Watership Down
Encyclopedia
Watership Down is a classic heroic fantasy
novel, written by English
author Richard Adams
, about a small group of rabbit
s. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised
, possessing their own culture
, language
(Lapine
), proverb
s, 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 its 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.
Published in 1972
, Watership Down was Richard Adams' first novel, and is by far his most successful to date. Although it was initially rejected by 13 publishers before eventually being accepted by Rex Collings Ltd, 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. In 1996, Adams published Tales from Watership Down
, a follow-up collection of 19 short stories
about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.
, Arnhem
, the Netherlands
in 1944. His daughters insisted he write it down—"they were very, very persistent"—and though he initially delayed, he eventually began writing in the evenings, completing it 18 months later. The book is dedicated to his daughters.
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. 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."
Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were based upon The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley
. 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.
The traveling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, a role reversal because of his previous position as an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory with Bigwig and Silver (both former Owsla) and Buckthorn as the only significantly strong rabbits among them.
The company copes with many dangers and meets a rabbit called Cowslip, who invites the group back to be members of his warren. Here, the company encounter an apparently prosperous rabbit colony with ample food and protection from predators by a human whose farm is near their warren. However, Fiver is profoundly suspicious, especially when he observes that these rabbits do not tell the customary tales of El-ahrairah but instead recite fatalistic poetry. When Fiver attempts to leave, Bigwig learns firsthand the deadly secret of the warren: the whole area is a human-designed rabbit farm with numerous snares placed to harvest them. After helping Bigwig escape from a snare, Fiver exposes his fellows to the warren's horrific secret, effectively convincing them to flee this honey trap of a colony immediately. One of the rabbits in Cowslip's warren, named Strawberry, joins them at this point.
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 Captain Holly and Bluebell, also from the original warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans.
Everything is peaceful for a while before Hazel encounters a problem. Hazel realizes there are no does, making the continuation of their new home an impossibility. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar whom they have befriended, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does.
Hazel sends a small delegation to this warren, composed of Captain Holly, Silver, Buckthorn, and Strawberry, to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel makes a reconnaissance trip with Pipkin to a nearby farm to talk with a group of hutch rabbits who live there, partly in their quest for does but also because of Hazel's curiosity. They discover there are indeed does at the farm and, against the advice of the clairvoyant Fiver, decide to gather a raiding party to attempt to bring them to Watership Down. They don't successfully bring back any does, but they bring back news that there are in fact does there.
Hazel and the trustworthy yet diminutive Pipkin bring back the tidings to Watership Down, setting the stage for an adventurous and daring raid. Hazel and Bigwig, along with a group of four others, venture out to the farm and bring the hutch rabbits to Watership Down. They return with two does, a good start, but not nearly enough for a warren of their size. On their way back, Hazel suffers a gunshot wound to his hind leg.
After the mission to the farm, the delegation sent to Efrafa returns, having been told they could not leave. The group escaped only because a pursuing group of Efrafans was destroyed by "one of Lord Frith's messengers" as they crossed the "Iron Road" (they were run over by a train). Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a tyrannical police state led by the dictator General Woundwort. Hazel's rabbits barely return alive, but the group does 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. Bigwig himself joins the warren and leads an escape, with Kehaar attacking the pursuing Woundwort. The group then escapes on a boat down the river Test that had been moored to the bank, with Hazel chewing through the rope in time for it to break free, leaving his rabbits on the board with the Efrafan does and Woundwort bemused on the bank.
The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but having been tracked by a wide patrol that they had encountered on their retreat, are soon under siege. Woundwort's army arrives to attack their warren. Through the bravery and loyalty of Bigwig and the ingenuity of Hazel, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort's army. Bigwig has to fight Woundwort himself, who flees when Bigwig declares his chief rabbit has ordered him to stay and fight. Not realising it is Hazel who is chief, the Efrafan general leaves in haste, imagining some huge rabbit must be the chief if so big an animal as Bigwig is not in charge.
In the meantime, Hazel leads a party down to the farm, where they chew through a dog's lead and lead it - chasing them up the down - straight onto the attacking Efrafans. Finally, none are left except Woundwort, face to face with a snarling labrador..
The fate of Woundwort himself is not exactly clear, but he is never again seen or heard of by any rabbit, bird, or mouse near the down.
The novel's epilogue describes Watership Down after the battle, as well as how Hazel, by now an old rabbit, is sleeping in his burrow one "chilly, blustery morning in March." Hazel is visited by El-ahraihrah, who invites Hazel to join his Owsla. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down, slipping away, "running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."
, 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." Adams draws on classical
heroic and quest
themes from Homer
and Virgil
, creating a story with epic
motifs.
interview about the religious symbolism in the novel, Adams stated that the story was "nothing like that at all." Adams said that the rabbits in Watership Down did not worship, however, "they believed passionately in El-ahrairah". Adams explained that he meant the book to be, "only a made-up story... in no sense an allegory or parable or any kind of political myth. I simply wrote down a story I told to my little girls". Instead, he explained, the "let-in" religious stories of El-ahrairah were meant more as legendary tales, similar to a rabbit Robin Hood
, and that these stories were interspersed throughout the book as humorous interjections to the often "grim" tales of the "real story".
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 mythologist Joseph Campbell
, especially his study of comparative mythology
, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
(1949), and in particular, Campbell's "monomyth
" theory, also based on Carl Jung
's view of the unconscious mind, that "all the stories in the world are really one story.".
The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down's characters and those in Homer
's Odyssey
and Virgil
's Aeneid
. 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. Kenneth Kitchell declared, "Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus
, Aeneas
, and others". 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 told it in 19 BC."
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." Peter Prescott
, senior book reviewer at Newsweek
, gave the novel a glowing review: "Adams handles his suspenseful narrative more dextrously than most authors who claim to write adventure novels, but his true achievement lies in the consistent, comprehensible and altogether enchanting civilisation that he has created." 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." 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."
