Watership Down

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Watership Down

Picking up a “Literature” book is like picking up a snake. You never know if you’ve discovered a fascinating specimen, or one filled with the poison of boredom that will send you into unconsciousness in matter of 60 seconds. Thus with some trepidation I opened Watership Down by Richard Adams published 1972.
The first page hooked me. It felt as if J.R.R. Tolkien, Brian Jacques, and the leading biologist on English fauna collaborated to write a fascinating epic drama about—rabbits.
Yes, ordinary rabbits…or maybe not so ordinary. Somehow, I had stumbled upon a well-rounded, fully developed yet myth-like society-- hidden yet always there waiting to be unveiled.
Like all human cultures, the Lapine society included a government and way of establishing order. They combined an odd mix of oligarchy and monarchy to create a system where the head rabbit or Ra supported by his Oswla, the largest and strongest rabbits, controlled and protected the burrow.
This foreign culture contains its own idiosyncrasies. According to Adam’s, rabbits only count up to four. Anything more than that is to them a thousand or a great many ie an uncountable number.
The author filled Watership Down with believable but impossible surprises like the full language spoken by the rabbits. Words like lendri, silflay, and Thethunthinnang added a musical, almost poem-like quality. The history hinted at in the language the rabbits allude to more in their folk tales. They had their own opinion on how the world was made, the workings of death, and many other historical and spiritual matters. Their myths always seemed to either reflect or apply to the story going on around the reader. The author created legends inside the making of a legend. Emphasizing this Adam’s used a 3rd omniscient, narrator voice in telling the tale.
However, this saga of rabbits telling the future, riding in cars, and establishing a new burrow against...