fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3616 ]

Did you join us in reading Watership Down for the month of November, or have you read it in the past? Share your thoughts or questions! Mine in a reply~

So I had no idea what this book was about going into it even though I'd head it before. Did not expect it to be a book about rabbits. But it was a very good book about rabbits.

My experience reading books about adventures from an animal's point of view is mostly Redwall, so I thought a little of that going in. But this was very different from Redwall. I'm not really surprised that Adams basically eschewed all anthropomorphization beyond some personality features and added intelligence (though it was interesting the pains he took to point out that rabbits are still kinda dumb even when they're thinking a little bit like us, like their inability to count past four or to understand why sitting on wood lets you float), but I was a bit surprised by how dark the story actually was. It was not by any means a children's book. It felt very unique to me in being a book about animals with lots of flowery prose about nature that had very adult themes and a fair amount of gore.

I was impressed with how well the characters were developed considering the restrictions within which the author was working. Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, Holly, Blackberry, etc. all had such unique and interesting personalities. I think my favorite rabbit was Bigwig. I admire his tenacity and relate to his tendency sometimes to see things in black-and-white and go directly at a problem to get to the other side.

General Woundwort was a really excellent villain and I was engaged enough with the conflict with him and disgusted enough by him as a person to really wish Bigwig had killed him during the invasion on Honeycomb. :/ What a nasty piece of work. He felt like the rabbit version of a narcissist, too.

I was a little bit disappointed at the secondary nature of does as characters, especially given that this story was originally written for the author's daughters! I don't know if that's a product of the author or the times but it seems most likely to be a product of trying to stay true to rabbit biology, and also needing a plot device to compel Hazel's warren to explore and return to Efrafa. He didn't give a good explanation though as to why no does had traveled with them from Sandleford in the first place. How likely is it that out of ten or twelve migrants not a single one would be female, when the only criterion for joining the expedition was "I want to go"? Maybe does just don't migrate much and that wasn't well explained?

That said I liked the does we had, especially Hyzenthlay. (I don't know why their names were all in Lapine and longer and more complicated than the names of the bucks, though, and some were annoying to remember.) Speaking of, I thought the development and use of Lapine was a really charming and well-crafted piece of worldbuilding. My favorite word is hrududu. ^_^

My favorite overall character has to be Kehaar. I loved his personality and I loved reading his accent. I really liked the friendship he developed with the rabbits, unlikely as that sort of thing is ever to happen in the wild IRL. And he had some of the most entertaining lines.

Last thing - I really loved the development of rabbit mythology and all the stories about El-ahrairah. Especially the part about Frith blessing El-ahrairah's bottom in the first story. :) One of my favorite features of the book overall. And finally, I loved the epilogue and El-ahrairah coming to take Hazel's spirit away. <3 Very sweet ending, and I'm a real sucker for those!

What about you, F!S? What was your overall impression of the story? Did you like it? Who were your favorite characters? What did you think of the worldbuilding in the confines of the setting? What did you think about Efrafa and General Woundwort? Tell me your thoughts!

It is a children's book, it just is not a modern children's book. This was a book for the last generation of kids who knew anything about how the countryside works. Ever since it has been sanitized cutesy tosh, and even kids that grow up in the countryside don't really know how it works. We have GPS controlled robot tractors now FFS, and a farmer spends more time in his home office ~~surfing the internet for porn~~ filling out subsidy applications than he does walking the lanes. If there are any lanes left in his land, that hasn't been ripped up to form poor quality arable or grazing land to get him a few extra bits of subsidy cash.

that's fair. I don't know much about the countryside now, let alone before I was born and on the other side of the pond. However, in the intro to the book (edition that I have anyway) Adams said it wasn't intended to be a children's book, so I went into it thinking it wouldn't be.

Edited 2016-11-28 04:17 (UTC)

It is a book that seems to appeal to people of all different ages, from children to old people, and the author said it was not a childrens' book.

The parts at Efrafa have always been my favorite. I love that trope of finding a place that seems perfect and then discovering the dark secrets underneath. You'd think with the popularity of dystopians I would have plenty of other stories to get that from, but few seem to actually take the time to build up the good reputation so that the disillusionment has an impact and can create that slow-building dread as you and the characters come to realize that something is very wrong.