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. 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."
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 15 April 1974, and remained there for another three months. The book did not drop off the list until February 1975.
John Rowe Townsend notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it, "came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been heard of". Fred Inglis, in his book The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction, praises the author’s use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits' perspective.
Watership Downs universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have led to the tendency of minority groups to read their own narrative into the novel, despite the author's assurance that it "was never intended to become some sort of allegory or parabel." Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto Watership Down, has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book...some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism...a protest against materialism, against the corporate state. Watership Down can be Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the massacres." Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and Watership Down for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture...all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype."
in 1972 and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
in 1973. The book won the 1977 California Young Reader Medal
. In The Big Read, a 2003 survey of the British public, it was voted the forty-second greatest book of all time.
Martin Rosen
wrote and directed an animated film
adaptation of Watership Down. The voice cast included John Hurt
, Richard Briers
, Harry Andrews
, Simon Cadell
, Nigel Hawthorne
, and Roy Kinnear
. The film featured the song "Bright Eyes
", sung by Art Garfunkel
. Released as a single, the song became a UK number one hit.
Although the essentials of the plot remained relatively unchanged, the film omits several side plots. 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. Rosen's adaptation was praised for "cutting through Adams' book ... to get to the beating heart".
The film has also seen some positive critical attention. In 1979 the film received a nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
. Additionally, British television station Channel 4
's 2006 documentary 100 Greatest Cartoons named it the 86th greatest cartoon of all time.
A screenplay is currently in development for a re-adaptation of the book.
in the UK and on YTV in Canada. 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 story lines 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.
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. 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." 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."
centred around talking rabbits, published in 1976
by Fantasy Games Unlimited. It introduced several innovations to role-playing game design, being the first game to allow players to have non-humanoid
roles, as well as the first with detailed martial arts
and skill systems. Fantasy Games Unlimited published a second edition of the game in 1982, and the game was modified and republished by Steve Jackson Games
as an official GURPS supplement in 1992.
folk rock
trio America
performed a song titled "Watership Down", released by Warner Bros. Records
in April 1976 on their Hideaway album. Composed by singer/songwriter Gerry Beckley
, the song's lyrics refer obliquely to the story elements, including the phrase "you might hear them in the distance, if your ear's to the ground." Although the song did not chart, it did receive airplay on FM
album rock stations during the year.
Swedish progressive rock
musician Bo Hansson
recorded a suite
named "Rabbit Music" which was based on the book, as part of his 1975 album Attic Thoughts
. Two years later, Hansson released an entire album devoted to the novel, titled Music Inspired by Watership Down
.
The British electro group Ladytron
shot a music video for their single "Ghosts", off their 2008 album Velocifero
, which featured many references to Watership Down.
American art-rock band ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
has one song on their self-titled album
, released in 1998, called "Prince With A Thousand Enemies".
American hip-hop group Common Market
recorded a song called "Watership Down" on their 2008 EP Black Patch War
.
American punk band AFI
used imagery from the movie on the cover of their Decemberunderground
album.
British post hardcore band Fall Of Efrafa created a trilogy of concept records based around an interpretation of the political and religious ideology in the book.
The Paul McCartney and Wings album Band On The Run
(1973) has the song "Band On The Run" referencing this work in the line "And the bell was ringing in the village square for the rabbits on the run".
American alt-rock band Watership Down bears the same name as the novel and film.
New Jersey based hardcore punk band Bigwig
takes their name from the character in the novel. The cover art of their first album, Unmerry Melodies, features a rabbit resembling the character of Bigwig, and the song "Best of Me" features a sample from the film Watership Down.
A homemade Youtube
music video for a song called "At Your Enemies" from ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers
guitarist, John Frusciante
, and Josh Klinghoffer
's album, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, contains clips from the animated film Watership Down.
American singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton
will release an album in June 2011 called Rabbits on the Run, which was inspired by Watership Down and A Brief History of Time
.
American Music Producer Skrillex (aka Sonny Moore
) named his music label after OWSLA. (2011)
, entitled Animals, nature presenters from the BBC are forced to escape in rabbit suits from the fury of animals now granted equal rights with humans. It features the music and animation in the style of the movies.
In the American TV show Robot Chicken
, a parody of the book is done with the Fraggles, the main characters of the show Fraggle Rock
, in place of the rabbits.
Heroic fantasy
Heroic fantasy is a sub-genre of fantasy which chronicles the tales of heroes in imaginary lands. Unlike stories of sword and sorcery, heroic fantasy narratives tend to be intricate in plot, often involving many peoples, nations and lands. Grand battles and the fate of the world are common themes,...
novel, written by English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
author Richard Adams
Richard Adams
Richard Adams was a non-conforming English Presbyterian divine, known as author of sermons and other theological writings.-Life:...
, about a small group of rabbit
Rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...
s. Although the animals in the story live in their natural environment, they are anthropomorphised
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
, possessing their own culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
(Lapine
Lapine language
Lapine is a fictional language created by author Richard Adams for his 1972 novel Watership Down, where it is spoken by fictional rabbit characters. The fragments of language presented by Adams consist of a few dozen distinct words, and are chiefly used for the naming of rabbits, their mythological...
), proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s, poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, and mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
. Evoking epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
themes, the novel recounts the rabbits' odyssey as they escape the destruction of their warren
Burrow
A burrow is a hole or tunnel dug into the ground by an animal to create a space suitable for habitation, temporary refuge, or as a byproduct of locomotion. Burrows provide a form of shelter against predation and exposure to the elements, so the burrowing way of life is quite popular among the...
to seek a place in which to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
The novel takes its name from the rabbits' destination, Watership Down
Watership Down, Hampshire
Watership Down is a hill, or down, at Ecchinswell in the civil parish of Ecchinswell, Sydmonton and Bishops Green in the English county of Hampshire. It rises fairly steeply on its northern flank , but to the south the slope is much gentler . .The Down is best known as the setting for Richard...
