The Best Book for 2020 is 'Watership Down'

Forget the experts. When it comes to courage, follow the rabbits.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

That’s right—and no, I’m not ruffling your fur.

If you’re not familiar with Watership Down, it’s all rabbits, all the time.

With few exceptions, the cast of characters are all wild, tunnel-digging, nose-twitching Leporidae. They’re probably descendants of the European rabbits brought over by the Normans to roam and populate the British Isles.

But while these rabbits are humanized, with their own language (Lapine), hierarchy, mythology, and social-cultural structures, they’re not cartoonish. With touches of detail, and sensory input that’s pretty much seamless, author Richard Adams slips right inside their furry-skins:

“Looking at them, Hazel felt almost as insecure as he had on the riverbank. A hedgerow in open fields was no place to remain all day. But where could they go? He needed to know more about their surroundings. He moved along the hedge, feeling the breeze from the south and looking for some spot where he could sit and scent it without too much risk. The smells that came down from the higher ground might tell him something.”¹

Over 474 pages, the creation is no small feat. And while Adams wrote it for children, (starting with the impromptu tales he told his own daughters), it’s as much a feast for mature readers. But regardless of who enjoys it, Watership Down achieves something that few novels of any genre can hope to pull off. While its characters are delightful, and its landscapes idyllic, the book both lays out the the tragic, Hobbesian realities of human (ahem… rabbit) existence, and demonstrates what it takes to conquer them.

Danger, violent death, annihilation, the lurking threat of slavery—a rabbit’s life means facing all the usual suspects. Every day, hour, minute, someone’s standing watch. But Adam contrasts those grim realities with the rollicking journey of a small herd that steps into the unknown to plant a new home. Cautious but daring, and faithful to one another, the herd demonstrates the glimmering exceptions—risk, courage, strategy sacrifice, and through those disciplines, the chance of freedom.

With scenes and moments that I’ll never forget, the novel strikes bedrock, shattering much of the nonsense that dominates news cycles—in 2020 or in any other year.

And now that I’ve blown past the trigger warning, be warned: there’s a few plot spoilers ahead.

In a single chapter I’ll discuss, Adams (again, using nothing but rabbits), delivers the most jarring explication of freedom and slavery that this M.F.A. candidate, (and English teacher of eight years) has ever read in a work of fiction.  

Photo by Aleksandra Boguslawska on Unsplash

Into the Deep End

The story begins when brothers Hazel and Fiver recruit a band of fluffy comrades and sneak away from their warren. Fiver, a pipsqueak with dark prophetic visions—he’s a bit like the precogs in Minority Report—senses danger. When the Chief Rabbit won’t believe him, the two get out of dodge. Later, we learn they left just in time, right before the whole warren was gassed by farmers, the population slaughtered.

Joined by Bigwig, a member of the Owsla (think Marine Corps for rabbits), the herd travels over the grassy downs of Southern England. Guided by their hunger for adventure and independence, as well the longing to come home—paradoxical desires that G.K. Chesterton holds up as the core of man’s spiritual appetite—they hurl themselves into uncharted territory, risking everything to live as free as possible, safe from humans, predators, and rival warrens.

Like the Constitutional Convention, or the founding (and re-founding) of Israel, their simple goal spawns an epic, daunting journey. One with little margin for error.

Along their way, the herd makes allies, escapes the temptation of a cult-like warren, outsmarts cats and farmers, and make their stand on the grassy fields of Watership Down. In a final test of strength and strategy, we find them backed against a river, squaring off with the snarling General Woundwort, dictator of militaristic warren that captures and tortures deserters. Having established their new home, they’ve come to rob Woundwort of his captive females, (they’ve none of their own), so it can continue in perpetuity.

While Adams takes no credit for his stunning depictions of cultish acquiescence and tight-fisted tyranny, (to hear him tell it, his book’s no Animal Farm—just a children’s tale), they’re impossible to miss.

Allegory simmered in this much detail is too juicy to pass up.

So for the entrée, we’ll jump right to Chapter Ten, when Fiver exposes the ugly nature of the warren cult, turning the hose of truth up to full blast. Brilliant, and scalding, it’s the perfect shower for a national climate reeking of fear, overreach, and the cheap perfume of noble intentions.

‘The Shining Wire’ – Setup and Execution

After setting out, the herd meets Cowslip, a rabbit from a new, well-populated warren that’s strangely free of predators. But not long after they’ve accepted Cowslip’s invitation to lodge, dine, and pretty much join the new warren, they find Bigwig caught in a snare outside.

The scene’s visceral touches capture its gravity:

“A terrible sight lay before them... Bigwig was lying on his side, his back legs kicking and struggling. A length of twisted copper wire, gleaming dully in the first sunlight, was looped round his neck and ran taut across one forepaw to the head of a stout peg driven into the ground. The running knot had pulled tight and was buried in the fur behind his ear. The projecting point of one strand had lacerated his neck and drops of blood, dark and red as yew berries, welled one by one down his shoulder. For a few moments he lay panting, his side heaving in exhaustion. Then again the struggling and fighting, backward and forward, jerking and falling until he choked and lay quiet.”²

Hazel and the others are in shock. Bigwig is Owsla—their muscle. If he’s knocked out, then the whole mission may be finished. But while Adams neither candy-coats, nor skimps on harrowing detail, it’s his masterful foreshadowing, a detailed build up over several chapters, that gives the dilemma its power.

