Hey I recently read “Watership Down” and then I got the movie (to see cute bunny cartoons. Note: Movie sucks compared to book!)
Anyway, when I got the movie it was in the action section of Blockbuster. I had been looking in Children’s section. My boyfriend said that WD is not a children’s book.
So my question is, what is the greater meaning of this book? A lot of people I talked to in the past had considered it their favorite book. I admit it’s well written but I guess the deeper meaning eluded me as I read.
Is it about good and evil? Is it about a specific social phenomenon, like communism? Is it based on some ancient myth?
Watership Down is my all time favorite book. I don’t know the classical interpretations of it though. All I know is I got a lot more from it than just a children’s book. I took it as a war/man versus nature/ look at social structures complete with myths, morals and parables/using one’s brain can be mightier than brawn but working together to combine brains, bravery and brawn will overcome, kind of book. Seems as though every time I re-read it, I get something new out of. Thlayli and Keehar rock! Man, I think I need read it again!
(I’ve never seen the movie. Doubt I ever will either, as all that will do is mess with the movie I see in my imagination everytime I read the book.)
I too, am curious as to others take on it.
Fiver’s bunch go looking for the perfect home. Some think they already live there now! But, Fiver fears danger - and he’s eventually proven right! When Fiver’s group meet their first home, every seems fine…too fine! Beware the snares! The second home on Watership Down is great, but lacks female rabbits for procreation! And look at their only option…risking life and limb by entering enemy territory! (I can be see a slight parallel to US’s “push” to make the world safe for democrasy during the Cold War era.)
Anyway, I’ve read all his books, and this was THE best. The Plague Dogs is similar, but not as moving. Shardik and Maia (a prequel to Shardik, I think) are set in ancient days (kinda Greek?) Very slow, but have excellent endings - if you can tolerate all the boredom! “Girl in the Swing”, a love story/ghost story, is a cool concept! Held my attention with the subtle suspense, but I thought the ending was very weak. I think that’s all of 'em…did I forget any? He did write some kids books, but I wasn’t impressed.
(Moderator: This question probably belongs posted in a different category, however - since it’s all "IMHO"s
I always figured it was just an exploration of an ‘alien world’ that was actually right here on earth. An exploration of a culture with its own traditions and legends based on the behavior of the little carrot snatching beaties themselves.
“This book is about RABBITS!?” - College roommate.
You can strain too hard to look for allegorical content in anything, but I think Adams was thinking more about Nazi Germany than the Soviet hegemony when he wrote the book.
Yeah Fiver that is sort of what I was thinking too. Wanted to know what people like yourself (obviously a huge fan) thought. Thanks!
Also, did anyone study this in school at any point? Usually teachers and professors will give you a nice clear cut answer about “this is what the book is about.”
I always thought, too, it had interesting parallells with ‘Animal Farm’. Essentially, I think it was simply Adams taking a look at society, religion, ethics, etc. through the eyes of an alien perspective to help us look at our own world.
Well, I used to run Watershipdown.org which is currently down to some ISP issues, but trust me, this question came up all the time.
Richard Adams has stated on a few occassions that the deep hidden meaning to WD is… nothing. It’s not meant to be some metaphorical image of Communism, Socialism, Fascism or any other -ism. Nor does it represent WWII or whatever else you might like to think. Basically, Adams came up with the story as a story, inventing it as he moved along.
Originally a long running tale he’s spin to amuse his daughters as they drove to see plays, the basis for the tale involved rabbits much more anthromorphical than the ones we know and love. They stood upright, they used bows and arrows – if you’ve ever seen the RPG Bunnies & Burrows, the original Hazel & Co. were much closer to those rabbits than real life ones (ironically, B&B was inspired by the published Watership Down and came closer to the unpublished rabbits, but I digress). Eventally, Adams wrote the book at his daughters’ insistance that he should try to share his story, not because he had a message for the world. In fact, Adams tried to make the story a “children’s book that adults could enjoy”. When originally published, Watership Down was solely in the Children’s Literature section. Noit until it was noticed how many adults were purchasing the book for their own enjoyment was it dual-published as both adult and children’s literature under both the Puffin and the Penguin Press banners.