, a hill in the north of Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
, 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.
Published in 1972
1972 in literature
The year 1972 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Fiction:*Richard Adams - Watership Down*Jorge Amado - Teresa Batista Cansada da Guerra *Martin Amis - The Rachel Papers...
, Watership Down was Richard Adams' first novel, and is by far his most successful to date. Although it was initially rejected by 13 publishers before eventually being accepted by Rex Collings Ltd, Watership Down has never been out of print, and was the recipient of several prestigious awards. Adapted into an acclaimed classic film
Watership Down (film)
Watership Down is a 1978 English adventure drama animated film written, produced and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the book by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions...
and a television series
Watership Down (TV series)
Watership Down is an animated television series, adapted from the novel of the same name by Richard Adams. It was a co-production of Alltime Entertainment of the United Kingdom and Decode Entertainment of Canada, and produced by Martin Rosen, the director of the 1978 feature film...
, it is Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
' best-selling novel of all time. In 1996, Adams published Tales from Watership Down
Tales from Watership Down
Tales from Watership Down is a collection of nineteen short stories by Richard Adams, published in 1996 as a follow-up to Adams's highly successful 1972 novel about rabbits, Watership Down. It consists of a number of short stories of rabbit mythology, followed by several chapters featuring many of...
, a follow-up collection of 19 short stories
Short Stories
Short Stories may refer to:*A plural for Short story*Short Stories , an American pulp magazine published from 1890-1959*Short Stories, a 1954 collection by O. E...
about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.
Publication history
Watership Down began as a story Richard Adams told to his two daughters, Juliet and Rosamond, on a long car journey; in an interview, Adams said he "began telling the story of the rabbits ... improvised off the top of my head, as we were driving along." He based the struggles of the animals in the story on the struggles he and his friends encountered during the Battle of OosterbeekBattle of Arnhem
The Battle of Arnhem was a famous Second World War military engagement fought in and around the Dutch towns of Arnhem, Oosterbeek, Wolfheze, Driel and the surrounding countryside from 17–26 September 1944....
, Arnhem
Arnhem
Arnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
in 1944. His daughters insisted he write it down—"they were very, very persistent"—and though he initially delayed, he eventually began writing in the evenings, completing it 18 months later. The book is dedicated to his daughters.
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. 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."
Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were based upon The Private Life of the Rabbit (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley
Ronald Lockley
Ronald Mathias Lockley was a Welsh naturalist and author who spent much of his later life in New Zealand. He wrote over fifty books, including The Private Life of the Rabbit , which played an important role in the plot development of Richard Adams' famous book Watership Down...
. The two later became friends and went on an expedition to the Antarctic
Antarctic
The Antarctic is the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises the continent of Antarctica and the ice shelves, waters and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence...
, resulting in a joint writing venture, Voyage Through the Antarctic, published in 1982.
Plot summary
The novel begins in a warren with Fiver, a young rabbit, who is considered a runt by the warren and yet is also a seer, receiving a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. He and his brother Hazel, the main character of the novel who at this point is low in the rabbit hierarchy, attempt to persuade their chief rabbit of the danger facing them, but are ignored. They then set out on their own with a small band of rabbits to search for a new home, though with difficulty, as the warren's military caste—the Owsla—try to prevent them leaving.The traveling group of rabbits find themselves following the leadership of Hazel, a role reversal because of his previous position as an unimportant member of the warren. They travel through dangerous territory with Bigwig and Silver (both former Owsla) and Buckthorn as the only significantly strong rabbits among them.
The company copes with many dangers and meets a rabbit called Cowslip, who invites the group back to be members of his warren. Here, the company encounter an apparently prosperous rabbit colony with ample food and protection from predators by a human whose farm is near their warren. However, Fiver is profoundly suspicious, especially when he observes that these rabbits do not tell the customary tales of El-ahrairah but instead recite fatalistic poetry. When Fiver attempts to leave, Bigwig learns firsthand the deadly secret of the warren: the whole area is a human-designed rabbit farm with numerous snares placed to harvest them. After helping Bigwig escape from a snare, Fiver exposes his fellows to the warren's horrific secret, effectively convincing them to flee this honey trap of a colony immediately. One of the rabbits in Cowslip's warren, named Strawberry, joins them at this point.
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 Captain Holly and Bluebell, also from the original warren, who reveal that Fiver's vision was true and the entire warren was destroyed by humans.
Everything is peaceful for a while before Hazel encounters a problem. Hazel realizes there are no does, making the continuation of their new home an impossibility. With the help of a seagull named Kehaar whom they have befriended, they locate a nearby warren, Efrafa, which is overcrowded and has many does.
Hazel sends a small delegation to this warren, composed of Captain Holly, Silver, Buckthorn, and Strawberry, to present their request for does. While waiting for the group to return, Hazel makes a reconnaissance trip with Pipkin to a nearby farm to talk with a group of hutch rabbits who live there, partly in their quest for does but also because of Hazel's curiosity. They discover there are indeed does at the farm and, against the advice of the clairvoyant Fiver, decide to gather a raiding party to attempt to bring them to Watership Down. They don't successfully bring back any does, but they bring back news that there are in fact does there.
Hazel and the trustworthy yet diminutive Pipkin bring back the tidings to Watership Down, setting the stage for an adventurous and daring raid. Hazel and Bigwig, along with a group of four others, venture out to the farm and bring the hutch rabbits to Watership Down. They return with two does, a good start, but not nearly enough for a warren of their size. On their way back, Hazel suffers a gunshot wound to his hind leg.
