Oh, and as a side note, I recently received a semi-complaint that this blog had turned into nothing but book reviews. Yeah, that has been about all I've had time or energy for lately. Not to put it in a grouchy way... well, yeah - to put it in a grouchy way, if you don't like what I'm doing, there is a big wide internet out there. Don't let the firewall hit you in the butt on the way to someplace less mundane. I'll get to the exciting stuff when I am darn good and ready.
Ok, enough drama.
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| Source: Amazon.com |
I think that when you review a book that many consider a classic, you have to be careful. Granted, people can call a Harlequin Romance novel of one particular title or another a “classic,” and perhaps in the eye of the beholder it may be so. But in this particular case, the book is one that many people seem to consider to be a seminal classic, and so reviewing it can be a bit dicey. If you didn’t like the book, you can say that, but you may be taken as one of those people who are just being “avant garde” or being obstinate for the sake of it. Know what I mean?
On the other hand, if you like the book, you are just one more in a long string of people who laud the thing and that isn’t terribly original, now is it? What is an amateur reviewer to do? Well, the best thing to do would be to get this review out of the way quickly, and be done with it. I considered doing a “dual review” of this one since the book was made into a film in the 1970s, but... well, to be honest, I don’t feel like re-visiting Watership Down. It’s over for me, and I’m frankly glad.
Don’t get me wrong, the book was good. I just didn’t really hang on every word. Well, let me change that statement. I didn’t hang on every word except for in a few specific spots. I think Adams’s best material was when he was having his rabbit characters tell their mythology about “El-ahrairah” (that’s El-Rey-Rah from the pronunciation I got on the tape I was listening to), a trickster lord of rabbits who forms a sort of “hero” for all rabbit-kind. Him and the Black Rabbit of Inle, who was quite cool for a rabbit. Sort of the rabbit version of Hades, you might say. But I’m getting away from the review here.
How to describe Watership Down in a “nut shell?” Well, we’ve got talking rabbits living in a field, and one of them, named “Fiver” (as rabbits can’t count any higher than four, his name is sort of representative of being one more than four, or a “multitude”), who sees the future in a prophetic vision, and leads a group of his friends away before the rabbit warren is destroyed. There is Hazel, Fiver’s brother, who becomes the defacto leader of the rabbits due to his intelligence, and “Big Wig,” the strongest of the group to go with them. And Blackberry, who is quite clever. And Dandelion, who is very fast. And a host of others. At times it was hard to keep them all straight, to be honest.
So first they cross into the lands of a warren of rabbits who are being “kept” by a farmer. The rabbits here are sort of domesticated, as they don’t have to fear anything getting them, except the farmer. He harvests them himself with wire snares as he needs them. This has made this bunch of rabbits very peculiar, and they try to integrate the newcomers into their weird society but don’t tell them about the situation they’ve worked out. The sacrifices of the few so that the many can live in comfort. The new rabbits soon find out, and they leave this place to continue their journey.
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| Author Richard Adams / Source: Telegraph.co.uk |
Next our little band of rabbits finds their way to a region called Watership Down, which is a safe place that they can live and raise little rabbits, which are also known as “kittens.” This was news to me. I didn't know that baby rabbits were called kittens. Now I do.
So our bunch arrives at Watership Down, but wouldn’t ya know it, they didn’t bring any females with them to this new place. And so they need to go out and find some. Female rabbits, that is. The group makes friends with a mouse about this time, and then soon afterward with a seagull who has been attacked by a cat and needs a place to rest up and heal. Rabbits and other animals typically don’t associate with each other, but these guys find common ground and get along well enough. The seagull, whose name I have forgotten, but who is a vital part of the rest of the story, becomes quite attached to “Mr. Big Wig,” as he calls him. The two become fast friends.
So meanwhile, out rabbits need to go and get some girl rabbits to have kids with. They decide to go to a place called Efrefin, a warren relatively nearby that has an excess of rabbits. This would be a fine place to get some ladies at, our rabbits assume. Not so. Efrefin is run by a rabbit named “General Woundwort.” This guy is bad news. He is running a totalitarian state and really riding rough-shod on the rabbits under his jurisdiction. The Watership Down rabbit party sent to scout them out is beaten up and limps home.
So Hazel decides to send Big Wig to become a spy, and he manages to infiltrate the enemy camp. Then there is a long section in which things all come together, and in the end some females are obtained through an escape, and the good rabbits all run back to Watership Down, and the bad rabbits follow them there. There is a great rabbit battle. The bad rabbits of Efrefin try to dig into Watership Down to kill all our friends, the good male rabbits (called, “bucks;” I didn’t know that male rabbits were called bucks, did you?). There is a climactic scene between Big Wig and General Woundwort. In the end, everything works out for the best.
Ok, so was it worth reading? Let me put it this way: it wasn’t NOT worth reading. But it wasn’t what I would have called a life-changing experience. Like I said, Adams was at his best when relating the fairy-tale like mythos of El-ahrairah and Prince Rainbow and the various adventures they all had. If I was going to recommend anything about Watership Down, that would be its selling point for me. Adams tells a great short fairy-tale.
What else to say about Watership Down? Well, as I read from various reviews on Amazon.com, it appears to be one of those books that Junior High English teachers like to have their classes read. Some kids like it, but one kid who thought he or she was oh-so-clever gave a string of negative reviews to the book. All in about the same time period, and all with the same author (“anonymous”) and with similar sentence structure and tone. It was obviously the same person. This poor kid derided Watership Down and complained thoroughly about the demands upon his/her time spent reading about “dumb talking rabbits.”
To be honest, I had to agree with the kid when it came to length. For me, the book seemed a bit long. I suppose when it was first published, the book’s length was not an issue so much, as this was probably before people thought in half hour/hour/two hour blocks (i.e.: the half hour TV show, the hour-long and therefore more involved TV show, or the two hour movie).
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| I can only assume this is General Woundwort and Big Wig fighting it out in the movie version of Watership Down. And this wasn't even the most disturbing picture I could find when I did a Google Image search for "Watership Down." Source: Lionking.org |
On the other hand, I think the kids who complained via Amazon.com that Watership Down was a “bad” book becasue it didn’t entertain them sufficiently were either too spoiled by a life of TV/internet/practically plotless action/disaster flics or over-dramtized teenage TV soap operas (Vampire Diaries, I’m looking at you in particular). It was a book with significant action and excitement in it if you don’t expect car chases or karate fights as part of your entertainment at a rate of one every ten minutes. It would be a shame if kids these days couldn’t find something good in a book like this simply because it doesn’t cater to their pampered and over-indulged sides.
Then again, if I’d had to read this in Junior High, I’d probably have complained pretty loudly too. Although, between you and me, I’d have found some of it interesting. Just not to the extent that the author delivers. An abridged version almost might have done ok here, for me personally. But what do I know? Read it yourself and then you decide.
Learn more about Watership Down by Richard Adams on Amazon.com
The parting comment:
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| Source: LOL snaps.com |
Ok, so it isn't the funniest parting comment I've come up with lately, but I kinda got a chuckle out of a couple of them. As somebody who doesn't do yoga, I think the names of the positions alone are kinda funny. And let's face it, the "Corpse Pose"? I do that one almost every day without even trying. I think I might have accidentally done a few of the other ones on the list when I couldn't find something I dropped, or after tripping over a tree limb in the back yard. So maybe a do yoga after all. Do you do yoga?
I've blocked this story from my psyche after a traumatic viewing of the "cartoon" as a very young child.The pink eyes still haunt me. The book has never been on my "to-read" list as a result. Sounds like I haven't missed much.
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