Watership Down


Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
Watership Down was Richard Adams's debut novel. It was rejected by several publishers before Collings accepted the manuscript; the published book then won the annual Carnegie Medal, annual Guardian Prize, and other book awards.
The novel was adapted into a 2D animated feature film in 1978 and a 2D animated children's television series from 1999 and 2001. In 2018, the novel was adapted again, this time into a 3D animated series, which both aired in the UK and was made available on Netflix.
Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, in 1996, Tales from Watership Down, constructed as a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.

Origin and publication history

The story began as tales that Richard Adams told his young daughters Juliet and Rosamund during long car journeys. He recounted in 2007 that he "began telling the story of the rabbits... improvised off the top of head, as were driving along". The daughters insisted he write it down—"they were very, very persistent". After some delay, Adams began writing the novel in the evenings; he completed it 18 months later. The book is dedicated to the two girls.
Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were based on The Private Life of the Rabbit, by British naturalist Ronald Lockley. The two later became friends, embarking on an Antarctic tour that became the subject of a co-authored book, Voyage Through the Antarctic.
In his autobiography, The Day Gone By, Adams wrote that he based Watership Down and the stories in it on his experiences during Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Arnhem, in 1944. The character of Hazel, the leader of the group of rabbits, was modelled on Adams's commanding officer, Major John Gifford. He gave the warrior Bigwig the personality of Captain Desmond Kavanagh, who is buried at the Airborne Cemetery in Oosterbeek, The Netherlands.
Watership Down was rejected seven times before it was accepted by Rex Collings. The one-man London publisher Collings wrote to an associate, "I've just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I'm mad?" The associate did call it "a mad risk," in her obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive." Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered." Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave Watership Down its title. There was a second edition released in 1973.
Macmillan USA, then a media giant, published the first U.S. edition in 1974; a Dutch edition was also published that year by Het Spectrum.

Plot summary

Part 1: The Journey

In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a runty young rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. He and his brother Hazel fail to convince the Threarah, their Chief Rabbit, of the need to evacuate; they then try to convince the other rabbits, but only succeed in gaining nine followers, all bucks and no does. Captain Holly of the Sandleford Owsla, the warren's military caste, accuses the group of fomenting dissension against the Threarah. He tries to stop them from leaving, but is driven off.
Once out in the world, the traveling group of rabbits finds itself following the leadership of Hazel, who had been considered an unimportant member of the warren. The group travels far through dangerous territory. Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla and the strongest rabbits among them, protect the others, helped by Hazel's good judgement and the ingenuity of the clever rabbit Blackberry. Along the way, they cross the River Enborne, and evade a badger, a dog, a crow, and a car. Hazel and Bigwig also stop three rabbits from attempting to return to the Sandleford warren.
A rabbit named Cowslip invites Hazel's group to join his warren, where a farmer leaves food for the rabbits and shoots all the predators. Fiver senses death and deception in Cowslip's warren, but the rest of Hazel's group, enjoying the peace and good food, decide to ignore Fiver's warnings and the strange and evasive behaviour of the stranger rabbits. Later, Bigwig is caught in a snare, only surviving the ordeal thanks to Blackberry and Hazel's quick thinking. Deducing the truth, Fiver admonishes the rest in a wild lecture; the farmer feeds and protects the rabbits so he can harvest them for meat and skins, and Cowslip's rabbits invited the guests into their warren to increase their own odds of survival. The Sandleford rabbits, badly shaken, continue on their journey. They are joined by Strawberry, a buck who deserts Cowslip's warren.

