Common Sense Note
Richard Adams's larger-than-life story is compelling and full of high adventure, and his characters are vividly drawn and winning. Experienced fantasy fans cheer the heroes on. This rousing story of a band of rabbits who escape persecution to create a just society is full of clever strategies, a self-contained rabbit mythology, and much detail about nature.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Mark Nichol
WATERSHIP DOWN was written for adults, but adolescents often find it more irresistible than their elders do. Although the rabbit characters have a language and a culture, and they converse and interact just as humans do, these are not cap-and-waistcoat picture-book bunnies, but fully realized characters whose conflicts and triumphs keep readers engrossed..
This is primarily an adventure novel, but one for thinking people. Social allegory pops up regularly, from the restlessness of the warren's disenfranchised younger bucks to the fatalism and repression in two other rabbit communities, whose members have given up freedom for an illusion of security. Readers are expected to engage their brains, even for the suspenseful action sequences.
Adams's conveys a palpable love of nature. He knows the story's countryside setting intimately, and much of his narrative contains descriptions of the landscape and references to specific plant species.
Though this is a thick book, a preteen reader weathered months of read-aloud sessions and became attached to the appealing characters, such as Bigwig, the blunt but courageous warrior rabbit. And when another main character had apparently died from a shotgun wound, she was disconsolate until the reader broke down and hinted at the character's survival.
From the Book:
Once more he climbed up on to the earth pile. Then he stopped. Vervain and Thistle, raising their heads to peer past him from behind, saw why. Thlayli had made his way up the run and was crouching immediately below. Blood had matted the great thatch of fur on his head, and one ear, half severed, hung down beside his face. His breathing was slow and heavy.
"You'll find it much harder to push me back from here, General," he said.
Plot Summary:
A band of young males, relegated to the fringes of society, set out to find a place where they can live free and proud. Never mind that the characters in this long and complex but thrilling epic are rabbits--Beatrix Potter, this isn't. Charismatic characters, nail-biting action, and an engrossing plot combine to produce a classic.
When Hazel's clairvoyant brother, Fiver, predicts a catastrophe, Hazel gathers other young rabbits willing to flee to establish a new warren of their own. But few of them have been far from home, and their journey is perilous: They're attacked by rats in a barn, must cross a creek, and are lulled into a false sense of security in a warren whose rabbits turn out to be fed--and harvested--by a farmer.
With every incident, however, the value of each individual becomes clear to the others, and they coalesce into a unified band. When they at last reach their objective, a desolate hill called Watership Down, they feel they have found, and earned, a home.
But then their search for mates to help populate their warren leads to an encounter with a repressive rabbit society, and a gripping undercover plot that culminates in a harrowing stand against the ferocious dictator, General Woundwort.
Related Books:
Books With Similar Themes
The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
Tales From Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams
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Sexual ContentMild references to courtship and bearing young. |
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ViolenceSeveral fights and one intense siege occur; a major character is shot, a supporting character has been tortured, and others are injured by hostile rabbits. The rabbits are attacked and menaced by other animals and by hostile rabbits. |
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LanguageRabbit-language oaths are translated to mild English swearing; another animal also cusses mildly in English. |
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Social BehaviorOne otherwise heroic main character is something of a bully; some supporting characters are timid or cowardly. Female rabbits are generally submissive and considered merely for their suitability for bearing young. |
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