I remember reading the book for the first time and getting to one of the legends of El-ahrairah. I remember thinking, “Are you serious? I don’t want mythology; I want to know what happens.” When I finished the book, I found that the most powerful part of the book was the story of El-ahrairah and the Black Rabbit of Inlé. Sitting there, with the rabbits in the dark before the one of the darkest parts of the story was the image that stuck with me after years and years.
I read it in sixth grade completely by accident.
We had to pick a novel for English class from a list provided to us. The books were then ordered. All we had were titles and authors, with no description whatsoever.
You can see where is leading: I had recently seen the movie Gray Lady Down and figured the book was about a ship or submarine.
When the book arrived, with the rabbit on the cover, I was flabbergasted. However, being a good student, I started into it.
I read the whole book in just a few days. It’s one of my all-time favorites. I’ve read it at least a half-dozen times since. I’ve still got the same copy from over 25 years ago.
P.S. Does anyone know where Adams came up with the title?
P.P.S. A year or two later, I read Maia by Adams. It wasn’t bad, but it was pretty adult for me at the time.
Watership Down and virtually all other locations described in the novel are based upon real places.
Stranger
First, I’d like to thank this thread for a moment of movie enjoyment. I’d been following the thread this week, so I had WD (both movie and book) nearer the front of my mind. I watched “Wallace and Grommit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit” last night for the first time last night. There’s a scene where Grommit turns on the car radio and “Bright Eyes” starts playing. If it hadn’t been for this thread, I’d have had to sit there for minutes trying to figure out where I knew that song, instead of laughing immediately.
That’s the name of the location the book takes place: Watership Down. A “down” is a hilly, grassy area without a lot of trees. ddgryphon’s link shows the real places associated with the book.
I love this book. I also love the way I discovered it.
One year in high school I enrolled in a summer study program, and became friends with a kid who I saw reading some SF book or other that I had just recently read (Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, I think). This was back in the mid-80s, and he was this tall, lanky guy dressed all in black denim, with a Black Sabbath album cover screened on the back of his jacket, wearing spiked leather belts and such, basically trying to look all bad-ass.
He asked me at one point what my favorite books were. I said, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. So I asked him for his favorites, and he said, “Watership Down”.
I hadn’t heard of it before, and the title isn’t very descriptive (unlike, say, Bio of a Space Tyrant). So I asked him, “What’s it about?”
The question seemed to catch him by surprise, and he thought about how to answer for a few seconds before finally saying, somewhat sheepishly, “Well… It’s about rabbits.”
I burst out laughing, and he protested, “It’s really good, and there are fight scenes in it!” Not long after, I looked the book up in the library, and was amazed and enchanted.
Thats’ always the curse of trying to recommend this book to people who are unfamiliar with it. They tend to stop listening after they hear the word “rabbits” and you always end up having to protest in ways that sound lame. “It’s not like it sounds, it’s GOOD. It has a whole rabbit mythology and battles and stuff. It’s DEEP.” The more you try to defend it the sillier it sounds.
Agree wholeheartedly–this was why I eventually stopped trying to recommend it to my friends in high school, despite its being one of my favorite books of all time. These days, I just say, “It’s a truly wonderful fantasy adventure story–and it’s full of bunnies!”
I do have a soft spot for the movie, too, since I saw it before I read the book, and I can still watch it and enjoy it.
Have you noticed that the film actually has a higher body count than the book?
There’s the invented-for-the-film character of Violet, who got carried off by a hawk, and then there’s the somewhat meaningless self-sacrifice of Blackavar near the end (although it did provide graphic evidence of the General’s bad-assedness).
I have to admit, as soon as he said “there are fight scenes” as an extension of “it’s about rabbits”, my first mental association was to Monty Python’s Holy Grail.
“He’s got huge, sharp… He can leap about… Just look at the bones!!”
Look, that rabbit’s got a vicious streak a mile wide! It’s a killer!
Oddly enough, I think my introduction to WD was through Stephen King. I believe one of the characters in *The Stand * was talking about how he thought it would be stupid since it was about rabbits and how wrong he was. I wondered if the book existed and I was very happy to discover that unlike S. Morgenstern’s Princess Bride it did!
The only other book of RA’s that I liked…and I REALLY liked it was Traveller. Very interesting to see War thru the perspective of a horse.
As far as Watership Down goes, there’s no book like it. I think of myself as having “jokes at one end and hraka at the other” all the time.
And not to be melodramatic, but everytime I’ve been thru the death of someone close, one of my first thoughts is, “My heart has joined The Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
It’s a perfect eulogy.
heart
I knew what a “down” was; I assumed the “Watership” name was fictional, though (and that Adams was being cute with the resulting name).
So does anyone know how the real Watership Down got such an odd name?
I read The Cold Moons by Aaron Clement a few years before I read Watership Down. The Cold Moons is very similar to Watership Down, except it’s about badgers instead of rabbits. There’s not as much mythology (and what there is is basically Norse), but it’s a good read.
Watership Down, for some reason, is always the first book I read in a new house, one of the few that’s followed me through my flats, instead of waiting in boxes at my parents’. The very last line makes me cry, every time.
Probably either “the down where sheep are watered” or “the down where Walter keeps his sheep”.
There doesn’t seem to be a dewpond shown on the map of the area, so I reckon the ‘Walter’ option is most likely.
I definitely agree with your first and third claims. As for your second: well, maybe, to some extent, I can see that, but no one should read it expecting another Watership Down.
If it does capture some o the same feel, then so does Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.