After the mission to the farm, the delegation sent to Efrafa returns, having been told they could not leave. The group escaped only because a pursuing group of Efrafans was destroyed by "one of Lord Frith's messengers" as they crossed the "Iron Road" (they were run over by a train). Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a tyrannical police state led by the dictator General Woundwort. Hazel's rabbits barely return alive, but the group does 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. Bigwig himself joins the warren and leads an escape, with Kehaar attacking the pursuing Woundwort. The group then escapes on a boat down the river Test that had been moored to the bank, with Hazel chewing through the rope in time for it to break free, leaving his rabbits on the board with the Efrafan does and Woundwort bemused on the bank.
The Efrafan escapees start their new life on Watership Down, but having been tracked by a wide patrol that they had encountered on their retreat, are soon under siege. Woundwort's army arrives to attack their warren. Through the bravery and loyalty of Bigwig and the ingenuity of Hazel, the Watership Down rabbits defeat Woundwort's army. Bigwig has to fight Woundwort himself, who flees when Bigwig declares his chief rabbit has ordered him to stay and fight. Not realising it is Hazel who is chief, the Efrafan general leaves in haste, imagining some huge rabbit must be the chief if so big an animal as Bigwig is not in charge.
In the meantime, Hazel leads a party down to the farm, where they chew through a dog's lead and lead it - chasing them up the down - straight onto the attacking Efrafans. Finally, none are left except Woundwort, face to face with a snarling labrador..
The fate of Woundwort himself is not exactly clear, but he is never again seen or heard of by any rabbit, bird, or mouse near the down.
The novel's epilogue describes Watership Down after the battle, as well as how Hazel, by now an old rabbit, is sleeping in his burrow one "chilly, blustery morning in March." Hazel is visited by El-ahraihrah, who invites Hazel to join his Owsla. Leaving his friends and no-longer-needed body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down, slipping away, "running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."
Characters
- Hazel: The main protagonistProtagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
, Fiver's 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 sees the good in each individual, and what they bring to the table; in so doing, he makes sure that no one gets left behind, thus earning the respect and loyalty of his warren. He often relies on Fiver's advice, and trusts in his brother's instincts absolutely. - Fiver: A small runtRuntA runt is a smaller specimen in a group of animals, usually of offspring in a litter.Runt may also refer to:*Runt , a 1970 album by Todd Rundgren, originally credited to the band Runt...
rabbit whose name literally means "Little-five" or "Little-many" (rabbits have a single word, "hrair", for all numbers greater than four; Fiver's name in Lapine, Hrairoo, indicates that he is the smallest of a litter of five or more rabbits). As a seer, he has visions and very strong instincts. Fiver is one of the most intelligent rabbits in the group. He is quiet and intuitive, and though he does not directly act as a leader, the others listen to and follow his advice. Vilthuril becomes his mate. - 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, mutilated, and put on display to discourage further escape attempts. When he is liberated by Bigwig, he quickly proves himself as an expert tracker and ranger.
- Hyzenthlay: A female rabbit who lives in Efrafa. She escapes with Bigwig, and becomes Hazel's mate. Her name means literally 'shine-dew-fur,' or 'fur shining like dew.'
- Kehaar: A Black-headed GullBlack-headed GullThe Black-headed Gull is a small gull which breeds in much of Europe and Asia, and also in coastal eastern Canada. Most of the population is migratory, wintering further south, but some birds in the milder westernmost areas of Europe are resident...
who is forced, by an injured wing, to take refuge on Watership Down. He is characterised 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 World War IIWorld War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. - General Woundwort: The main antagonist: a vicious, cruel and brutally efficient rabbit who was orphaned at a young age, Woundwort founded the Efrafa warren and is its tyrannical chief. Though he is greater even than Bigwig in terms of his size and strength, he lacks the former's loyalty and kindness. He even leads an attack to capture the Watership warren as an act of revenge against Bigwig. After his apparent death, he lives on in rabbit legend as a bogeymanBogeymanA bogeyman is an amorphous imaginary being used by adults to frighten children into compliant behaviour...
. - 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 tricksterTricksterIn mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...
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". His stories of cleverness (and arrogance) are very similar to Br'er RabbitBr'er RabbitBr'er Rabbit is a central figure in the Uncle Remus stories of the Southern United States. He is a trickster character who succeeds by his wits rather than by brawn, tweaking authority figures and bending social mores as he sees fit...
and AnansiAnansiAnansi the trickster is a spider, and is one of the most important characters of West African and Caribbean folklore.He is also known as Ananse, Kwaku Ananse, and Anancy; and in the Southern United States he has evolved into Aunt Nancy. He is a spider, but often acts and appears as a man...
. - Black Rabbit of Inlé: A sinister phantomGhostIn traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. Descriptions of the apparition of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to...
servant of the god Frith who appears in rabbit folkloreFolkloreFolklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
. He is the rabbit equivalent of a grim reaper in human folklore, and similarly ensures all rabbits die at their predestined time. "Inlé" is the Lapine term for the moon or darkness.
Themes
Watership Down has been described as an allegoryAllegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
, 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." Adams draws on classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
heroic and quest
Quest
In mythology and literature, a quest, a journey towards a goal, serves as a plot device and as a symbol. Quests appear in the folklore of every nation and also figure prominently in non-national cultures. In literature, the objects of quests require great exertion on the part of the hero, and...
themes from Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
, creating a story with epic
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
motifs.
Religious symbolism
It has been suggested that Watership Down contains symbolism of several religions, or that the stories of El-ahrairah were meant to mimic some elements of real-world religion. When asked in a 2007 BBC RadioBBC Radio
BBC Radio is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927. For a history of BBC radio prior to 1927 see British Broadcasting Company...
interview about the religious symbolism in the novel, Adams stated that the story was "nothing like that at all." Adams said that the rabbits in Watership Down did not worship, however, "they believed passionately in El-ahrairah". Adams explained that he meant the book to be, "only a made-up story... in no sense an allegory or parable or any kind of political myth. I simply wrote down a story I told to my little girls". Instead, he explained, the "let-in" religious stories of El-ahrairah were meant more as legendary tales, similar to a rabbit Robin Hood
Robin Hood
Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....
