Watership Down By:Richard Adams

"Watership Down Review"

By: Izabella Orozco

Watership Down is an amazing fictional book that embarks you on a journey with a group of rabbits who leave their home, Sandleford warren to start new life elsewhere.

The most important characters are Hazel, the rabbit who convinces and leads the group to Watership Down warren and eventually becomes “Hazel-rah Chief of the Warren”. Fiver, a rabbit with a gift that allows him to occasionally see the future, predicts the end of Sandleford warren and insists everyone leave immediately, only a small group of rabbits followed. Shortly after leaving Sandleford, they received word that Fiver's premonition came true. Bigwig, is a rabbit who was part of the Sandleford warren Owsla. On their journey there is much doubt from the other rabbits and some even want to return to Sandleford warren, But Bigwig makes sure everyone's in line and no one turns back, he himself infiltrates Efrafa warren and helps eleven does and a buck Blackavar escape. General Woundwort is the main antagonist of the book. He is a the rabbit chief of Efrafa, a warren that is overpopulated and has a strict schedule, because of this many of the rabbits are unhappy and wish to leave but are not allowed. These characters are very important to the story line because of the action they do.

Something I found very interesting about Watership Down was that the rabbits had their own language called lapine and some of the words they said were in this language, for example “Rah” at the end of a name symbolizes a leader or power. Something else I found interesting was the way they had an explanation for the origin of life and had stories about their gods and heroes.

The main setting of Watership Down is The Watership Down warren, this is where many important events happen such as The Battle of Watership Down. But there are other important setting such as Sandleford warren, The warren of the Shining Wires, and Efrafa.

This book surprisingly reminds me about the events of World War II. General Woundwort reminds me of Hitler, because of the way he treats the other rabbits in Efrafa. His Owsla Patrol represents the Nazi soldiers. The groups that the enslaved rabbits were separated in represents concentration camps. And the lower class rabbits represents the Jewish men and women.

I recommend this book for older and mature book readers, although it is a book about rabbits it is incredibly bloody and gruesome. It may not be appropriate for younger readers