This piece is one I truly enjoyed working on because of the exquisite flavors in Richard Adam's novel. Rabbits and regimes, warrens and wires, and yes, bucks and battles, join creating a wonderful story. I won't give an abstract...
An Insightful Message: Rabbits and a 20th Century Preoccupation with History and Politics
“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, digger, listener, runner, Prince
with swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never
be destroyed” (Adams 29). The story of a
group of rabbits (led by one named Hazel) that leaves their Sandleford warren
to embark on a journey to found their own, new, warren is none other than
Richard Adams' Watership Down.
This is no tale of The Velveteen Rabbit: These rabbits had
their share of enemies, and though the author claimed it to be only a child's
story written about the British countryside that he loves, his novel displays
certain weighty subjects of importance (Adams “My Brit”). The people of the
Prince with a Thousand Enemies were rabbits in the center of southern England
within a real world to illustrate the importance of running, fighting, and
overcoming evil. Placed in the world and
not a fictional other-world, the rabbits possess their own vernacular as well
as stories and tales passed down as proverbs.
Richard Adams' tale of lapine comrades was written and published in
1972, after the world recovered from World War Two, a recovery during which the
world experienced another explosion: One of popular culture amidst the
modernist movements in art, music, and literature, forms people use to express
their individuality (Spielvogel 628). During this time, authors explored new themes
and ways to emphasize their messages, and one trend was to write free-form
poetry (such as T.S. Eliot's “Prufrock”) or novels from either a futuristic
mindset or nature's point of view while being “mediators of insight” in order to
display themes of political conflicts (Tarka).
An example of modern literature with a futuristic mindset is George
Orwell's 1984, while one with animals basking in the spotlight is Animal
Farm, also written by Orwell, who skillfully combined political messages in
a future context or in the context of a group of animals. With Watership Down, however, although
Adams’ 20th century novel may appear to be simply an imaginative
tale about rabbits in order to elevate environmentalism, it clearly
demonstrates the preoccupation 20th century literature possessed in
relation to history and politics by using epigraphs, parallels to Greek
literature, and themes of political and socialistic regimes.
The
novel may lend the impression that it supports every aspect of ecological care
and consideration because the main character is taken by visions of trouble,
prophesying that the warren will be destroyed because man has visited and doom
of the warrens' destruction by man impends (Adams Watership 9). To be certain,
the description of the extermination of those who remained at the Sandleford
Warren, which Captain Holly relates to Hazel's troupe, is not for the faint of
heart, as big men with white sticks (cigarettes) in their mouths gas the rabbit
runs, resulting in screaming, hallucinating rabbits (154). These devastating
effects, written in such detail and expressed by the story teller so
horrifically, seem to elicit the inspiration to protect the environment.
However, it is not the cry to protect all rabbits; rather, it is a part of the
story Adams employed to endear his characters to his readers.
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| Watership Down, England |
The
chapter in which Captain Holly explains the events of the annihilation of the
Sandleford rabbits begins with an epigraph from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers
Karamazov. The function of an
epigraph is a form of literary strategy in which the author selects passages,
quotations, or colloquialisms to set a stage or mood for the section following
the epigraph. The epigraph Adams used
for this particular passage appeals to a reader’s sense of emotional
sensitivity, for when a Russian states that man should love the animals and not
cause them unnecessary harm for the sole reason that they are gifts from God,
it is an impressive imperative that causes the reader to discover how and in
what way the epigraph will tie into the following events in the story.
Epigraphs
were common during the Romantic era (of poetry especially), and employed most
often. In 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge used a Latin passage to preface “The
Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and even years later, T. S. Eliot used an
epigraph from Dante's Inferno to further his point in “The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock” (Greenblatt 443, 2524).