, and that these stories were interspersed throughout the book as humorous interjections to the often "grim" tales of the "real story".
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". Joan Bridgman's analysis of Adams's works in The Contemporary ReviewContemporary Review
-Foundation:It was founded in 1866 by Alexander Strahan and a group of intellectuals anxious to promote intelligent and independent opinion about the great issues of their day. They intended it to be the church-minded counterpart of the resolutely secular Fortnightly Review, which was founded by...
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 mythologist Joseph Campbell
Joseph Campbell
Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience...
, especially his study of comparative mythology
Comparative mythology
Comparative mythology is the comparison of myths from different cultures in an attempt to identify shared themes and characteristics. Comparative mythology has served a variety of academic purposes...
, The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a non-fiction book, and seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell...
(1949), and in particular, Campbell's "monomyth
Monomyth
Joseph Campbell's term monomyth, also referred to as the hero's journey, is a basic pattern that its proponents argue is found in many narratives from around the world. This widely distributed pattern was described by Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces...
" theory, also based on Carl Jung
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
's view of the unconscious mind, that "all the stories in the world are really one story.".
The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between Watership Down's characters and those in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
and Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
. 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
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
Odyssey. Kenneth Kitchell declared, "Hazel stands in the tradition of Odysseus
Odysseus
Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....
, Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
, and others". Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
scholar John Rateliff calls Adams's novel an Aeneid "what-if" book: what if the seer
Clairvoyance
The term clairvoyance is used to refer to the ability to gain information about an object, person, location or physical event through means other than the known human senses, a form of extra-sensory perception...
Cassandra
Cassandra
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...
(Fiver) had been believed and she and a company had fled Troy
Troy
Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...
(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
Turnus
In Virgil's Aeneid, Turnus was the King of the Rutuli, and the chief antagonist of the hero Aeneas.-Biography:Prior to Aeneas' arrival in Italy, Turnus was the primary potential suitor of Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, King of the Latin people. Upon Aeneas' arrival, however, Lavinia is promised to...
's Latins
Latins
"Latins" refers to different groups of people and the meaning of the word changes for where and when it is used.The original Latins were an Italian tribe inhabiting central and south-central Italy. Through conquest by their most populous city-state, Rome, the original Latins culturally "Romanized"...
. "By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
and Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, 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 told it in 19 BC."
Reception
The EconomistThe Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
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." Peter Prescott
Peter S. Prescott
Peter S. Prescott was an American author and book critic. He was the senior book reviewer at Newsweek for more than two decades.In January, 1970, Prescott published A World of Our Own: Notes on Life and Learning in a Boys' Preparatory School, which described his alma mater, The Choate School, .In...
, senior book reviewer at Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, gave the novel a glowing review: "Adams handles his suspenseful narrative more dextrously than most authors who claim to write adventure novels, but his true achievement lies in the consistent, comprehensible and altogether enchanting civilisation that he has created." 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." This echoed Nicholas Tucker
Nicholas Tucker
Nicholas Tucker is a British academic and writer who is an honorary Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex.He was educated at Burgess Hill School in Hampstead, London, where his English teacher was briefly Bernice Rubens...
's praise for the story's suspense in the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
: "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."
The "enchanting" world Prescott admired was not as well received upon its 1974
1974 in literature
The year 1974 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman.-New books:*Richard Adams - Shardik*Kingsley Amis - Ending Up...
American publication. Although again the object of general approval, reception in the United States was more mixed, unlike the predominantly positive reviews of 1972. D. Keith Mano, a science fiction writer and conservative social commentator writing in the National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
, 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
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
is an allegory."
Despite the criticism, Watership Down was a hit with the reading public. The novel found a spot on the Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
’s Best-Seller List in March 1974; it attained the number one ranking on 15 April 1974, and remained there for another three months. The book did not drop off the list until February 1975.
John Rowe Townsend notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it, "came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been heard of". Fred Inglis, in his book The Promise of Happiness: Value and meaning in children's fiction, praises the author’s use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits' perspective.
Watership Downs universal motifs of liberation and self-determination have led to the tendency of minority groups to read their own narrative into the novel, despite the author's assurance that it "was never intended to become some sort of allegory or parabel." Rachel Kadish, reflecting on her own superimposition of the founding of Israel onto Watership Down, has remarked "Turns out plenty of other people have seen their histories in that book...some people see it as an allegory for struggles against the Cold War, fascism, extremism...a protest against materialism, against the corporate state. Watership Down can be Ireland after the famine, Rwanda after the massacres." Kadish has praised both the fantasy genre and Watership Down for its "motifs [that] hit home in every culture...all passersby are welcome to bring their own subplots and plug into the archetype."
Awards
Watership Down won both the Carnegie MedalCarnegie Medal
The Carnegie Medal is a literary award established in 1936 in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and given annually to an outstanding book for children and young adults. It is awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals...
in 1972 and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize
Guardian Award
The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award is a prominent award for works of children's literature by British or Commonwealth authors, published in the United Kingdom during the preceding year. The award has been given annually since 1967, and is decided by a panel of authors and the...
in 1973. The book won the 1977 California Young Reader Medal
California Young Reader Medal
The California Young Reader Medal is an award given annually to books nominated and voted on by children in California. The medal was established in 1974 and encourages recreational reading...
. In The Big Read, a 2003 survey of the British public, it was voted the forty-second greatest book of all time.
Film
In 19781978 in film
The year 1978 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 1 - Bob Dylan's film Renaldo and Clara, a documentary of the "Rolling Thunder Revue" tour premieres in Los Angeles, California....
