I absolutely adored Watership Down, and despite hearing that it was a rather harrowing book, I really couldn’t get enough of it when I sat down to read every evening. And I can also honestly say that I didn’t want this book to end, either.

Having long heard that Watership Down was a hard read when I was younger, I was surprised to learn that it was actually a childrens book as an adult: a story that Richard Adams spun from his imagination to tell his own children on long car rides. It’s a book that my mum said she had a hard time reading when she was a child, so I was a bit nervous when I eventually got round to picking the book up – especially as I was volunteering with street dogs in Sri Lanka at the time (which was a rather distressing experience in and of itself and one that I’ve posted about before). Vaguely knowing what the source material was about, and knowing that it was about the suffering of animals, I nearly didn’t read it at all while I was out there, thinking of putting it aside to pick up at a later date. But I’m glad I pushed through and read it despite my trepidations, because I honestly loved this book more than I could have ever imagined.

Watership Down follows the journey of our hero, a rabbit called Hazel, who, with his band of misfits, sets out from the Warren that they call home when his younger brother, Fiver, shares a worrying vision that has been plaguing him for some time. What follows is an adventure that is in equal parts fueled by desperation as it is by hope.

I was quick to find the main ensemble cast of rabbits to be very lovable and I was greatly rooting for their success early on. There is such an imploring dynamic amongst all the rabbits that just draws you in and makes you feel all the more invested in their story. The problems that the rabbits face and deal with aren’t simple: they are beyond complex and are also the cause and effect to the rabbit’s entire purpose and drive.

Whether it was Adams’ intentions or not, it has become undeniable that the themes in this book have become subject to discussion and debate many-a-time, with audiences often using Watership Down as an allegory for humankinds savage and cruel reality: killing not for survival, but purely for the sake of it. So at odds and distant from nature, it is through the eyes of the rabbits that we can truly see the incomprehensible way that humanity lives: that the way we exist is entirely unnatural and strange. I, for one, as I grow up, have certainly been sharing this sentiment with increasing momentum lately.

I do have to say that I wonder whether social media has desensitised me to too many things though, because despite the infamy that follows this book (and despite working with suffering dogs in need at the time) I didn’t find it to be a difficult read, or too harrowing. Though I will say that reading about the first incident that befell the rabbits – reading about the cave-in that they experienced, and then later finding out what needlessly caused it – gave me great pause for thought. I vividly imagined the scenario, which was made all the more easier with Adams’ incredible writing, and I definitely felt an awful pang in my chest. It, I think, was the only moment in the book where I felt so incredibly helpless and horrified at what I was reading. I could emphasise and understand, now, why kids would struggle with the topics and events that take place within the book.

The themes of violence and brutality are unmistakable, with characters often finding themselves in a battle for power, willingly or otherwise. Themes of authoritarianism also lends itself to this book, as Hazel and his friends often find themselves in conflict with power structures that best benefit the few, rather than the many. Hazel is seen as wanting to bring democracy and independent thinking to authoritarian regimes from other warrens, with his group frequently willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good in order to find a sense of belonging and a place to call home. It’s a concept that is made all the more tangible due to the fact that the rabbits have a culture; have their own history, and tales of their own heroes and gods. They pass these stories down to later generations orally, quite like how humans share their stories in a traditional sense as well – it made the rabbits all the more relatable and understandable as characters. An impressive feat considering that they are another species entirely.

Which leads me to another thing that I absolutely adored about this book: its descriptions. The care and detail taken in describing the landscape, the weather and temperature during the day, and how it fluctuated as a normal day would, was so immersive to me. I especially enjoyed the little bits of information that were added throughout the story to remind the reader that the characters we were following were animals: ear twitches; quivering noses; tails and claws and teeth. I appreciated these little additions of detail because, a lot of the time when I read books from an animals perspective, too many authors don’t tend to add these little mannerisms in their writings. When this happens, I find that it becomes all too easy to forget that the characters that we are following are, in fact, animals. You can easily read them as humans going through the motions when there aren’t added details of an ear or tail twitching in response to changes in the environment. So I really loved these details as they read more realistically as the actions and thoughts of an animal character.

This was also the first book, that I can remember at least, where the author went into such great detail about the vegetation and plants within the environment. Normally, I find that in a lot of books, such things will often be mentioned with a vagueness that, in hindsight after reading Watership Down, leaves everything a bit flat. In other books that I’ve read, something like “in the shade of the tree” will be written, which is lovely in and of itself, but it pales in comparison to Adams’, “where the ground became open and sloped down to an old fence and a brambly ditch beyond, only a few fading patches of pale yellow still showed among the dog’s mercury and oak tree roots”. There is such care and knowledge taken in describing what kind of trees, what kind of plants, are in any space that the rabbits find themselves in and it so brilliantly brings the scene to life so much more, vividly painting the story being told in the mind of the reader.

The blades of grass; the different types of fauna and the sound that they make as they move in the breeze, just made for an incredible reading experience. This amazing attention to detail has for sure made Richard Adams one of my favourite authors. Such in-depth description and ‘wordiness’, I’ve realised, is exactly what I like to read in books, and so I can’t wait to read more of Richard Adams’ work. I will also now be on the look out for other such authors that write similarly wordy and descriptive stories, because they’re the ones that make the escapism believable for me!