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Amber's Reviews > Watership Down
Watership Down
by
by
Amber's review
bookshelves: classics, favorites, ibooks, fiction, 2015-reading-challenge
Jul 10, 2013
bookshelves: classics, favorites, ibooks, fiction, 2015-reading-challenge
Read 4 times. Last read September 7, 2017 to September 19, 2017.
In loving memory of Richard Adams (1920 - 2016)
Review posted on my blog
My relationship with Watership Down began about a year ago, (2013), on a sunny May afternoon. It was warm outside and I was basking in the sunlight on the terrace, allowing the swinging bench I sat on to move at its leisurely pace. My father sat at my side, discussing home renovations with my mother, when suddenly I sat up and searched this book on iBooks. My favorite singer had covered the song "Bright Eyes" and a favorite band of mine (to which the singer belonged, believe it or not) had written a song entitled "Heroism: Hazel and Dandelion," which I'd heard was an allusion to Watership Down. So, I decided to search the book. When I found out it was about rabbits, I remember feeling absolutely no qualms about reading it, and I think that was because I'd seen small snippets from the film adaptation online, which I was able to handle, given my age. I remember wanting to watch the entire movie, but I found out that it was a novel, and I never watch a movie without cracking open the book first. The only thing I really remember about that first day of reading is diving into the sample from iBooks, and finishing the 100-page preview within the hour. (The iBooks version was 1,000-plus pages.) I remember walking back out to the terrace, where my parents were still conversing in the mid daylight. I sat down beside my father and patiently waited for the conversation to stop, distracting myself with my iPad. A minute later, he turned to me and said, "Okay, I know you're dying to tell me about the book."
I remember trying to conceal my excitement; I remember feeling bad about him spending his money on something for me. I knew the price was only $10, but I still felt bad about it. My father didn't care, which wasn't a surprise, since we both shared a profound love of reading. Exactly a week later, I had finished the book and at the same time had fallen in love with it. I remember trying to pick a favorite character, and coming up with a ton! (Hazel, Thlayli, Fiver, Pipkin, Dandelion.)
I remember how, every time I picked up the book during that first read, a wave of nostalgia would wash over me as I was driven by an intensely burning hunger to see what would happen next. I remember falling in love with Thlayli after he promised to save Blackavar from certain death in Efrafa. I remember reading the chapter "General Woundwort" during my lunch period at school, and feeling intensely sad when I had to stop because the bell signaling the end of the period rang! I remember one of the teachers asking me about the book I was reading and telling her, and her telling me in response that she had read it, too, and loved it.
This book is so worth reading. I still have it on my iPad and I remember that, every time Apple accidentally deleted it, (it does that sometimes) I would think to myself, "Why that one? Delete any other book besides that one!" and wait impatiently until I had internet so I could download it again! This novel is an absolute treasure! It is a must-have for any library. It was so wonderful that I decided to use it for my Summer Reading assignment a month later.
I'm telling you so much about the effect the story had on me, but I should explain why it affected me in this way.
Fiver, the runt of the litter and a seer to boot, has a terrible vision of death and destruction approaching his home Sandleford warren. He convinces his brother Hazel that evacuation is mandatory, so, as the Chief Rabbit dismisses it all as nonsense, Hazel and Fiver gather a small group of rabbits to leave, including two members of the warren's militia, Thlayli and Silver. Their journey takes them to places and puts them in situations unlike anything they've ever experienced before. But will they find a new home?
I won't spoil any more. All I have left to say is:
it was one of the best novels I've ever read. Five MILLION stars.
Update 2014
I just listened to the audiobook (the week before Thanksgiving 2014) for the first time, narrated by the wonderful Ralph Cosham. I fell in love with the audiobook almost as hard as I had with the novel itself. After reading it I did some research on the narrator of the audiobook.
May Ralph Cosham rest in peace....
Update December 2016
News just surfaced on 12/27 that Richard Adams, author of this wonderful masterpiece, had passed away on Christmas Eve 2016. May his beautiful soul rest in peace....
Update January 2019
For a much more in-depth and personal account of my experience with this beautiful book, please visit to learn more.
Review posted on my blog
My relationship with Watership Down began about a year ago, (2013), on a sunny May afternoon. It was warm outside and I was basking in the sunlight on the terrace, allowing the swinging bench I sat on to move at its leisurely pace. My father sat at my side, discussing home renovations with my mother, when suddenly I sat up and searched this book on iBooks. My favorite singer had covered the song "Bright Eyes" and a favorite band of mine (to which the singer belonged, believe it or not) had written a song entitled "Heroism: Hazel and Dandelion," which I'd heard was an allusion to Watership Down. So, I decided to search the book. When I found out it was about rabbits, I remember feeling absolutely no qualms about reading it, and I think that was because I'd seen small snippets from the film adaptation online, which I was able to handle, given my age. I remember wanting to watch the entire movie, but I found out that it was a novel, and I never watch a movie without cracking open the book first. The only thing I really remember about that first day of reading is diving into the sample from iBooks, and finishing the 100-page preview within the hour. (The iBooks version was 1,000-plus pages.) I remember walking back out to the terrace, where my parents were still conversing in the mid daylight. I sat down beside my father and patiently waited for the conversation to stop, distracting myself with my iPad. A minute later, he turned to me and said, "Okay, I know you're dying to tell me about the book."
