer, of its very largeness allowing us to see glimpses and moments that would never be allowed in a more controlled work of art. In their very nature of natures they are diffuse, they spread and drip and fall where one does not expect them. But often their genius lies in this, this careening magnitude that attempts to capture not one aspect of life, but everything.

Book borrowed from work.

Watership Down

By: Richard Adams

Scribner, 2005

Paperback, 496 pages

ISBN: 0743277708