Martin Rosen
Martin Rosen (director)
Martin Rosen is an American film and theater director, producer and writer. Rosen is known for the animated adaptation of Richard Adams's Watership Down.He is founder and owner of film/theater company Nepenthe.-Career:...
wrote and directed an animated film
Watership Down (film)
Watership Down is a 1978 English adventure drama animated film written, produced and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the book by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions...
adaptation of Watership Down. The voice cast included John Hurt
John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
, Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
, Harry Andrews
Harry Andrews
Harry Fleetwood Andrews, CBE was an English film actor known for his frequent portrayals of tough military officers. His performance as Sergeant Major Wilson in The Hill alongside Sean Connery earned Andrews the 1965 National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor and a nomination for the...
, Simon Cadell
Simon Cadell
Simon John Cadell was an English actor.Born in London, he was the grandson of the Scottish character actor Jean Cadell, the brother of the actress Selina Cadell, and the cousin of the actor Guy Siner. He was educated at Bedales School at Petersfield where his close friends included Gyles...
, Nigel Hawthorne
Nigel Hawthorne
Sir Nigel Barnard Hawthorne, CBE was an English actor, perhaps best remembered for his role as Sir Humphrey Appleby, the Permanent Secretary in the 1980s sitcom Yes Minister and the Cabinet Secretary in its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. For this role he won four BAFTA Awards during the 1980s in the...
, and Roy Kinnear
Roy Kinnear
Roy Mitchell Kinnear was an English character actor. He is best remembered for playing Veruca Salt's father, Mr. Salt, in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.-Early life:...
. The film featured the song "Bright Eyes
Bright Eyes (Art Garfunkel song)
"Bright Eyes" is a song written by Mike Batt, and performed by Art Garfunkel. It was used in the soundtrack of the 1978 film Watership Down and as such is considered the theme song of the film and the later television series adaptations. The track also appears on Garfunkel's fourth studio album,...
", sung by Art Garfunkel
Art Garfunkel
Arthur Ira "Art" Garfunkel is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and actor, best known as being a member of the folk duo Simon & Garfunkel...
. Released as a single, the song became a UK number one hit.
Although the essentials of the plot remained relatively unchanged, the film omits several side plots. 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. Rosen's adaptation was praised for "cutting through Adams' book ... to get to the beating heart".
The film has also seen some positive critical attention. In 1979 the film received a nomination for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation
The Hugo Awards are given every year by the World Science Fiction Society for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. The award is named after Hugo Gernsback, the founder of the pioneering science fiction magazine Amazing Stories, and was once officially...
. Additionally, British television station Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
's 2006 documentary 100 Greatest Cartoons named it the 86th greatest cartoon of all time.
A screenplay is currently in development for a re-adaptation of the book.
Television
From 1999 to 2001, the book was also adapted as an animated television series, broadcast on CITVCITV
CITV is a British television channel from ITV Digital Channels Ltd, a division of ITV plc. It broadcasts content from the CITV archive, as well as commissions and acquisitions. CITV itself is the programming block on the main ITV Network .The CITV channel broadcasts from 06:00 to 18:00...
in the UK and on YTV in Canada. It starred several well-known British actors, including Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
Stephen John Fry is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation "The Cellar Tapes", which also...
, Rik Mayall
Rik Mayall
Richard Michael "Rik" Mayall is an English comedian, writer, and actor. He is known for his comedy partnership with Ade Edmondson, his over-the-top, energetic portrayal of characters, and as a pioneer of alternative comedy in the early 1980s...
, Dawn French, John Hurt
John Hurt
John Vincent Hurt, CBE is an English actor, known for his leading roles as John Merrick in The Elephant Man, Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, Mr. Braddock in The Hit, Stephen Ward in Scandal, Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant and An Englishman in New York...
, and Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
, 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 story lines and characters were entirely new. In 2003, the second season was nominated for a Gemini Award
Gemini Award
The Gemini Awards are annual television broadcasting industry awards in Canada.First awarded in 1986, the Geminis celebrate the achievements of TV members of the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television. Essentially, it presents awards for the best television productions in Canada. Awards are...
for Best Original Music Score for a Dramatic Series.
Theatre
In 2006, Watership Down was adapted into a theatrical productionPlay (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
by Rona Munro
Rona Munro
Rona Munro is a Scottish writer. She has written plays for theatre, radio, and television; was the author of the screenplay of Ken Loach's Ladybird, Ladybird and co-author of Aimée & Jaguar by German director Max Färberböck.Munro is also known for being the author of the last Doctor Who television...
for the Lyric Hammersmith
Lyric Hammersmith
The Lyric Theatre, also known as the Lyric Hammersmith, is a theatre on King Street, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which takes pride in its original, "groundbreaking" productions....
in London. Directed by Melly Still, the cast included Matthew Burgess, Joseph Traynor, and Richard Simons, and ran from November 2006 through January 2007. The tone of the production was inspired by the tension of war: in an interview with The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, Still commented, "The closest humans come to feeling like rabbits is under war conditions ... We've tried to capture that anxiety." A reviewer at The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
called the play "an exciting, often brutal tale of survival" and said that "even when it’s a muddle, it’s a glorious one."
Role-playing game
Watership Down inspired the creation of Bunnies & Burrows, a role-playing gameRole-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
centred around talking rabbits, published in 1976
1976 in games
This page lists board and card games, wargames, miniatures games, and table-top role-playing games published in 1976. For video and console games, see 1976 in video gaming.-Significant games-related events of 1976:...
by Fantasy Games Unlimited. It introduced several innovations to role-playing game design, being the first game to allow players to have non-humanoid
Humanoid
A humanoid is something that has an appearance resembling a human being. The term first appeared in 1912 to refer to fossils which were morphologically similar to, but not identical with, those of the human skeleton. Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it...
roles, as well as the first with detailed martial arts
Martial arts
Martial arts are extensive systems of codified practices and traditions of combat, practiced for a variety of reasons, including self-defense, competition, physical health and fitness, as well as mental and spiritual development....
and skill systems. Fantasy Games Unlimited published a second edition of the game in 1982, and the game was modified and republished by Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games
Steve Jackson Games is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and the gaming magazine Pyramid.-History:...
as an official GURPS supplement in 1992.