Yes, and Holly's recounting of it was really good and one of the most gripping parts of the story! I thought that was done just as well too if not better at Cowslip's warren. I knew something was off, partly because of how perfect everything seemed and partly because of Fiver, but when it all came together it was like oh shit!

DA I always found Cowslip's warren more horrifying, especially when I read it as a kid. Efrafa is brutal but in its way it's a more ... overt, honest brutality? It's a military dictatorship. But the Snare Warren just felt more ... insidious. The way they just pretended nothing was happening, that they were willing to allow some of their own to die to be safe and well-fed. I'm not sure exactly why it felt worse than Efrafa to me, it just did.

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-28 02:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-28 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-28 08:44 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-28 04:16 (UTC) - Expand

Ha, that's interesting! :) I found the rabbits extremely human-like, which is why the book as a whole didn't work for me.

Apart from Fiver, Bigwig and Kehaar were my favourites too. The moment at the beginning, when Bigwig almost died in the trap, was one of the very few times in the book, where I actually cared what happened. I don't think, I could have brought myself to continue reading without Bigwig around.

The treatment of the female rabbits by the author really confused and disappointed me too. Because they were (for me) so much like humans, and yet treating the does as anything but breeding stock would be stretching the imagination too far for those anthropomorphic rabbits, because real life rabbits wouldn't be like that?

That doesn't really change in Hazel's warren either. The interactions between Bigwig and the does go in a slightly different direction. But when they settle in their new warren, they are definitely better treated, but the status quo doesn't change. Also suddenly having been completely oppressed by an autocratic government and under constant threat as well as past experiences of sexual coercion etc. don't really matter anymore, because - according to what's her face - the Efrafran does were mostly miserable, because they weren't allowed to dig. Meaning returning to a 'natural' life works as an instant cure. Yet the bucks who came from or have been to Efrafra show clear signs of trauma from their experiences.

I would agree with the anon above. It's definitely a children's book in my eyes.

I'm not in the book club, but i've read Watership Down every year - sometimes twice a year - since I first read it way back as a teen. And i've loved it fiercely ever since, not only as a wonderful and interesting and emotional story, but as the book that introduced me to some amazing poetry.

I love the language of the book; the dense descriptions of plants, water, weather. I love the mythological way the rabbit history is told, and how the storytellers all seem to speak in a slightly more formal and 'fairy tale' way when telling a story.

I love how similar, but how very, very different, the animals are. Things that would bother humans a lot are shrugged off, and things we take for granted (like clouds. The passage where they're first climbing the down, and see the clouds...that's just so amazing, and beautiful, and other-worldly....) are strange and new to them. The bridge over the Test river! The road! Just so neat.

I think the does didn't come away when Hazel and the rest did because does are not the ones, in rabbit life, that wander. Lone rabbits or a group of young, male rabbits may do that, but does need and count on the safety and security of the warren to make dens and carry, and raise kits. A doe wandering away from the warren and trying to live out in the open would be extra-vulnerable if she were carrying or had babies.

I think we got a doe's perspective very neatly from the Efrafa does; they wanted to dig their own homes, and choose their own mates, and raise their kits in peace. They had their own secret, internal lives, that revolved a bit more around warren life and babies than the males, even though the males were as eager to start families as the females were. They were brave and sensible when they escaped, and even though their senses and knowledge had been blunted by their restricted lives, they still learned quickly and had enough instinctual knowledge to keep them going.

Even though anthropomorphized, they're still *animals* - reproducing enough to maintain and continue the warren and the species is still the main goal. And that never bothered me.

hey, you post in the book club thread, you are in the book club! :p

Yay!
*pins on badge*

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-28 00:07 (UTC) - Expand

I think the does didn't come away when Hazel and the rest did because does are not the ones, in rabbit life, that wander. Lone rabbits or a group of young, male rabbits may do that, but does need and count on the safety and security of the warren to make dens and carry, and raise kits.

Excellent point, and one that had completely escaped me! He actually states in the story that Mr Locksley tells us that it's the males who wander, too. I just hadn't joined up the dots.

Yes! Another book I really want to get - the rabbit book by Mr. Locksley!

ah, wonderful comment! I like the descriptors you use here. And yes, the poetry was very good!

Excellent point about the does!

Do you have a favorite character or favorite arc?

