Richard Adams published his best selling work, Watership Down in 1972 and it seems to have become an instant classic, telling the heroic tale of a group of rabbits who flee the destruction of their home warren and travel through a countryside that offers danger at every corner and little rest. Though a narrative seemingly written for children, it speaks to adult themes and Adams clearly draws on epic themes and the Judaeo-Christian tradition in unfolding the narrative (though he has personally insisted that the book is in no way meant as any sort of allegory). In this respect though the work is a failure for a number of reasons, ranging from chauvinistic undertones, narrative inconsistencies and the problematic and inconsistent omniscience of the nove’ls narrator.
Most novels written in the third person are presented by a omniscient or limited omniscient narrator, a problematic conceit the most readers forgive for the sake of the narrative, but the structure of Watership Down draws constant attention to this awkward conceit by repeatedly stepping outside of the narrative to explain certain fabricated terms presented by the novel’s characters. In explaining one of the protagonists names (that of the seer Fiver), the novels narrator employs a footnote to explain that rabbits cannot count past four, and that all numbers past four are referred to by rabbits as Hrair, which the omniscient narrator translates to mean five in the case of Fiver, but translates it to “the thousand” when referring to the many predatorily animals who prey on rabbits. Introducing such a problematic and trivial aspect of rabbits offers nothing to the narrative and only serves to complicate how the omniscient narrator translates their words, and using footnotes encourages the reader to halt the narrative and step outside it for a moment, both slowing down the narrative at a point when it is just starting and also suggesting that the narrative presented is some sort of translation which requires academic footnotes to elucidate this translation. This tool is not necessary with an omniscient narrator though as an omniscient narrator can explain within the narrative itself the meaning of expressions that are unique to the narrative and indeed Adams does exactly this several times throughout the novel putting some explanations that are not entirely unlike the explanation of Fiver’s name in parenthesis rather than in a footnote, or simple disrupting the narrative with two comma splices to explain an unfamiliar term, making the footnotes seem to be some sort of academic addition that is not ultimately explained within the narrative context and remains inconsistent with the various modes of clarification employed elsewhere in the novel. One simple suggestion by an editor to remove the foots notes and incorporate them within the narrative could have corrected this inconsistent and distracting break in the narrative, but instead it has been left in, as a testament to the amateur and novice nature the author’s unseasoned craft. This is not the only disruption in the narrative however, as the omniscient narrator also steps outside of the narrative to address the reader several times, and none of those times for any apparent purpose. Drawing attention to the omniscient nature and in turn presenting question about the narrator’s relationship to the narrative without explaining such problem serves as an unnecessary distractions that distracts from the narrative rather than serving to enhance it.
Equally distracting are the often times misplaced and misused epigraphs that herald each chapter. While epigraphs can be used as an effective literary tool, the shear number of the epigraphs in this novel (there are some fifty chapters in the novel each with its own epigraph) dilute any potential effectiveness that could have been realized. Sometimes the epigraphs are not even quoted from an original source, but rather from somebody who quoted the original source, and often times the quotes aren’t even relatable to the chapter which they herald. The first chapter, for example, quotes a passage from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, where a vision of the prophetess Cassandra is not taken seriously, and while Fiver is introduced in this chapter and his visions are ultimately ignored by most, the scene in which Fiver explains his premonition only to have it ignored takes place in the following chapter, making this epigraph more appropriate as the introduction of the second chapter and not the first. Being a novel aimed a children it is also somewhat presumptuous (and even pompous) to draw quotes from the likes of Dostoyevsky, Clausewitz, Plato, and Tennyson since most, if not all children, will be able to gather no meaning from such quotes because they will not understand their context. The epigraphs seems to be more boasting of the text the author has read than an effective literary tool, and even as early as the first chapter seems to be grasping for an applicable quote to establish the chapter.
The over arching narrative of the novel is also stunted a number of times throughout the narrative by shorter narratives shared between the rabbits that are seemingly meant to build the mythos of the fictional culture, but rather than enhancing the narrative, these shorter sequences serve instead to stunt the overall narrative and break the momentum of the unfolding events taking place in the present tense of the novel, most notably towards the end on the novel both before the rabbits of Watership Down encroached on an invasion of sorts on a neighbouring warren and again when rabbits from that warren journeyed to Watership Down to launch and assault of their own in retaliation.
There is also some undermining and potentially chauvinistic aspects to the narrative. For one there are no female characters who leave the warren at the beginning of the narrative, nor are their any does who leave the second warren which the reader is introduced to as the narrative unfolds, though both times the bucks have the foresight and personal autonomy to act on their own behalf. The third warren which the rabbits of Watership Down invade was a militaristic one, and one which a single buck made an attempt to leave, and none of the does had the courage or cunning to even try to escape and had to be ‘rescued’ by the bucks of another warren and would only act when under the order of a strong male presence. And then there is the question of the role of the does in the novel as they are essentially seen a breeding stock and caretakers of the young, an idea that perpetuates patriarchal gender roles to the children who the novel aims to entertain.
There are aspects of Watership Down that work well. There are parallels with the Judeo-Christian tradition, the idea of flight is a common theme in Jewish literature, as well as the concept of the world as the enemy which is articulated through the idea of “the thousand”. The rabbits essentially are looking to find their New Jerusalem and find that the world is their enemy, but ultimately the novel seems to be a cheap imitation of an epic and between the undermining chauvinistic undertones of the roles assigned to the does, the inconsistent presentation and explanation of the narrative, the ineffective epigraphs and outside narratives, the novel fails to maintain its momentum and seems often times to have an identity crisis. While some might consider it unfair to hold what is essentially a children’s novel up to such scrutiny, it is important to note at the same time that the novel is easily over 400 pages and is not the type of work a young child would easily read through, and other “children’s novels”, such as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson’s Alice In Wonderland, or Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and of host of books by Theodore Suess Geisel all encourage the imagination of youths without encouraging chauvinistic gender role and all while also presenting texts that can stand up to literary criticism and can be enjoyed as much by adults as by children. Richard Adams does not succeed in creating a world that is on a par with Dahl, or Geisel or Dodgson, but instead has created a long, drawn-out narrative that has too many stops and starts, inconsistencies and problematic issues to really be as effective some of the truly great works in children’s literature.