Music
AmericanUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
folk rock
Folk rock
Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...
trio America
America (band)
America is an English-American folk rock band that originally included members Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell and Dan Peek. The three members were barely out of their teens when they became a musical sensation during 1972, scoring #1 hits and winning a Grammy for best new musical artist...
performed a song titled "Watership Down", released by Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
in April 1976 on their Hideaway album. Composed by singer/songwriter Gerry Beckley
Gerry Beckley
Gerald Linford "Gerry" Beckley is a founding member of the band America.Beckley was born to an American father, and an English mother. He began playing the piano at the age of three and the guitar a few years later. By 1962, Beckley was playing guitar in The Vanguards, an instrumental surf music...
, the song's lyrics refer obliquely to the story elements, including the phrase "you might hear them in the distance, if your ear's to the ground." Although the song did not chart, it did receive airplay on FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
album rock stations during the year.
Swedish progressive rock
Progressive rock
Progressive rock is a subgenre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s as part of a "mostly British attempt to elevate rock music to new levels of artistic credibility." John Covach, in Contemporary Music Review, says that many thought it would not just "succeed the pop of...
musician Bo Hansson
Bo Hansson
Bo Hansson was a Swedish musician best known for his four instrumental albums released in the 1970s.-Early life and musical career:...
recorded a suite
Suite
In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...
named "Rabbit Music" which was based on the book, as part of his 1975 album Attic Thoughts
Attic Thoughts
Attic Thoughts is an instrumental progressive rock album by Swedish musician Bo Hansson. The album was recorded during 1974 and 1975 at Studio Decibel in Stockholm, and at Hansson's home, which had virtually become a studio by this point in his career...
. Two years later, Hansson released an entire album devoted to the novel, titled Music Inspired by Watership Down
Music Inspired by Watership Down
Music Inspired by Watership Down is a progressive rock album by Swedish musician Bo Hansson. The album is Hansson's fourth solo album and is, as its name suggests, built around musical ideas inspired by Richard Adams' heroic fantasy novel Watership Down...
.
The British electro group Ladytron
Ladytron
Ladytron are an English electronic band formed in 1999 in Liverpool, Merseyside. The group consists of Helen Marnie , Mira Aroyo , Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu .Their sound blends electropop with New Wave and shoegazing elements. Ladytron described their sound as "electronic pop"...
shot a music video for their single "Ghosts", off their 2008 album Velocifero
Velocifero
Velocifero received positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, based on 26 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews"....
, which featured many references to Watership Down.
American art-rock band ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is an American alternative rock band from Austin, Texas. The chief creative members of the band are Jason Reece and Conrad Keely . The two switch between drumming, guitar and lead vocals, both on recordings and live shows...
has one song on their self-titled album
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead (album)
-Personnel:*Richard McIntosh – Photography*Dave McNair – Mixing*Chris "Frenchie" Smith – Producer*Mike McCarthy – Engineer*Kevin Allen – Producer*Jason Reece – Producer*Conrad Keely – Producer, Cover Design...
, released in 1998, called "Prince With A Thousand Enemies".
American hip-hop group Common Market
Common Market (band)
Common Market is a hip hop duo based in Seattle, Washington with members RA Scion and DJ/Producer Sabzi. The two members were individually active hip hop artists in the Pacific Northwest since 2002, but collectively combined their talents in 2005 to form Common Market.Sabzi started his career as...
recorded a song called "Watership Down" on their 2008 EP Black Patch War
Black Patch War (album)
Black Patch War is an EP from Seattle-based hip-hop duo, Common Market. It is the group's second release. The title is a reference to the American Black Patch Tobacco Wars of the early 20th century, a continuation of the title of the group's forthcoming full-length album, Tobacco Road which takes...
.
American punk band AFI
AFI (band)
AFI is an American alternative rock band from Ukiah, California that formed in 1991. They have consisted of the same lineup since 1998: lead vocalist Davey Havok, drummer and backup vocalist Adam Carson, with bassist Hunter Burgan and guitarist Jade Puget, who both play keyboard and contribute...
used imagery from the movie on the cover of their Decemberunderground
Decemberunderground
Decemberunderground is the seventh studio album by American alternative rock band AFI. The album was released on June 6, 2006 through Interscope Records. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, selling 182,000 in its first week. The album certified Gold by the RIAA on August 30, 2006 and has sold...
album.
British post hardcore band Fall Of Efrafa created a trilogy of concept records based around an interpretation of the political and religious ideology in the book.
The Paul McCartney and Wings album Band On The Run
Band on the Run
Band on the Run is an album by Paul McCartney & Wings, released in 1973. It was Wings' third album. It became Wings' most successful album and remains the most celebrated of McCartney's post-Beatles albums...
(1973) has the song "Band On The Run" referencing this work in the line "And the bell was ringing in the village square for the rabbits on the run".
American alt-rock band Watership Down bears the same name as the novel and film.
New Jersey based hardcore punk band Bigwig
Bigwig (band)
Bigwig is a hardcore punk band from New Jersey, formed in 1995. They were originally composed of Josh Farrell , John Castaldo , Tom Petta , and Dan Rominski . It is said they got their name from a character in the book "Watership Down", a large, tough rabbit...
takes their name from the character in the novel. The cover art of their first album, Unmerry Melodies, features a rabbit resembling the character of Bigwig, and the song "Best of Me" features a sample from the film Watership Down.
