Thoughts on Watership Down

This post contains spoilers about Richard Adams' Watership Down. If you haven't read it, give it a chance. Below, you will find a response to a second reading of Watership Down, which I had read for the first time a little under six years ago.

I told a co-worker one day that I specifically read the ending of Watership Down to cry and he said he believed that. I wanted to see if this was still the truth. Also, I read Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces a couple months back. As if Richard Adams intended all the allusions to myths, I kept thinking back to how there were epigraphs from Greek myth to some chapters. One chapter even quoted the Joseph Campbell book.

Adams' presents folk tales as sacred myth. It is never mentioned but there is the suggestion of a creation story for rabbits. It is fascinating that a way of life is formulated from the folk tales of Brer Rabbit.

There were times when the story got me and I am caught up in the pleasure of reading an adventure story. When Bigwig is defending the burrow from General Woundwort and he let' s slip that he has to wait for his chief rabbit to give him further orders. Bigwig who has just handed General Woundwort his chewed ass. It is delicious how fear splits the Efrafran rabbits, terrified of a chief rabbit tougher, more relentless and aggressive than him. How this chief rabbit is lame and diminutive in stature and his claims to leadership are persuasiveness and willingness to listen.

The introduction of Hazel also got to me. I love that these rabbits, are marked out by actions like licking each other to heal wounds and lying together to keep warmth in a burrow. Hazel and Bluebell are introduced after bolting for cover at a false alarm. I love how a reader can think at one instant, "how cute, it's a rabbit!" and then at another instant, "I admire them". I love how a character who is both a rabbit and a human is resolved in the head of the reader and there is no flaw.

I found it interesting how much of the novel had to do with problem-solving. There is a certain goal that must be achieved. How can we reasonably do so in the allotted time? And so the emphasis given to using a door like a boat or a bird to do reconnaissance. The rabbits themselves question how ridiculous these things sound. I appreciated how this felt like lived experience.

I must have been confused at the story of the Black Rabbit of Inle. I found it strange that the Black Rabbit allowed El-ahrairah, the king of rabbits, his wish when he did not win against the Black Rabbit in any of the games. I was confused with the lesson that El-ahrairah learnt as a result of the encounter with the Black Rabbit.

This time, I felt it closely ties to the ending of Watership Down. When Hazel is in the dark burrow and he feels that there is a rabbit next to him, unsure which one it is. For all Hazel knows, it is the Black Rabbit of Inle, the embodiment of death for a rabbit. But there is warmth in the coversation between Hazel and the rabbit. I thought it was clear that this rabbit was El-ahrairah, ready to take Hazel away to die peacefully. I don't think I gave enough credit to how shaded the unknown rabbit was.

It made me think that El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit were the same person depending on your acceptance of death. This time, I did not cry at the ending.

Survey says, Watership Down has more levels than I can deal with. The more I read into Classical literature, the more Watership Down will repay a third reading.