Fiver, ever the prophet, sees it coming. But his detective work falls on deaf ears; we’re just as puzzled as the others when he sounds the alarm early on. When the trap springs, Fiver’s concerns suddenly add up—and we see Adams has laid all the groundwork for a searing, penetrating contrast.

Before we meet Cowslip and the strange new warren, we’re immersed in the rabbits’ day to day existence. For Hazel, Fiver, and company, life on the move means nonstop danger. Predators lurk everywhere. Violent death is the rule. Survival means strategy, risk, and of course, nonstop courage.

Tied to their survival, we find the rabbits’ shared mythos—a catalogue of proverbs, with stories centered around a dashing rabbit hero-savior, (El-ahrairah, whose name means ‘Prince with a thousand enemies’), and a shrewd, overbearing deity named Lord Firth. The stories are both creation myth and hero epic. When El-ahrairah boasts to Frith that his people are the strongest animals, the whole species is cursed with predators. But with speed and cunning, El-ahrairah earns his name again and again, outsmarting enemies, stealing vegetables, even going on to establish a heavenly Owsla of Chief Rabbits who join him in the sky.

But for all their flair, the myths are no small detail. For rabbits flung from their home, they’re bread and butter. Like a banner rippling over an ancient army, the stories of El-ahrairah raise spirits, build camaraderie, demonstrate courage. They remind them that living as their own masters means risk and sacrifice, outsmarting enemies and exercising true courage. Having won their freedom, they only way to keep it is to step toward death, again and again and again.

It’s a beautiful creed—a crystal clear snapshot of a population’s core posture toward fight or acquiescence. It’s also a glimpse of the interplay between that core posture and the culture, psychology, and behavior found downstream.  

If Adams wasn’t, (as he claims) mining for gold, then it’s a stroke of genius on the scale of a lightning bolt.

When Hazel first meets Cowslip, it’s clear that he and his kind are cut from a different cloth. Knowing only his own caution, tempered by responsibility—as Chief Rabbit, Hazel carries the livelihood of the whole herd on his shoulders—he’s astonished to see Cowslip ambling out in the open, as a nonchalant as a surfer brah.

“Hazel felt puzzled… How big was his warren? Where was it? How many rabbits were concealed in the copse and watching them now? Were they likely to be attacked? The stranger’s manner told nothing. He seemed detached, almost bored, but perfectly friendly. His lassitude, his great size and beautiful, well-groomed appearance, his unhurried air of having all that he wanted and of being unaffected by the newcomers one way or another—all these presented a problem...”³

Disarmed by Cowslips’ agreeability, (although Fiver doesn’t buy it), they follow him to a vast, full warren, busting with young and females. Outside there’s no predators, and inside, everyone shares Cowslip’s hakuna-matata. There’s no Chief Rabbit, no Owsla, no factions, and to their astonishment, the entire herd dines on luxury vegetables—carrots, old apples, kale—the likes of which Hazel has only tasted on rare occasions. Like squirrels hoarding, the new rabbits gather food scattered outside the warren and bring it in to share.

It’s utopia—or so it seems.

Already suspicious, Fiver finds his smoking gun when we sample the new warren’s mythos—not a story, (they’ve heard of El-ahrairah but find him boring), but rather a self-praising mother-earth poem, shared by a young rabbit.

The poem ends with:

“I am here, Lord Frith, I am running through the long grass.

O take me with you, dropping behind the woods,

Far away, to the heart of light, the silence.

For I am ready to give you my breath, my life,

The shining circle of the sun, the sun and the rabbit,”⁴

By the last line, (with its suicidal nod to the ‘shining circle’ just outside, the same kind that will soon snare Bigwig), Fiver’s spider sense is tingling. A moment later, he’s shoving his way out of the crowd, embarrassing Hazel and Bigwig, who don’t see the problem and don’t want to wear out their welcome. Scolded, cuffed, and told to behave, Fiver flees during the night, prompting tragedy when the others set out to retrieve him the very next morning.

Fiver Throws Down

With Bigwig caught and suffocating, Fiver runs to the warren for help. Remembering his Owsla training, Bigwig instructs the others to dig out the wooden peg holding the snare to the ground. They pry it out, digging and chewing until their paws are raw. By the time Fiver returns, having been silenced and nearly attacked by Cowslip simply for requesting help, Bigwig lays unconscious, freed but silent.  

With the others still in shock, Fiver assembles the clues in a searing monologue, schooling them with a lesson they won’t soon forget:

“Listen, Dandelion. You’re fond of stories, aren’t you? I’ll tell you one—yes, one for El-ahrairah to cry at. Once there was a fine warren on the edge of the wood, overlooking the meadows of a farm. It was big, full of rabbits. Then one day the white blindness [poison gas] came and the rabbits fell sick and died. But a few survived, as they always do.

