Introducing Watership Down
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It has been compared to Homer and the Aeneid. Its chapters take their headings from Aeschylus, the Psalms, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Before each of his writing sessions, its author read Milton, Spenser, or Proust out loud. Some have called it a political allegory. Others see it as a commentary on religion. One editorialist recently claimed that it has “real relevance to the crisis of the liberal order in the Western world.” All this solemn ink has been spilled over none other than Watership Down, Richard Adams’s 1972 children’s book about a band of talking rabbits. This unlikely novel sparked enthusiasm from the outset—it was an instant bestseller, lauded by critics, and its reputation and popularity have only grown over the decades. Since its first publication, Watership Down has sold an extraordinary 50 million copies and spawned two television adaptations.
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As for the novel’s various interpretations, and their varying degrees of validity, the conversation remains live. Adams’s own daughters were the original audience of Watership Down, which he first improvised as a way to entertain them during long car-trips. Juliet and Rosamond Adams remember their father rejecting all of these critical readings: “‘Rubbish,’ he always said. ‘It’s just a story about rabbits.’” In a 1973 interview, Adams claimed that the novel “[is] not meant to be a parable…Its power and strength come from being a story told in the car.” This does not lessen the fact, however, that Watership Down is permeated by its author&#8217;s beliefs and values—as a Christian, a veteran of the Second World War, a longtime employee of the British government’s Department of the Environment, and a passionate opponent of animal cruelty. Adams’s moral philosophy was clear-cut: in a 1974 interview, he described his distaste for modern novels “dominated by the problems of their heroes or heroines, who are constantly questioning their values.” “As an Orthodox Christian,” he continued, “I feel there really isn’t a lot of agonizing to be done. I couldn’t write a story about right and wrong.” Ironically, this very quality—and the traditional ethics of honor, bravery, selflessness, love, and loyalty embodied by the story’s central characters—prompted the novelist and critic Alison Lurie to label Watership Down a “subversive” novel. It rejected the mood of its 1960s and 70s contemporaries, Lurie claimed, which were populated with, in her words, “sad, bumbling failures; hysterical combatants in the sex war; or self-deceptive men and women of ill-will.”
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Upon the book’s release, Penguin made the unusual choice to publish it under both its adult and children’s imprints. Watership Down’s “crossover” appeal, a feature much sought after by publishers, is a result of the fact that it is a serious tale, delivered with conviction. Adams held pronounced opinions about how to tell stories to kids. “I do not believe in talking down to children,” he declared. “Readers like to be upset, excited and bowled over. I can remember weeping when I was little at upsetting things that were read to me, but fortunately my mother and father were wise enough to keep going.” Rosamond recalled the “scary stories” her father used to tell before bedtime: “I wasn’t able to sleep,” she described—and yet it was the author’s two little girls who convinced him to write down the extemporized adventures that became Watership Down. They were, his daughters insisted, simply “too good to waste.” “When you’re little,” Adams once said, “you don’t distinguish between fiction and reality. It’s all reality. And thank goodness for that.”
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-Tom Malmgren