Tower and Town, November 2023

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Thoughts Invoked By Literature

Year 10 student, Rachel Darby, explains how she found a tale of hope and resilience in Richard Adams’s Watership Down

It seems slightly odd that such a famous, classic book would actually be about rabbits, but then Watership Down is surprising in many ways. At first, I was uncertain whether it would be worth reading, but I soon found myself engrossed in the story.

The Sandleford Warren once provided a safe home for the rabbits that lived there, but disaster was inevitable. When Fiver - a young rabbit with a sixth sense - predicts the danger, he and his brother, Hazel, lead a small group into the vast countryside. With nowhere to go, the rabbits must stick together and fight to survive in a cruel world where small animals are overlooked.

Richard Adams once said that he “simply wrote down a story” that he told to his daughters on long car journeys and that it was “just about rabbits”. This is, to many people’s annoyance, due to the many theories and allegories people are still coming up with for the book. It’s interesting that he chose to write the story about rabbits though, as they are often thought of as cute and cuddly, but are portrayed quite differently in Watership Down. Each rabbit has a unique and developed personality, with good and bad qualities, which helps you to relate to them. They display loyalty, intelligence, resilience and hard work, but each one has its own weakness. Since these animals are portrayed to have human-like qualities, it raises questions surrounding animal rights, but it also explores the way humans treat nature and the environment, exposing their lack of respect for it. Watership Down encouraged me to think more about these topics, and seeing the world from a rabbit’s perspective made me consider the impacts (intentionally or otherwise) that we humans can have on our beautiful planet. This is particularly relevant considering the increasing rate of development that is destroying our green spaces and animal habitats, leaving us with areas of brick and concrete. After reading Watership Down, I found myself truly appreciating the stunning area on my doorstep and enjoying more time outside.

Despite the challenges these animals face, this book focuses a lot on themes of hope and resilience. Throughout the book, some of the characters tell stories about “El-Ahrairah”, who was a legendary rabbit hero. He was also known as the “Prince with a Thousand Enemies”, inspiring the group and proving that, even when the whole world seems against you, there is always hope. The first and last lines of the book continue this theme of hope: even when things seem grim, the first line is “The primroses were over” while the last line is “the first primroses were beginning to bloom” which, in many ways, reflects the spirit of the story.

I laughed, cheered, and cried myself through this book. It was thought-provoking and gratifying, and I hope you will experience it for yourself too. One quotation really stood out to me, and I believe it sums up Watership Down perfectly:

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you”.

Rachel Darb (y10)