I am so glad that I did.
Watership Down is a well-beloved story about Rabbits, so going into it that is exactly what I expected: a loveable and entertaining adventure. But this book was so much more.
Let me rant about Watership Down for a while.
The fact that this is considered a children's book, and the fact that it is a story about rabbits, gives this book a certain image that is entirely misleading.
But let me tell you, this is no ordinary rabbit adventure, and these are no ordinary rabbits. While this adventure through the countryside is at times charming and perhaps even a little delightful, it is so in the least childish way imaginable. Rarely have I read a book that was so heartfelt and yet so heartwrenchingly twisted! This book is heartening simply because it is so brutal, it is gruesome, and it is so powerful!
These rabbits are not your ordinary cute and timid bunnies. These rabbits are fierce and they are ferocious! These rabbits are fighters, and it is their fight against the cruelties of a world gone savage that makes this book so empowering!
To say that this book was life-changing or eyeopening might be overselling it a bit. But before I began reading it I read somewhere online that after reading this book you will never look at a countryside or a meadow the same way again. And it is in this sense that I can honestly say that, yes, this book was life-changing and it was eye-opening. This book has made countrysides and prairies, not into peaceful meadows, but battlefields where life must fight with all its vigor to survive.
"Your people cannot rule the world, for I will not have it so. All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and when they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you."
~Frith to El-ahrairah
Watership Down, by Richard Adams
Thanks again Dad for taking these pictures for me. It really means a lot that you make the time to support me.
Check out more of his pictures here.
Check out more of his pictures here.