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-28 00:28 (UTC) - Expand

Hey, you're really early! :D

Oh dear, I'm going to be such a party pooper.

I enjoyed some of the shenanigans and characters, especially bunny ~~Jesus~~ prophet Fiver and proud xenophile Bigwig.

The group dynamics in the different warrens and within Hazel's followers were really interesting. There's also an interesting parallel between Hazel and General Woundwort, and what Hazel might have become without a reliable dissenter like Fiver around. I also found the hint interesting that Hazel's warren only works perfectly for the time being, because it currently has the perfect size, but that this is going to change eventually. So history repeating itself, the warren developing in different directions etc. remains a definite possibility.

I found some things confusing. Please enlighten me, if you understood those better than I did.

I'm assuming that the rabbits have this ancient/traditional language (hrooloodudu-whatever etc.) that they use for special occasions and a common everyday language that seems to be some kind of animal Esperanto that all the animals in one country/region share (which looks like normal human English, but is probably not supposed to be normal human English). Do the rabbits understand normal human English? They also have two names each: a common name (like Hazel) and a Lapine name. But why do all the 'normal'/'wild' does only have Lapine names?

My Esperanto theory makes sense in relation to how the local rats, cats, dogs are able to speak it perfectly without accent, and Kehaar speaks it with a heavy accent, because he's a foreigner speaking a (for him) foreign language (birds probably have their own kind of bird Esperanto thing going on). But why are the local mice speaking like foreigners?

I also found the whole anthropomorphization of the rabbits in combination with the 'living naturally/as rabbity as possible' and 'the callousness/destructiveness of humans' themes really strange. It doesn't make much sense to me.

So you give your fictional bunnies speech and language, you give them history, religion, mythology, art, the ability to consciously change the way they live etc. Those are extremely anthropomorphic rabbits. Yet those extremely human-like rabbits are desperately fighting for a chance to live, as they see it, as 'naturally' and 'rabbit-like' as possible.

It seems to be implied that the 'bad' warrens went bad, because their rabbits started behaving too much like humans (General Woundword is actually described as unnatural, as not like a rabbit at all). But Hazel and his followers are by no means less human-like or more animal-like or more natural than the rabbits in the 'bad' warrens. They are simply extremely human-like in a different way. I just don't understand what Adams was trying to do here.

My overall impression is that it's a very off-kilter, confused story. However, I think it could have been amazing, if he managed to pull something like that off with more rabbity rabbits, using actual ways real life rabbits would communicate, minimal direct speech etc.

You could argue that my confusion is due to not getting the deliberate ambiguity on the author's part. Certainly possible. I'm usually a great fan of that. But I didn't get the impression of deliberate ambiguity at all. To me it reads like the author himself was confused about what he actually wanted to do and say within his story.

I guess, what it comes down to is that you either buy those rabbits as rabbits or you don't. I've seen a lot of praise about the book in relation to how believably animalistic the rabbits are. But for me that's laughable. They are some of the least animalistic animals in fiction I can imagine.

Those are just the things I don't get, though.

My main issues are length and pacing. It's way too long. I don't know which editions you all read, but mine has 450 pages (that's 450 pages pure text, no introduction, essay, notes). It could have easily done with half of that without losing anything of importance. It was often a battle for me to get through. The pacing as well is often completely off. Most of the time I was simply bored.

tl,dr: There is some serious potential in there, but the execution of it is subpar.

I can't say I enjoyed it very much. All my own fault, because I suggested it myself. I wouldn't have finished it, had I not suggested it, to be honest. Well, at least I've read it now, I guess.

Well, I guess my overall interpretation was kinda different. Maybe my suspension of belief is harder to undermine?

There was a conversation or two where one of the rabbits said "it's because they're not ~natural" and idk if that was actually true, but I didn't really get the impression that wanting to live a different life meant wanting a less or more natural one for the most part, but wanting to avoid really bad things like living under the reign of a selfish tyrant. I can see where you're coming from with that.

I think Lapine was implied to be the language rabbits used 100% of the time unless they were talking to other animals. They used a few Lapine words in the book because there wasn't a good English equivalent, or as a worldbuilding feature, not because those were the only words they spoke actually in Lapine. Likewise I think all their names were in Lapine but they used an English equivalent where possible for the sake of simplicity (for example, Dandelion's actual name would be whatever the Lapine word for "dandelion" is). The author stated at the beginning of the book for example that Fiver and Pipkin's names were Hrairoo and Hlao respectively.

