Thoughts on Watership Down
Public
For all it's not the animal-based fantasy I write about most these days, if I had to say which one was the most personally important to me, it would be Watership Down. This post isn't intended as a lengthy essay on the subject (though that may yet come) but just a short bit of musing about what it is that attracted, and attracts, me so much to Richard Adams' masterpiece. (It must be a little bit annoying for an author to write something so popular first time out and then never quite manage to match it!) It's a shame it's not as popular as it used to be.
Obviously, rabbits. My fursona is a rabbit, I like rabbits a great deal (especially wild ones) and I think Mr Adams is one of the few authors really to capture their essential resilience against the manifold dangers they face. Also, let's face it: they're rather old-fashioned English rabbits, and so am I; that appeals as well. Mr Adams is wonderful at describing the countryside from a rabbit's perspective, and the book would not be half as good without it. (This, incidentally, is why the watercolour backdrops for the 1978 film are so appropriate.)
I also love the way that the Lapine language is built up, very slowly and unobtrusively, until the point at which Bigwig's "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!" is immediately understandable -- and, more impressively, the impact of such a phrase is something the reader can grasp. Add to that the tremendously moving passages such as Hazel's thoughts after being shot, the humour (of which there is much more than most people seem to think) and the varied chapter epigraphs, and you have a story for the ages. And for my ages. All of them.
For all it's not the animal-based fantasy I write about most these days, if I had to say which one was the most personally important to me, it would be Watership Down. This post isn't intended as a lengthy essay on the subject (though that may yet come) but just a short bit of musing about what it is that attracted, and attracts, me so much to Richard Adams' masterpiece. (It must be a little bit annoying for an author to write something so popular first time out and then never quite manage to match it!) It's a shame it's not as popular as it used to be.
Obviously, rabbits. My fursona is a rabbit, I like rabbits a great deal (especially wild ones) and I think Mr Adams is one of the few authors really to capture their essential resilience against the manifold dangers they face. Also, let's face it: they're rather old-fashioned English rabbits, and so am I; that appeals as well. Mr Adams is wonderful at describing the countryside from a rabbit's perspective, and the book would not be half as good without it. (This, incidentally, is why the watercolour backdrops for the 1978 film are so appropriate.)
I also love the way that the Lapine language is built up, very slowly and unobtrusively, until the point at which Bigwig's "Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!" is immediately understandable -- and, more impressively, the impact of such a phrase is something the reader can grasp. Add to that the tremendously moving passages such as Hazel's thoughts after being shot, the humour (of which there is much more than most people seem to think) and the varied chapter epigraphs, and you have a story for the ages. And for my ages. All of them.