I remember trying to conceal my excitement; I remember feeling bad about him spending his money on something for me. I knew the price was only $10, but I still felt bad about it. My father didn't care, which wasn't a surprise, since we both shared a profound love of reading. Exactly a week later, I had finished the book and at the same time had fallen in love with it. I remember trying to pick a favorite character, and coming up with a ton! (Hazel, Thlayli, Fiver, Pipkin, Dandelion.)
I remember how, every time I picked up the book during that first read, a wave of nostalgia would wash over me as I was driven by an intensely burning hunger to see what would happen next. I remember falling in love with Thlayli after he promised to save Blackavar from certain death in Efrafa. I remember reading the chapter "General Woundwort" during my lunch period at school, and feeling intensely sad when I had to stop because the bell signaling the end of the period rang! I remember one of the teachers asking me about the book I was reading and telling her, and her telling me in response that she had read it, too, and loved it.
This book is so worth reading. I still have it on my iPad and I remember that, every time Apple accidentally deleted it, (it does that sometimes) I would think to myself, "Why that one? Delete any other book besides that one!" and wait impatiently until I had internet so I could download it again! This novel is an absolute treasure! It is a must-have for any library. It was so wonderful that I decided to use it for my Summer Reading assignment a month later.
I'm telling you so much about the effect the story had on me, but I should explain why it affected me in this way.
Fiver, the runt of the litter and a seer to boot, has a terrible vision of death and destruction approaching his home Sandleford warren. He convinces his brother Hazel that evacuation is mandatory, so, as the Chief Rabbit dismisses it all as nonsense, Hazel and Fiver gather a small group of rabbits to leave, including two members of the warren's militia, Thlayli and Silver. Their journey takes them to places and puts them in situations unlike anything they've ever experienced before. But will they find a new home?
I won't spoil any more. All I have left to say is:
it was one of the best novels I've ever read. Five MILLION stars.
Update 2014
I just listened to the audiobook (the week before Thanksgiving 2014) for the first time, narrated by the wonderful Ralph Cosham. I fell in love with the audiobook almost as hard as I had with the novel itself. After reading it I did some research on the narrator of the audiobook.
May Ralph Cosham rest in peace....
Update December 2016
News just surfaced on 12/27 that Richard Adams, author of this wonderful masterpiece, had passed away on Christmas Eve 2016. May his beautiful soul rest in peace....
Update January 2019
For a much more in-depth and personal account of my experience with this beautiful book, please visit to learn more.
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Quotes Amber Liked
“The rabbits mingled naturally. They did not talk for talking's sake, in the artificial manner that human beings - and sometimes even their dogs and cats - do. But this did not mean that they were not communicating; merely that they were not communicating by talking.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“They're all so much afraid of the Council that they're not afraid of anything else.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“There is not a day or night but a doe offers her life for her kittens, or some honest captain of Owsla his life for his Chief Rabbit's. Sometimes it is taken, sometimes it is not. But there is no bargain, for here, what is, is what must be.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“My Chief Rabbit has told me to stay and defend this run, and until he says otherwise, I shall stay here. --Bigwig”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“There's terrible evil in the world."
It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
― Watership Down
It comes from men," said Holly. "All other elil do what they have to do and Frith moves them as he moves us. They live on the earth and they need food. Men will never rest till they've spoiled the earth and destroyed the animals.”
