Watership Down (original 1972; edition 1975)

this is my favorite book, ever. when i finished it, i had a sort of nervous breakdown and couldn't stop crying for three days. my parents sought outside help: their friend and fellow high school teacher, mrs. richardson, who taught senior english. who better, right?

mrs. richardson sent a book home and told my mother to have me read the marked story inside. the story was "the scarlet ibis" by james hurst. i dare you to find that story and read it and not be cured of your watership down crackup. like a miracle medicine. and this is how i learned to fight sadness with more sadness. ( )

this is my favorite book, ever. when i finished it, i had a sort of nervous breakdown and couldn't stop crying for three days. my parents sought outside help: their friend and fellow high school teacher, mrs. richardson, who taught senior english. who better, right?

mrs. richardson sent a book home and told my mother to have me read the marked story inside. the story was "the scarlet ibis" by james hurst. i dare you to find that story and read it and not be cured of your watership down crackup. like a miracle medicine. and this is how i learned to fight sadness with more sadness. ( )

Watership Down> is one of those books that people won't read, because they think it's just about rabbits. But it's not just about rabbits, it's about society. Hazel and his band set off and try to make a place for themselves in the world where they can be happy. In the process, they see things and do things that none of they could every have imagined they would, and the reader is shown all kinds of ways that man and society and interact and destroy one another. But they press on, nonetheless, in a kind of rabbit Aeneid until they achieve their goals.

Adams does a great job of conveying a sense of rabbit civilization. There's a whole mythology there and storytelling that plays a key role in moving the plot along. But most of all, it's a beautiful tale about endurance in the face of trials and quest for happiness in a hard world. ( )

Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams is a wonderful adventure story, absolutely deserving of its status as a classic. I read it for the first time in my life at age 28, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Watership Down tells the story of a group of rabbits in rural England fleeing their threatened warren, overcoming difficulties and danger, establishing a new warren, and coming to terms with their new neighbors, a nearby farm and the large warren Efrafa. The book has been called the Aeneid of rabbits, as it echos the broad outlines of this classic tale: flight from the destruction of Troy, the warnings of the prophet Cassandra, the founding of Rome, and the abduction of the Sabine women (which I do not think appears in the Aeneid but is part of the same storyline). The way in which Adams is able to so completely transform this story, changing elements to appeal to modern readers, demonstrates the timelessness of the core plot.

Watership Down's greatest achievement is its artful portrayal of rabbits and rabbit life, which hovers somewhere between Jack London's realistic portrayal of canines and Brian Jaques' heavily anthropomorphized woodland creatures (who construct buildings, wear armor, wield swords, etc.). Adams' rabbits mostly engage in activities that real rabbits do, and even the exceptions are actions that real rabbits would be capable of doing. On the other hand, the intellectual life of the rabbits is unrealistically rich. Each rabbit has personality, and you come to know and care about many of the rabbits. They have human-like conversations, they make plans, and most delightfully of all, they have an oral history involving tales of the legendary trickster rabbit El-ahrairah. The novel devotes several chapters to stories of this demigod-like figure, who is reminiscent of Coyote in Native American mythology, but clearly a product of the rabbit culture that Adams has developed. These stories enable the reader to understand how the rabbits see themselves: as brave and clever creatures, living by their wits, and ultimately devoted to their people.

Watership Down is not a complex book. It covers much of the same ground as other adventure stories and has some of the same, simple lessons (e.g. be nice to people you meet on your journey, try to work things out first and only fight as a last resort, etc.). The book does contain a couple deus ex machinae, and it doesn't give as much screentime to the female rabbits as they deserve. These are all downsides.

However, I found them to be small problems. Watership Down executes its story with skill, and the rabbit-based setting and culture is more than sufficient to keep the book interesting and distract a reader from the familiarity of other aspects of the story.

I would not hesitate to read this story to a child (say, age 8-10 or older), or to read it as an adult in the mood for something light and fun. One small note: if reading it to a young girl, I'd probably want to precede or follow it with a book that has some more important female characters (say, The Golden Compass (if old enough), certain Narnia books, etc.), to provide a contrast to the low-status portrayal of females in this book. ( )

A good story splendidly read by the narrator. In the introduction the the author said the story isn't meant as an allegory but their are lessons here for Adults as well as children. ( )