Ear, ear (Watership Down - Richard Adams)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	Watership Down - Richard Adams
Date:	10/07/02 (398 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Convincing rabbit society

Disadvantages: Rather flighty language at times

==UPDATED 24/09/02==

The original reason for this update was that I'd somehow managed to mis-spell "Kehaar" throughout, and it was irritating me. However, I'll take this opportunity to admit that I was slightly hard on the 1978 Nepenthe film, and have upgraded it from "adequate" to "more than adequate". I'll do an op on that film soon, if I can find a suitable category.

Also, one interesting point that was made to me recently (in the course of a discussion about something else entirely on Usenet!) was that the effect of the novel is different for non-British readers. For example, the American "Bugs Bunny" rabbit is a different species to our own. And readers in the Antipodes will be accustomed to thinking of rabbits as pests pure and simple, with little of the affection towards them that most British readers have.

One thing hasn't changed, though: this book is still utterly wonderful, so there.

==END OF UPDATE==

"Stunning, compulsive reading". That was the Sunday Times' verdict on Richard Adams' masterpiece, and it is not one I can quibble with. This extraordinary novel, Adams' first and still - by some distance - his best, remains in print in both Penguin and Puffin editions after 30 years, and with ample justification. The dual editions exist for the same reason as they do with the much more recent Harry Potter books - because some adults look down their nose at "kids' books". All I can say is that they don't know what they're missing, but that's for another op.

A brief synopsis of the book reveals little of its depth and variety, but let's have one anyway. After a prophecy of doom from a visionary rabbit named Fiver, a small band of bucks leave their Sandleford warren one night to look for a new home. Along the way, they meet with triumph and disaster, but are unable to treat those two impostors just th
e same, as it slowly becomes clear that there is no future for the group without does. They discover a nearby warren, run on brutal militaristic lines by the overbearing General Woundwort, and attempt to liberate its downtrodden residents. But this only results in even greater danger for the Sandleford band.

So far, so ordinary - but Watership Down is far from being an ordinary book. Adams' great achievement is that he manages to create rabbit characters which are both athropomorphised (in that they can speak - normally in English, though fragments of their "Lapine" language are dotted about the pages) and realistic. By "realistic", I mean that they, for the most part, follow the behavioural patterns of real rabbits in such things as feeding and fighting. This is, perhaps, the place to warn that the novel is not suitable for very young readers - Adams pulls no punches in his descriptions of the violence that is a very real part of rabbit life, and there are several passages which are genuinely frightening.

There are three rabbits who have a disproportionate influence on the band. The group's de facto leader is Hazel, a calm, sensible rabbit who doesn't - initially - have great personal charisma, but does, in time, earn respect from the others. It does take longer in some cases than in others, though, especially in the case of Bigwig, a classic "sergeant major" character who has rather a bluff and gruff manner, but who is honest enough to recognise good qualities in others. The last of the triumvirate is Fiver, the rabbit who foresaw the destruction of their home warren. He is physically small and weak, and has an almost sickly air about him (Richard Briers' portrayal of him in the 1978 animated film is spot on), but despite suspicion at first, his judgement proves itself worthy of trust.

The supporting cast are a varied bunch - they include Blackberry, the quick-witted thinker; Dandelion, th
e runner and storyteller (the latter being a highly regarded skill in rabbit society); Pipkin, a small, timid rabbit with an unshakeable loyalty to Hazel; and Holly, who joins the band midway through the story, and confirms that Fiver was right in his original fears. On the "opposition bench", we have the dreaded General Woundwort, who runs Efrafa (his warren) with an iron paw, and his trusted lieutenant Campion, who though loyal to his commanding officer does have some sense of honour and propriety that is lacking in Woundwort.

Perhaps the most memorable character of all, though, is not a rabbit at all, and in fact does not appear until well into the book. I refer to Kehaar the seagull - a wonderful invention, and one which provides the comic relief to lighten what might otherwise be a rather dry tale. Kehaar's plain speaking and somewhat inflated opinion of himself make Fred Trueman seem introverted, and he tells the rabbits in no uncertain terms what they are doing wrong. Although the alliance between gull and rabbits is uneasy at first, Kehaar is, in the end, the linchpin of the struggle against Efrafan tyranny.

The book is a long one - not far short of 500 pages - and when the novel was published, many people thought that this would be too much for young readers. But Adams skilfully avoids this problem by interspersing the main narrative with rabbit fairy-tales, presented as stories told by Dandelion. These concern El-Ahrairah, the greatest rabbit hero (the name, we are told, is a corruption of "elil-hrair-rah", or "enemies-thousand-prince", ie "Prince with a Thousand Enemies"). El-Ahrairah is, as Adams says, roughly the equivalent of Robin Hood, and all his stories concern how he managed to get the better of some seemingly stronger foe by use of the rabbits' most respected skill, that of trickery.

Another positive factor resulting from the book's length is that the narrative does
not feel rushed (unlike the latter portions of the otherwise more than adequate animated film) - there is plenty of time for other adventures, and for the characters to develop at a sensible pace. A lot of this development is done very subtly - the gradual acceptance of Hazel as Chief Rabbit by more and more of the group, for example - and you often find yourself thinking, "hang on a minute..." and checking back to see what important plot development was mentioned earlier on, almost in passing. It's almost like watching for clues in a whodunit, and I think it adds to the book's appeal.

It would be surprising if such an audacious work did not have its flaws, and indeed they do exist. The most common complaint - that of sexism - can be answered simply and bluntly: this is how real rabbits behave. However, some of the language is rather unnecessarily old-fashioned, even for the early 1970s, and there are often fairly lengthy chunks of speculation from Adams about other matters - the Crusades, for example - which don't have a great deal to do with the story. I happen to enjoy these flights of fancy, but others may become irritated with them.

That said, for me this is one of those rare novels for which the sheer enjoyment gained from its reading far outweighs any niggles. In its 50 chapters you can find excitement, humour, terror, joy, sadness, pleasure, pain... in fact, the whole range of human emotion has been successfully instilled into a group of rabbits, with the result that the book is at times intensely moving. And that, I feel, is Watership Down's great triumph.

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Penguin, 1974. ISBN: 0140039589
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PS: For some reason, the Puffin edition of the book retails for a pound less, despite being identical apart from the cover. A good incentive for those not snobbish about the children's section of the bookshop. There's also a &quo
t;Puffin Modern Classics" edition, with an interesting - though short - afterword by Nicholas Tucker, but it's slightly larger than the standard editions, so may not fit in your bookcase, and has been re-set, losing some of the feeling of intimacy of the original printing.

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