One day the farmer thought, ‘I could increase those rabbits: make them part of my farm—their meat, their skins. Why should I bother to keep rabbits in hutches? They’ll do very well where they are.’ He began to shoot all predators—lendri, homba, stoat, owl. He put out food for the rabbits, but not too near the warren. For his purpose they had to become accustomed to going about in the fields and the wood. And then he snared them—not too man: as many as he wanted and not as many as would frighten them all away or destroy the warren. They grew big and strong and healthy, for he saw to it that they had all of the best, particularly in winter, and nothing to fear…so they lived as he wanted them to live and all the time there were a few who disappeared…”⁵

Here, Adams runs circles around the sociologists. Understanding the true, ugly nature of the warren’s serfdom, we see that acquiescence to an evil power warps culture, shapes behavior. It’s even worse on the inside, a slavery that rots the soul.

“The rabbits became strange in many ways, different from other rabbits. They knew well enough what was happening. But even to themselves they pretended that all was well, for the food was good, they were protected, they had nothing to fear but the one fear; and that struck here and there, never enough at a time to drive them away. They forgot the ways of wild rabbits, for what use had they for trucks and cunning, living in the enemy’s warren and paying his price?”⁶

It’s brilliant. More damning than a thousand case studies.

In light of the self-deceit buried at the heart of his warren, coursing through its entire culture, Cowslip’s violent response makes perfect sense. In silencing Fiver, he’s enforcing the first, hard rule of all cults—from the Dear Leader’s cheering section to your local anti-racist workshop:

Don’t talk about the ugly, blood-splattered secret.

It’s all too penetrating. More prescient that many a dystopian classic. Conclude as you will, but think of the voices screaming the loudest for everyone’s acquiescence—the ones going hoarse over health and safety, unity, cooperation, justice and equity, and utopian transformation.

Think of those promising that with just enough imagination, (theirs—not yours), with just enough obedience, monopoly, censorship, and a tad more state power—they and they alone can flatten out life’s tragic landscape, once and for all.

I’m not the first, or even the thousandth person to say them, but the plain, mundane fact bears repeating:

A self-governing people ignores these pied pipers.

Or they take the bait and follow them, as Germany, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela and the residents of Jonestown did—all the way to the concentration camps.

As Hazel and Bigwig now understand, (deep down, they’ve known all along), there’s no free lunch. No guarantee of ultimate safety; no freedom from all predators; no rest from vigilance—nothing.

At least, on this side of the pasture. 

The tranquility and opulence of Cowslip’s warren comes at a shameful price. And as we’re seeing with our own talking heads, influencers, comedians, part of that price is shitty storytelling:

“They had no Chief Rabbit—how could they? Instead, Frith sent them strange singers, beautiful and sick like oak apples… and since they could not bear the truth, these singers, who might in some other place have been wise, were squeezed under the terrible weight of the warren’s secret until they gulped out fine folly—about dignity and acquiescence, and anything else that could make believe the rabbit loved the shining wire.”⁷

But when he’s done hurling us against the wall, (the wallop is just as hard, if not harder than the merciless reversals in Animal Farm), Adams helps us to our feet.

About the time Fiver’s finished, Bigwig rallies. Bloodied and exhausted, he hobbles over to Fiver, the pipsqueak who would have saved him, had he only listened.

“Fiver sank down into the grass. Bigwig, still trailing his horrible, smooth peg, staggered up to him and touched his nose with his own.

I’m alive, Fiver,” he said. “So are all of us. You’ve bitten through a bigger peg than this one I’m dragging. Tell us what to do,”⁸

The moment is a gem, a touch of pathos when we need it most.

It’s also a glimpse of true camaraderie—one Spartan, mistaken but penitent, bestowing honor on another. It’s the friendship shared by fighters, the likes of which someone like Cowslip will never experience.  

If we beam with pride just reading it, imagine how Fiver feels.  

Photo by the Crocodile, 2008

Fur Ruffled; Lessons Learned

For Hazel and the herd, seeing the cult warren’s true colors reinforces the myth of El-ahrairah, but with a crackling possibility.

The thousand enemies includes other rabbits.

It’s a lesson that all rabbits—especially those born in affluent democracies, won and founded before long before their parents were born—must learn and relearn. And they put it to use in the final act, in going to war with General Woundwort to preserve their future. With no females of their own, it’s life or death down the line.

Something similar goes for us humans, who lack in natural predators, but more than make up for it with our own utopian delusions. Good thing Watership Down is there—with its own furry nudge— to remind us—what they look like, how they manifest.

And truly—all preaching aside—it’s worth every page of reading. Like C.S. Lewis with The Chronicles of Narnia, Adams gets all the more credit for spinning a tale (sorry) that readers, young and old, can enjoy for the surface journey, again and again.

But those of us who see deeper are out of luck. If we notice the allegory—glimmering beneath the surface like a vein of gold—then we’ve no excuse.

Woe to us if we choose not to fight.

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