― Watership Down
“Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“At that moment, in the sunset on Watership Down, there was offered to General Woundwort the opportunity to show whether he was really the leader of vision and genius which he believed himself to be, or whether he was no more than a tyrant with the courage and cunning of a pirate. For one beat of his pulse the lame rabbit's idea shone clearly before him. He grasped it and realized what it meant. The next, he had pushed it away from him.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“I am sorry for you with all my heart. But you cannot blame us, for you came to kill us if you could.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel--and did his heart not falter as he realized--that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatever? We know that he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“For that matter, Odysseus himself might have borrowed a trick or two from the rabbit hero, for he is very old and was never at a loss for a trick to deceive his enemies.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“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. They forgot El-ahrairah, for what use had they for tricks and cunning, living in the enemy's warren and paying his price?”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Before such people can act together, a kind of telepathic feeling has to flow through them and ripen to the point when they all know that they are ready to begin. Anyone who has seen the martins and swallows in September, assembling on the telephone wires, twittering, making short flights singly and in groups over the open, stubbly fields, returning to form longer and even longer lines above the yellowing verges of the lanes-the hundreds of individual birds merging and blending, in a mounting excitement, into swarms, and these swarms coming loosely and untidily together to create a great, unorganized flock, thick at the centre and ragged at the edges, which breaks and re-forms continually like clouds or waves-until that moment when the greater part (but not all) of them know that the time has come: they are off, and have begun once more that great southward flight which many will not survive; anyone seeing this has seen at the work the current that flows (among creatures who think of themselves primarily as part of a group and only secondarily, if at all, as individuals) to fuse them together and impel them into action without conscious thought or will: has seen at work the angel which drove the First Crusade into Antioch and drives the lemmings into the sea.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“With a kind of wry envy, Hazel realized that Bigwig was actually looking forward to meeting the Efrafan assault. He knew he could fight and he meant to show it. He was not thinking of anything else. The hopelessness of their chances had no important place in his thoughts. Even the sound of the digging, clearer already, only set him thinking of the best way to sell his life as dearly as he could.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“A magpie, seeing some light-colored object conspicuous on the empty slope, flew closer to look. but all that lay there was a splintered peg and a twisted length of wire.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Most of them had not understood Blackberry's discovery of the raft and at once forgot it.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward dying.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“At that instant a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the flash. Immediately upon it came the thunder: a high, tearing noise, as though some huge thing were being ripped to pieces close above, which deepened and turned to enormous blows of dissolution. Then the rain fell like a waterfall. In a few seconds the ground was covered with water and over it, to a height of inches, rose a haze formed of a myriad minute splashes. Stupefied with the shock, unable even to move, the sodden rabbits crouched inert, almost pinned to the earth by the rain.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Love the animals. God has given them the rudiments of thought and joy untroubled. Don’t trouble it, don’t harass them, don’t deprive them of their happiness, don’t work against God’s intent. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“People who record birdsong generally do it very early--before six o'clock--if they can. Soon after that, the invasion of distant noise in most woodland becomes too constant and too loud.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“You can pluck up your spirits, Bluebell,â€� he said. “I think we’re close to the iron road.â€� “I wouldn’t care about my spirits,â€� said Bluebell, “if my legs weren’t so tired. Slugs are lucky not to have legs. I think I’ll be a slug.â€� “Well, I’m a hedgehog,â€� said Hazel, “so you’d better get on!â€� “You’re not,â€� replied Bluebell. “You haven’t enough fleas. Now, slugs don’t have fleas, either. How comforting to be a slug, among the dandelions so snug—â€� “And feel the blackbird’s sudden tug,â€� said Hazel.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Narrow lanes climb both slopes and come together in a great ring of elm trees which encircles the flat summit. Any wind--even the slightest--draws from the height of the elms a rushing sound, multifoliate and powerful.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“Hazel, like nearly all wild animals, was unaccustomed to look up at the sky. What he thought of as the sky was the horizon, usually broken by trees and hedges.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
“I know. And we have no does--not one--and no does means no kittens and in a few years no warren."
It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once--left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war.”
― Watership Down
It may seem incredible that the rabbits had given no thought to so vital a matter. But men have made the same mistake more than once--left the whole business out of account, or been content to trust to luck and the fortune of war.”
― Watership Down
“Here is a boy who was waiting to be punished. But then, unexpectedly, he finds that his fault has been overlooked or forgiven and at once the world reappears in brilliant colors, full of delightful prospects. Here is a soldier who was waiting, with a heavy heart, to suffer and die in battle. But suddenly the luck has changed. There is news! The war is over and everyone bursts out singing! He will go home after all! The sparrows in the plowland were crouching in terror of the kestrel. But she has gone; and they fly pell-mell up the hedgerow, frisking, chattering and perching where they will.”
― Watership Down
― Watership Down
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
Finished Reading
July 10, 2013
– Shelved
January 6, 2014
– Shelved as:
classics
January 19, 2014
– Shelved as:
favorites
January 26, 2014
– Shelved as:
ibooks
March 1, 2014
– Shelved as:
fiction
June 27, 2014
–
Started Reading
July 1, 2014
–
90.0%
"On to the epilogue... man, it was a good idea to visit this. I love it even more... which seemed impossible!"
July 2, 2014
–
Finished Reading
August 8, 2015
– Shelved as:
2015-reading-challenge
September 7, 2017
–
Started Reading
September 19, 2017
–
Finished Reading
Your review also made me venture over to YouTube and listen to 'Bright Eyes' - from the part of the film where it plays, Fiver looking for Hazel. I forgot how lovely that song was in that particular moment.