Of course, even as I write this, people will be saying “but look at this part!” Perhaps. I’m not Richard Adams and only have what he’s said to go on. If Richard Adams says that the book has no great world-moving internal meaning, he’d know better than I would no matter how much I’d like to second guess him. And if you gained some insight into the world through reading the story, I doubt he’d be upset about it.
Hmmmm. I’ll disagree a bit. “Shardik” is terrific - one of the best realized fantasy epics ever created, with an absolutely towering climax. But I’m a sucker for what I call the “redemption” story, where you have a naive protagonist make a terrible mistake and come to atone for it. The Beklan empire strikes me more Middle Eastern and earlier than Greece, BTW: Babylonia maybe. “Maia” is a prequel, and is nicely done in that knowledge of the “Shardik” story line doesn’t wreck the plotting in “Maia”. “Maia” IS overlong, however, and doesn’t quite have the impact of “Shardik”.
Where “Shardik” is an epic fantasy, “Watership Down” is a much shorter work, an anthropomorphic beast fable. I’d rate it his second best work, and a much shorter read than “Shardik”, obviously. It pretty much deserves its reputation - better than William Horwood’s “Duncton Wood”, another well-regarded beast fable (whatever possessed him to do moles?). Personally, when it comes to this genre, I like Walter Wangerin’s “Book of the Dun Cow”.
In “Plague Dogs”, he was guilty of beating the reader over the head with his message, and I though “Girl in a Swing” WAS boring.
Interesting, Jophiel. It sounds like a situation rather analogous to Tolkien’s writing of The Hobbit, which was originally a series of bedtime stories told to his son. At some point in the creation of the book, he decided to tie it in to his pre-existing (though not yet published) legends of Middle-Earth, and many adults enjoy it immensely, but it remains a children’s book.
I want to thank you, Jophiel for bringing this thread back to GQ territory.
I’ll take this opportunity to let you all know that speculation about the deep hidden meaning of a work of literature is not fodder for GQ. Unless an author has chosen to grace us with a decipherment, this sort of thread best belongs in another forum.
This is a GQ: Did A. A. Milne ever explicitly say that he intended piglet’s house to be a interpreted as a metaphor for the injustice of the early Industrial Revolution Presumably, the answer is “no”, but it’s still a GQ.
Unless Milne left a decipherment, this is not a GQ: What does piglet’s house symbolize?
Here’s enough of a reason to show that it isn’t for kids. When Bigwig mounts his final assault on General Woundwort, he says, in the Lapine tongue, “silflay hraka u embleer ra.”
Literally, this is stranslated as “chew and digest rabbit pellets, you king who smells” but very obviously, bigwig was saying “eat shit, you stinking fascist!”
Jophiel since you must be somewhat of an expert on the subject (I consider people smart enough to own a domain name smart enough to be experts) let me hijack my own question and remove this bee of a post from biblio’s bonnet (my apologies for the OP. I thought it had a real answer).
Anyway, is the rabbit language based on Hebrew? I went from reading WD to reading the Bible and noticed a similarity between the languages.
Of course, judging from your earlier post I bet Adams would say “naw, just fun jibberish to tell my kids!”
Hehe… actually, there was a little debate way back when on the mailing list as to whether or not Lapine is based on Arabic or some other Middle Eastern language (I guess Hebrew would apply). This went as far as people bringing up that rabbits are originally Middle Eastern creatures that expanded largely due to humans and so it would make sense for Lapine to be based off of a tounge from that region. However, the sampling of Lapine that we get from the book is too small to really tell. I personally sort of doubt that it is; unless Richard Adams already knew a bit about Middle Eastern languages, I don’t imagine he’d learn enough about them to fashion a pseudo-language out of one. Still, it’d only take him one or two words based off of a legitimate Middle Eastern word to have people make the connection, even if he only did so subconsciously or because it sounded “right” to him.
Short Answer (well, too late for that): Probably not and if so, very very loosely and just for a few words. But there’s enough there to draw up a link if you wish and I couldn’t effectively argue against it
