^ John Dies at the End.
Well, it happens in Tolkien’s Return of the King. And in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King. And in Robert Graves’ Claudius the God. And arguably in the movie Titanic.
It’s really not that unusual for a fictional work that depicts great dramatic events in the protagonist’s life to include the end of their life in old age as its closing scene after the drama is over. (Happens in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop too, but there the title is something of a giveaway.)
It’s not just that Hazel goes to Rabbit Heaven. By the end of the book, he is El-Ahrairah, and just doesn’t realize it. El-Ahrairah lives on through the legendary deeds of all rabbits, and all rabbits who perform legendary deeds live on as El-Ahrairah.
“A Chief Rabbit must be El-Ahrairah to his people, and keep them from death.”
I thought it was El-Ahrairah who came and asked Hazel to join his owsla.
The Frith, the El-Ahrairah and the Hazel compose the Holy Lapine Trinity, separate and yet the same. 
On the first page Adams tells us rabbits can only count up to four…so how the hell is his name ‘Fiver?’ This has bugged me since I first read my favorite book of all time.
Five means “a lot” or “A thousand”. He was from a litter that had more than four kittens.
Which brings up the question, why didn’t the rabbits have base five mathematics?
Fiver’s Mama could have named her kittens Fiver-one, Fiver-two, Fiver-three, etc.
Fiver’s name should have been “Four-one”.
Great summary!
Watership Down is one of my favorite books of all time, even though I erroneously assumed that it was nautical story about a ship or submarine sinking when I picked it off of a list to read in 7th grade English class. (I had recently seen Gray Lady Down in the theater.) When the book arrived, I was bemused to see a rabbit on the cover. :dubious:
Limited number systems tend to use repetition and correspondence rather than place-value to cope with higher numbers, because place-value (even with a small base) doesn’t really make sense unless you have a quantitative understanding of the difference between one high number and the next.
carnivorousplant, towards the end, there’s a doe telling her young children Tales of El-Ahrairah, and Hazel is musing that he hasn’t heard those particular tales before… but the tales she’s telling are actually of Hazel’s own adventures.
I don’t recall that. Novel or film?
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I remember that from the end of the novel.
IIRC, the Lapine word for “a lot” or “a thousand” – i.e. more than four – is “hrair” (used on occasion, in the rabbits’ otherwise-in-English conversation in the book). Fiver’s name in Lapine, is “Hrair-Roo” – “Little Hrair”, because of his having been an undersized member of a litter of more than four. I take it that Adams, for the purposes of his narrative, Englishes the character’s name to “Fiver” – “taking the liberty” of using the number five, actually unknown to rabbits – to make flow more smoothly, a tale in English in which the character’s name features very frequently. The majority of the male rabbits have “botanical” names, re which this does not pose a problem.
Thanks. I think I was at the “Oh hell, he is going to die” point by then.
Thanks, Sangahyando.
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
What is that from? I don’t recall it from Watership Down or Tales From.