Part 2: On Watership Down

Fiver's visions instruct the rabbits to seek a home atop the hills. The group eventually finds and settles in a beech hanger on Watership Down. While digging the new warren, they are joined by Captain Holly and his friend Bluebell. Holly is severely wounded, and both rabbits are ill from exhaustion, having escaped both the violent destruction of the Sandleford Warren by humans and an attack by Cowslip's rabbits along the way. Holly's ordeal has left him a changed rabbit and, after telling the others that Fiver's terrible vision has come true, he offers to join Hazel's band in whatever way they will have him.
Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realizes that, with all buck rabbits and no does, the warren will soon die out. With the help of their useful new friend, a black-headed gull named Kehaar, they discover a nearby warren called Efrafa, which is overcrowded. At Hazel's request, Holly leads a small embassy to Efrafa to present their request for does.
Hazel and Pipkin decide to scout out the nearby Nuthanger Farm, where they find a rabbit hutch. Despite their uncertainty about living wild, the four hutch rabbits are willing to come to Watership. Two nights later, Hazel leads a raid on the farm, which frees two does and a buck from the hutch. Hazel is wounded in the leg by the farmer's shotgun and presumed dead; Fiver's visions prompt him and Blackberry to return and rescue Hazel. When the embassy to Efrafa returns soon after, Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a police state run by the despotic General Woundwort, who refuses to allow anyone to leave his warren. Holly and his three companions have managed to escape with little more than their lives.

Part 3: Efrafa

While they were imprisoned in Efrafa, Holly's group had met an Efrafan doe named Hyzenthlay, who wishes to leave the warren and can recruit other does to join in the escape. Hazel and Blackberry devise a plan to rescue Hyzenthlay's group and bring them to Watership Down.
Bigwig infiltrates Efrafa in the guise of a 'hlessi'. He is recruited into the Efrafan Owsla by Woundwort, while Hazel and several other Watership rabbits hide across the nearby River Test. With help from Kehaar, Bigwig manages to free Hyzenthlay and nine other does, as well as a condemned Efrafan prisoner named Blackavar. Woundwort and his officers pursue them, but the Watership rabbits and the escapees use a punt to float away down the Test and escape.

Part 4: Hazel-rah

Downriver, the punt strikes a bridge, killing one doe. Once the rabbits are back on shore, they begin the long journey home, losing one more doe to a fox along the way. As they near Watership, they come across Captain Campion and his Efrafan patrol, who have been tracking them. Blackavar advises Hazel that the patrol must be killed to prevent them from reporting to Woundwort, but Hazel spares them and sends them off.
A few weeks later, the Owsla of Efrafa, led by Woundwort, unexpectedly arrives to destroy the warren at Watership Down and take back the escapees. Fiver experiences another vision, which gives Hazel the solution to the problem. While Bigwig fights and injures Woundwort in a narrow tunnel, preventing the rest of the Efrafans from getting any further into the burrows, Hazel, Dandelion and Blackberry return to Nuthanger Farm. They release Bob, the farmer's Labrador, and lure him back to Watership Down. Bob attacks the Efrafans, who flee in terror, leaving Woundwort to stubbornly stand his ground unobserved. Following the fight, Bob returns to Nuthanger Farm with a few wounds, but there is no sign of Woundwort's body. Groundsel, one of the Efrafan officers, fervently believes the General must have survived.
After releasing Bob, Hazel is attacked by Tab, one of the farmhouse cats. He is saved by young Lucy, the former owner of the escaped hutch rabbits, who shows him to the local doctor before releasing him. Upon returning to Watership, Hazel effects a lasting peace and friendship between the remaining Efrafans and the Watership rabbits. Some time later, Hazel and Campion, the intelligent new chief of Efrafa, send rabbits to start a new warren at Caesar's Belt, to relieve the effects of overcrowding at both their warrens.

Epilogue

As time goes on, the three warrens on the downs prosper under Hazel, Campion and Groundsel. General Woundwort is never seen or heard from again; he becomes a legend among the rabbits, and a sort of bogeyman to frighten rabbit kits. Kehaar rejoins his colony, but continues to visit the rabbits every winter. He refuses to search for Woundwort, showing that even he still fears him.
Years later, on a cold March morning, an elderly Hazel is visited by El-ahrairah, the legendary rabbit folk hero and spiritual Prince of the Rabbits. He invites Hazel to join his Owsla, reassuring Hazel of Watership's future success and prosperity. Leaving his friends and his physical body behind, Hazel departs Watership Down with El-ahrairah.