Watership Down

Summary

Watership Down is the epic of a small band of rabbits who leave their home to found a new one. In the Sandleford warren in Berkshire, a small, nervous rabbit named Fiver, who has visions, sees the field covered in blood and begs his brother Hazel to warn the Chief Rabbit, the Threarah, who dismisses them. Hazel leads a handful of followers away by night, among them Bigwig, a strong officer of the Owsla, the warren's guard; clever Blackberry; Dandelion, the fast runner and storyteller; Silver; and tiny Pipkin. They float the weakest across the river Enborne on a board, cross a road and a heath, and are welcomed by a warren of large, sleek, well-fed rabbits led by Cowslip, who make art and poetry but will not answer questions about where they go. Fiver senses death there, and when Bigwig is caught in a wire snare the truth comes out: a farmer feeds the warren and harvests it, and the rabbits have learned not to speak of it. Freed, Bigwig and the band move on with Strawberry, a rabbit of that warren, and climb to the high, quiet chalk down of Watership. Two survivors, Holly and Bluebell, arrive with the news that men gassed and bulldozed Sandleford for a housing development. The new warren has no does. Hazel befriends Kehaar, an injured black-headed gull, who scouts and finds Efrafa, a large warren run as a police state by General Woundwort, where rabbits are marked, confined and kept underground. A raid on Nuthanger Farm frees hutch rabbits but leaves Hazel shot in the leg; Fiver finds him in a drain by following a dream. Bigwig enters Efrafa in disguise as a would-be officer, wins the trust of the doe Hyzenthlay and the mutilated prisoner Blackavar, and in a thunderstorm leads a breakout to the river, where Kehaar attacks the pursuers and the rabbits escape on a moored punt. Woundwort follows to Watership Down with his army. While Bigwig holds a tunnel against Woundwort, Hazel goes to Nuthanger, gnaws through the farm dog's rope, and leads the dog back to the down, where it routs the Efrafans; Woundwort stands to fight and is never seen again. Hazel, caught by a cat, is rescued by Lucy, the farmer's daughter, and taken back to the down in a doctor's car. Peace follows, with a shared warren at Caesar's Belt under Captain Campion. In the epilogue the aged Hazel is invited by the Black Rabbit of Inlé to join his Owsla and goes gently. Throughout, Dandelion and others tell tales of the rabbit trickster-hero El-ahrairah. Rejected by several publishers, the book was issued by Rex Collings in London in November 1972 and won the Carnegie Medal.

Top Lessons

• Leadership that listens

  Hazel is neither the strongest nor the cleverest rabbit in the band, but he trusts Fiver's visions, uses Blackberry's ideas and Bigwig's strength, and takes the dangerous jobs himself. Woundwort, by contrast, commands by fear and cannot imagine an enemy who will not fight on his terms.

• The comfortable trap

  Cowslip's warren has food, shelter and poetry, but its rabbits have bought comfort by agreeing not to see the snares. Adams shows how a community can grow polished and sad by refusing to name the truth about its own life.

• Order and freedom

  Efrafa is safe from elil because Woundwort controls every movement, but no one there may choose anything. The book weighs three kinds of warren: the careless one at Sandleford, the deceived one at Cowslip's, and the tyrannous one at Efrafa, against the free and cooperative warren Hazel builds.

• Stories that hold a people together

  The rabbits carry no possessions, only their tales of El-ahrairah, and they tell them when they are most afraid. By the epilogue Hazel's own deeds have become stories, and it is hard to tell them apart from the legends.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is not a subject of the novel, but its attention to fear and injury interests a clinical reader. Fiver's visions come in trance-like states and dreams that leave him exhausted, and the book treats them as true foresight, not illness. Adams describes being tharn, the rabbit's freezing in terror before headlights or danger, with a naturalist's precision; readers sometimes connect it with the freeze response in modern stress physiology, a comparison the book itself does not make. Holly and Bluebell arrive from the gassed Sandleford warren shaken and half-incoherent, and Holly's account of the poisoned runs is often read as a portrait of survivor shock, an interpretation in keeping with Adams's own war service. Physical wounds are frequent: Bigwig is half-strangled in the snare, Hazel is shot in the leg at Nuthanger and nursed back, and Blackavar's ears are torn as a punishment in Efrafa.

• Part I, opening chapters

  Fiver's vision of the field covered in blood and his collapse into fear before the flight from Sandleford.

• Part I, the snare at Cowslip's warren

  Bigwig is caught by a wire noose and nearly dies before the others dig out the peg.

• Part II, Holly's story

  Holly and Bluebell, exhausted and shocked, tell how men gassed the Sandleford warren and filled in the runs.

• Part II, the Nuthanger raid

  Hazel is shot by the farmer and lies wounded in a drain until Fiver, led by a dream, finds him.