“Watership Down” is a 1972 fantasy novel by Richard Adams. It is positioned to be a children book, but it’s read and loved by adults all over the world.

It’s common for literature works to use anthropomorphized animals as characters. They walk, talk, do human things, live in houses with large windows and wear brand clothes. But the “Watership Down” used a different approach. At first glance, we meet regular animals that live at a warren. They look, behave and eat just like any other animals. But they are only ordinary animals on the outside.

Their particularity is that they think and interact just like any human would. Keeping animal lifestyle, they build a very human governance model. They unite to defend their home, plan ways to keep the order in place, organize strategic raids on foes and look for females to keep the generation going. That’s how the book is a manifest to social development in terms of culture, administration, and personality.

The plot of the book rolls out as the rabbits are forced to find a new home. Not everybody joins them on their mission. As it often happens, the head rabbit Threarah didn’t believe in the upcoming danger. Fiver, who can predict future, his brother Hazel, their friends Dandelion, Pipkin and Blackberry, and many others, on the other hand, were brave enough to take on such a great challenge. Forgetting about the names, the group consists of the visionary, an inventor, a poet, a leader and a strong man.

Keep flipping the pages to see the magical language full of proverbs, epic, myths, colorful expressions and manifestations of unique culture created by the rabbits. In addition to that Adams used a lot of references to other literary works, ancient myths, folk culture, classic plots. All this makes the book a rich and fascinating read for children, adults, and grown-ups.

Author: Shelly Austin