When Adams inserted epigraphs for his novel, he did so not only to set a
stage for the readers' imagination, but also to tie the context of his modern
tale in with those of the literature preceding his novel, illustrating how 20th
century literature was occupied with somehow combining a political or
historical theme into a work. Adams did
both, and, in a sense, this act (incorporating epigraphs) is also a symbol of
appreciation for pieces written before his novel, as he is giving them honor
and recognition.
The multiple ways the
world has developed owes much to the Greek leaders, historians, and
philosophers, and again, Adams gives honor to the preceding (or ancient)
literature in that he employs parallels between his characters and those in
Virgil's Aeneid, in which a young man, Aeneas, returns from the Trojan
War and is determined to found the city of Rome. Like Aeneas (the main character in the Aeneid)
the rabbits break away from what they have been used to for years in order to
create a new warren and are constantly met with numerous obstacles, some of
which (such as Cowslip's warren and the lotus eaters) mirror the obstacles
encountered in the Aeneid. In
doing this, Richard Adams creates a story that is looked upon as a great epic
because it possesses the themes of this famous Greek poem (Anderson).
Themes
of the Aeneid include those of fighting for freedom and founding a new
city, avoiding obstructions or obstacles that deter from the goal, and lastly,
enduring anything that came across the traveler's path whether it was a
challenge or the loss of a friend.
Aeneas, like the rabbits in Watership Down, had to fight
to found and maintain Rome. A similar
obstruction the rabbits and Aeneas encounter are seemingly seductive areas,
that is, places that have allure but are actually full of danger and death, such
as the lotus eaters and Cowslip's warren (Anderson).
Enduring
hardships and bearing grief is also a theme in both tales: In the Aeneid,
when Aeneas relates the horrors of the Trojan war, he is heartbroken as he
tells of the woeful events of the war while Bluebell and Captain Holly (two
rabbits who had remained at Sandleford) speak of the dreadful events of the
extermination and utter destruction of the Sandleford warren. While Aeneas moaned that none could retell
the woes to give them justice, Captain Holly “looked sad and dark” after he
related that his tale would “strike frost into the heart of every rabbit that
hears it” (Adams 148). The “death agony”
Aeneas recalls the women mourning over in courthouses synchronizes with the
instance in which the men gassed the Sandleford warren runs and the does
screamed in agony over their death and the death of their kittens (Adams 154,
Anderson). Another parallel to the Aeneid
that Adams adopted is that of the prophetic rabbit, Fiver, and the Aeneid’s
Princess Cassandra, a young priestess who foretold the unfortunate fortune of
Troy if the Trojans were to accept the horse left by the Greeks. Like Cassandra, Fiver has physical fits and
is captured in an other-worldly trance when he foresees the destruction of
Sandleford after observing the signpost (Adams 7).
Though
the signpost set in Sandleford's warren signified the coming of men and the
destruction of the warren, each warren in the novel signifies three political
regimes. When the rabbits followed Hazel
and stopped at an eery warren (seemingly managed by a distant, detached,
character named Cowslip) on their journey, the Sandleford escapees sensed a
danger that persisted even when all seemed safe. True, Cowslip's community
possessed the same vernacular, as well as poetry, proverbs and tales, but it
was eery. Fiver felt the entire aura of
the place unnatural, as if death was hanging over the warren like a mist. When
a native rabbit finished reciting a poem, Fiver absorbed it with absolute
horror, and, stricken with fear, he came to his senses and realized what the
mist was (Adams 103). The oppressive
mist Fiver sensed was the fact that Cowslip's warren was not free, it was run
by fear of death. The apparent leader,
Cowslip, treated everyone as equal, and because he did not view himself as a
spokesperson or even true leader, the warren suffered because of its
socialistic regime. Adams' lapine characters knew that socialism was not what
they had left Sandleford for, but by inserting the element of a regime that the
rabbits fled from in order to establish their own, Adams suggests countries
should flee socialism and found governments that encourage independence.
When
the independent rabbits continued their journey, they found a beautiful down to
claim as their own, but there was one problem: There were no does, and no does
meant no continuation of the new warren.