The rabbits had mythology, and storytelling, but they didn't really have art - there was art in Cowslip's warren and the Sandleford rabbits were really confused by it and never understood it - and they didn't really have history (their entire history was just their mythology and I don't think they had much sense of the overall passage of time).

I'm sorry you didn't like it though :( sucks if you were the one to suggest it. If it makes you feel better, I enjoyed it so your suggestion was a good one because it made at least one person happy :)

(I was early because I was refreshing the page to make sure I wouldn't be late! and I might go out later tonight so I didn't want to do a post-and-run. Also I already had my comment typed out on a text doc)

Even their mythology is more tales with a social or cautionary value than entertainment, even if the Sandleford rabbits use it as such on their migration, they don't have the time or the luxury of true art unless farmed like Cowslip's warren is. It is just not a feature of their lives in the way we understand it, it is almost like the primitive tribal tails of human hunter-gatherer societies.

I enjoyed it on the level of simple animals can lead very complicated lives just in a different context from our own..

Oh god, really? I thought they were speaking two different languages the whole time... Now I feel a bit silly.

But why could the cats/dogs/rats (but not the mice) speak perfect Lapine then?

They did have art, though. Don't you remember the bunny poets? I thought it was implied those existed in many warrens.

I think history and mythology were mixed. Some of the stories about El-ahrairah were actually about El-ahrairah, while some of the stories about him were historical in the sense that they were about real rabbits and their deeds, but were told as El-ahrairah stories. Wasn't it implied somewhere close to the end that in the future some of those El-ahrairah stories would be about Hazel?

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I really wanted to like it too. It just didn't happen. However, I loved the other book I was reading at the same time. The comparison didn't really help Watership Down's case, though.

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-27 22:31 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 22:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 23:01 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 23:26 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-27 23:12 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 23:35 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

diet_poison - 2016-11-27 23:38 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-27 23:48 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-27 23:30 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 23:47 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-27 23:48 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

(Anonymous) - 2016-11-27 23:50 (UTC) - Expand

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-28 00:01 (UTC) - Expand

My copy has 475 pages, excluding the Lapine glossary at the end.

oh my gosh, the Lapine glossary in mine starts on page 475 that's funny

(it's not actually mine, it's the library's)

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-28 00:14 (UTC) - Expand

I re-read it for the first time in decades, and was surprised at how well it stood up. It was a big hit when it first came out and started off a genre of children's animal stories, but it's still the original and best. I love the rabbit's eye view of the world – both trying to explain concepts that would be outside their normal experience – and also literally seeing the world from a rabbit's viewpoint close to the ground. It's a way of getting out of my own experience, I guess.

I love the stories-within-stories construction. It works much better here than in some other books that have used that structure, though Ursula LeGuin comes close. I love the sharply-drawn characters (felt a bit sorry for other ranks Acorn, Speedwell and Hawkbit, though!) The does got less attention than I would have liked, though they obviously did their best to get out of Efrafa before our heroes came along. I've read the sequel, tales from Watership Down, and you get more of the does in that one.

My favourite character of all is Campion, surely the Rommel of the rabbit world, a thoroughly decent and highly competent fellow who eventually realises he's been on the wrong side – and survives to do something about it. You get more of his story in the sequel, and I'm fairly sure, from a line in that book, that he ends up where Hazel did.

So thank-you to whoever suggested it, I loved re-reading it – a mix of pure nostalgia and new appreciation of what the writer did.

I'm glad to hear that Campion gets more development! And the does too :) I should read this.

How did i not know there was as sequel? Campion was a marvelous character - I must seek it out! :)

(Top ten favorite book of all time.)

Fellow Campion fan fistbump!

The sequel is a series of short stories, rather than a novel. I read it once, and don't remember it all that clearly, except that the issue of the does is addressed (zeitgeist of the times, it was published in the mid-90s) and also the theme of establishing more warrens as Watership gets more populated. I must re-read it.

Re: Book club - November discussion for Watership Down!!!

tabaqui - 2016-11-28 00:02 (UTC) - Expand