A homemade Youtube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
music video for a song called "At Your Enemies" from ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...
guitarist, John Frusciante
John Frusciante
John Anthony Frusciante is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, record and film producer. He is best known as the former lead guitarist of the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he had been for a number of years and recorded five studio albums...
, and Josh Klinghoffer
Josh Klinghoffer
Joshua Adam "Josh" Klinghoffer is an American multi-instrumentalist, who is best known as the current guitarist for the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers. Klinghoffer replaced his friend and frequent collaborator John Frusciante, who left the band in 2009.Klinghoffer also fronts Dot Hacker, and was...
's album, A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, contains clips from the animated film Watership Down.
American singer-songwriter Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Carlton
Vanessa Lee Carlton is an American singer-songwriter and musician. Upon completion of her education at the School of American Ballet, Carlton chose to pursue singing instead, performing in New York bars and clubs while attending university. Three months after recording a demo with producer Peter...
will release an album in June 2011 called Rabbits on the Run, which was inspired by Watership Down and A Brief History of Time
A Brief History of Time
A Brief History of Time is a popular science book written by renown physicist Stephen Hawking and first published by the Bantam Dell Publishing Group in 1988. It became a best-seller and has sold more than 10 million copies...
.
American Music Producer Skrillex (aka Sonny Moore
Sonny Moore
Sonny John Moore is an American electronic dance music producer who is widely known by his professional name Skrillex. Moore is also a former frontman for the American band From First to Last. In late Autumn of 2007 he embarked on his first tour as a solo artist, the Team Sleep Tour with Team...
) named his music label after OWSLA. (2011)
Parodies
In an episode of the British comedy show The GoodiesThe Goodies (TV series)
The Goodies is a British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s. The series, which combines surreal sketches and situation comedy, was broadcast by BBC 2 from 1970 until 1980 — and was then broadcast by the ITV company LWT for a year, between 1981 to 1982.The show was...
, entitled Animals, nature presenters from the BBC are forced to escape in rabbit suits from the fury of animals now granted equal rights with humans. It features the music and animation in the style of the movies.
In the American TV show Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken
Robot Chicken is an American stop motion animated television series created and executive produced by Seth Green and Matthew Senreich along with co-head writers Douglas Goldstein and Tom Root. Green provides many voices for the show...
, a parody of the book is done with the Fraggles, the main characters of the show Fraggle Rock
Fraggle Rock
Fraggle Rock is a children's live action puppet television program series created by Jim Henson. The central characters were a set of "Muppet" creatures called Fraggles. The show ran from January 10, 1983, to March 30, 1987, on CBC Television in Canada, ITV in the UK, HBO in the United States,...
, in place of the rabbits.
Other references
Watership Down has been referenced in other media.- In Stephen King's novel The StandThe StandThe Stand is a post-apocalyptic horror/fantasy novel by American author Stephen King. It demonstrates the scenario in his earlier short story, Night Surf...
, protagonist Stu Redman reads Watership Down non-stop for two days. - In ABC TV's show LostLost (TV series)Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
, one of the main characters, Sawyer, is shown several times reading the book. - In the film Donnie DarkoDonnie DarkoDonnie Darko is a 2001 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Richard Kelly and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Drew Barrymore, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Noah Wyle, Jena Malone, and Mary McDonnell...
, the book and its film adaptation are viewed and discussed. - In the GundamGundamThe is a metaseries of anime created by Sunrise studios that features giant robots called "Mobile Suits" ; usually the protagonist's MS will carry the name Gundam....
metaseries, especially the manga Advance of Zeta: The Flag of Titans, the Titans test team use a rabbit in their logo and name their units after characters from the book. - In The Vicar of DibleyThe Vicar of DibleyThe Vicar of Dibley is a British sitcom created by Richard Curtis and written for its lead actress, Dawn French, by Curtis and Paul Mayhew-Archer, with contributions from Kit Hesketh-Harvey. It aired from 1994 to 2007...
BBC television series, "The Easter Bunny" episode. - In the book The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal, Qwilleran tries several times to read Watership Down, but never gets past the first sentence.
- In the comic book series Shanda the Panda, several references are made to Watership Down.
- In the popular sitcom Lead BalloonLead BalloonLead Balloon is a British television series produced by Open Mike Productions for BBC Four. The series was created and is co-written by comedian Jack Dee and...
, references are made to Watership Down when they describe the book without rabbits but people. - In the Doug WorgulDoug WorgulDoug Worgul is an American writer and editor based in Kansas City.Worgul was raised mostly in Lansing, Michigan, the oldest of three siblings. He graduated from J.W. Sexton High School in 1971. He attended Gordon College from 1971-1972. He graduated from Western Michigan University in 1976 with...
novel "Thin Blue Smoke", a mentally ill character named Warren regards Richard Adams as a prophet, and often speaks or writes in Lapine. - In the Hillary JordanHillary JordanHillary Jordan is the author of two novels: MUDBOUND, published in March 2008, and WHEN SHE WOKE, published in October 2011, both by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. She received a BA from Wellesley College and an MFA from Columbia University...
novel “When She Woke”, the main characters reference the secret of Cowslip's warren in regards to their situation.
External links
- Essay on life and society in Watership Down
- Review of Watership Down by John D. Rateliff
- Review of Watership Down by Jo WaltonJo WaltonJo Walton is a Welsh-Canadian fantasy and science fiction writer and poet. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002 and the World Fantasy award for her novel Tooth and Claw in 2004. Her novel Ha'penny was a co-winner of the 2008 Prometheus Award...
- Watership Down wiki at WikiaWikiaWikia is a free web hosting service for wikis . It is normally free of charge for readers and editors, deriving most of its income from advertising, and publishes all user-provided text under copyleft licenses. Wikia hosts several hundred thousand wikis using the open-source wiki software MediaWiki...
- Darkhaven.de - A German Watership Down Fan Site