When this problem was addressed, the second political regime entered the
stage. Several rabbits from Hazel's
warren made a trek to Efrafa, a militaristic, suppressed, not to mention
depressed community of rabbits. Efrafa
is the supreme dictatorship. The leader, General Woundwort, is bent on system,
control, schedules, obedience from his Council, and that every rabbit coming in
to Efrafa “will find [them] perfectly friendly and helpful to rabbits who
understand what's expected of them” (Adams 238). Citizens are given no free choice of when to
silflay (eat) or even when to pass hraka, because man may come and inflict harm
or cause disease: “You can't call your life your own, and in return you have
safety” (233). In this dictatorship, the
Efrafan council police “demonstrated the power to ferret out and punish every
individual...engaged in or...suspected of political opposition”
(Hallagan). Adams’ colorful picture of a
disgusting way of life in which citizens were limited in so many areas of life is
a powerful one that makes readers appreciate freedom, because freedom to be
able to live, eat, sleep breath, mate, and love is the most important of
all. In the end, the dictatorship
crumbled for many reasons, but Adams' intention was not to allow this warren to
prosper because it was a dictatorship that did not allow citizens to truly
live.
Adams' novel ends with a
solid, peaceful, and well established order of rabbits who not only have room
to breath, but room to live. With Hazel,
Fiver, and the singular character of Bigwig, the rabbits were able to be
represented. Watership Down and the
rabbits therein were content; they had escaped certain death more than once and
were now upon a down with leaders they could not be more grateful for, leaders
who had led them through the dark mist, away from predators, and out of reach
of the Efrafan clutches. By ending on
the note of a warren in the hands of a healthy democracy, Adams gives a
subliminal message that democracy leads to peace and a secure, satisfactory
homeland.
Creating
a phenomenal conglomeration of themes, morals, and characters, Adams chose
rabbits with a peculiar vernacular, history, and mythology of their own to
write a story that warns against the evils of supreme control. The 20th century novel certainly
displays the era's slight engrossment with history and politics, but Richard
Adams wrote a story with insight. More
than an environmental promoter, the novel's epigraphs set and influence
moods. Profound comparisons and
parallels to the Aeneid, Virgil's epic, give the book a flavor that is
not reproducible, and the examination of political and socialistic regimes
proves this book to be more than a tale of fluffy rabbits. These rabbits had to
fight for their freedom, even when seductive warrens, predators, and other
obstacles stubbornly stood in their way.
All the world was promised to be their enemy, and whenever they were
caught, they were promised to be killed. “But first they must catch you,
digger, listener, runner, Prince with swift warning. Be cunning and full of
tricks and your people shall never be destroyed” (Adams 29). While the novel, like others during the 20th
century, is most definitely preoccupied with history, politics, and other
interesting themes, Adams' insightful message to remain free from political and
relational evils rings true: Because of
their bravery and endurance, the people of the Prince of a Thousand Enemies
consistently came out as the victors no matter how dark the tunnel or how
suffocating the run.
Works Cited:
Adams,
Richard. "My Bit of Britain." In Britain 4.1 (1994): 53. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 19
Nov. 2012.
---.Watership Down. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.
Anderson,
Celia Catlett. "Troy, Carthage, and Watership Down." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 8.1
(1983): 12-13. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
Greenblatt,
Stephen. The Norton Anthology of
English Literature. 9th ed. New York: Norton, 2006. Print.
Hallagan,
William. "Corruption in Dictatorships." Economics of Governance 11.1 (2010): 27-49. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 21 Nov. 2012.
Spielvogel,
Jackson J. Western Civilization: A
Brief History. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2011. Print.
"Tarka
the Otter, Ring of Bright Water, Watership Down." World Literature Today 82.6 (2008):
4. EBSCO MegaFILE. Web. 19 Nov. 2012.
