Synopsis
The adventure begins when Hazel, a quiet, unassuming fellow (the lapin equivalent to a civil servant, I suppose) wanders out to silflay (graze) one evening with his cousin Fiver. Fiver has a gift—he can sense the future at times—and he has a vision of destruction looming over the warren when he sees a notice board go up in the field. Unable to convince the chief rabbit that danger is imminent, Hazel persuades a few rabbits to flee with him and Fiver in search of a new home. The rabbits of Watership Down (a field in the English countryside that becomes their eventual home) are not cuddly or cute; they fight, eat, defecate, mate and generally struggle to stay alive. They contend with an evil, fascist group of rabbits that threatens them, as well as humans and natural disasters. Hazel, an unassuming rabbit with no ambition, emerges as their hero and leader, with the assistance of the prophetic Fiver and some other important friends. Together the rabbits overcome their challenges and eventually find peace. Some survive the struggle, and some die, but they succeed in creating a new society where they can continue to thrive.
What Makes it Great?
Adams used technical information about warrens and their ways (mainly from R.M. Lockley’s, The Private Life of Rabbits) to give the story a realistic feel. Since this is a fantasy, however, these rabbits also speak, in a language called lapin. Every language captures the unique cultural characteristics of its speakers, and lapin is no exception. We are given new words to describe activities and emotions unique to rabbits. For example, the word tharn refers to the stupefied, frozen fear that rabbits experience when faced with sudden danger. Silflay means to go above ground to feed. There may be no more than about fifty words of lapin in the text, but the exercise of learning these words helps the reader begin to think, well, like a rabbit, and fully participate in the imaginative world of Watership Down.
Even with all the interesting facts and cool bunny language, why would a fantasy tale about rabbits be so popular? It is, of course, because this tale of rabbits tells us a great deal about what it means to be human. As the rabbits journey they encounter various predators; men, dogs, trains, and a whole warren of terrifying fascist rabbits threaten them at every turn. Their struggles against these adversaries mirror our own human conflicts. But above all, Watership Down has a memorable hero named Hazel who wins not only the love and respect of his followers, but ours as well. Hazel becomes a Moses (with Fiver as his faithful Aaron) and his character development taps into our collective recognition of the mythic journey of the hero, described by Joseph Campbell:
“There is a certain typical hero sequence of actions which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many periods of history. Essentially, it might even be said there is but one archetypal mythic hero whose life has been replicated in many lands by many, many people.
Did You Know?
Adams said of his writing style: “I derived early the idea that one must at all costs tell the truth to children, not so much about mere physical pain and fear, but about the really unanswerable things—what [writer] Thomas Hardy called ‘the essential grimness of the human situation.’” It is interesting that Adams chose a story about bunnies to present this realistic worldview.
A legendary hero is usually the founder of something—the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go in quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potentiality of bringing forth that new thing.” (The Power of Myth, p.136)
This is one of those books that has so many layers and levels of meaning that it creates a cult following. (In my research I found Watership Down websites with painstaking studies of the religion, myths and customs of the warren.) Interwoven between the action scenes are stories from rabbit mythology about the great El-ahrairah, the first rabbit. Through these various “backstories” Adams creates not only a physical, but also a spiritual and emotional world for these rabbits that is truly believable. It is no accident that the story inspires an almost religious devotion in readers. Like Star Wars and, most recently, the Harry Potter series, these tales create an alternative universe that is more manageable than our own, and thus more attractive in many ways. In the rabbit world, problems are difficult but there is a hero to believe in who will lead the people and bring peace and safety at last. Though the real world may defeat us, we want to believe that the meek truly will inherit the earth, that good will overcome evil and that the last will one day be first. Books that strengthen our faith in these ideas are universally beloved; they are morality plays that speak directly to our ideals. We love Hazel for his leadership, Fiver for his spirituality and Bigwig for his courage. These rabbits become real people to us, and their journey enlightens us about our own life paths. After all, rabbits aren’t the only creatures that experience tharn. Fear is common to all of us, and these tales give us hope.
Here is a sample of Adams’s wonderful writing style, which combines realism, fantasy, humor and pathos to a remarkable degree. Each rabbit in the warren contributes something vital to the survival of the group, and some of the most interesting passages are the ones where the rabbits, with their limited intelligence, work together to solve a problem they have never faced. In this case, they are being chased by the fascist General Woundwort and his army, and actually figure out how to float downriver in an abandoned boat. But, eventually, they are forced to swim to shore, something most rabbits would rather avoid. Often when I read I ask myself how I would describe a certain experience to someone completely unfamiliar with it. What does it feel like for a rabbit to swim for the first time, in a fast-moving stream? Notice how Adams gives us this experience through Hazel’s limited frame of reference, which includes little more than temperature, movement, and light and dark:
“There was an instant shock of cold. But more than this, and at once, he felt the pull of the current. He was being drawn away by a force like a high wind, yet smooth and silent. He was drifting helplessly down a suffocating, cold run, with no hold for his feet. Full of fear, he paddled and struggled, got his head up and took a breath, scrabbled his claws against rough bricks under water and lost them again as he was dragged on. Then the current slackened, the run vanished, the dark became light and there were leaves and sky above him once more.” (145)
If you have a child or grandchild who likes to read, share Watership Down together. I was rather reluctant to begin this book, but so many club members recommended it that my son and I took the plunge. It took me about fifty pages to get involved in the narrative, and by then I was hooked, and was as anxious as my son Blake to find out what happened next. The sweet, final moments when, after a long and courageous life, Hazel is called to the next world are truly fine. Even without Fiver’s prophetic gift I can predict you will shed tears, and that you will never look at a bunny in quite the same way again. You will understand why in its initial review of the book one publication stated: “If there is no place for Watership Down in children’s bookshops, then children’s literature is dead.”
Quotations taken from Watership Down. Sribner and Sons, New York. 1972.
Talk About It
Watership Down and The Once and Future King are anti-war novels. Do you think it is fair to couch strong political statements in literature meant for children?
About the Author: Richard Adams
Richard George Adams was born in Berkshire, England in 1920. At age 18, he studied modern history at Worchester College, Oxford, and then joined the British Army soon after the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany declared war. At Arnhem in Holland, Adams participated in heavy fighting with the British Airborne Army. After his discharge in 1946, he returned to Worchester to study, earning a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Arts degree.
Upon graduation, he accepted a position in government and became a civil servant, eventually working as Assistant Secretary for the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, later part of the Department of th
e Environment. With the publication of his second novel, he retired from government service to write fulltime. In the 1970s, he was writer-in-residence at University of Florida, Gainesville, and at Hollins College, Virginia.
Adams wove the tale, Watership Down, to entertain his two daughters, Juliet and Rosamond, on a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon one summer. The girls urged him to write it down, and the task took him two years, working in his spare time. After thirteen rejections it was published in 1972, with a run of only 2,500 copies, and was immediately hailed by critics and readers as a children’s classic. His first book, Watership Down won both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize. By 1985 it was second on Penguin’s list of all-time bestsellers with over five million copies in print, and continues to be one of the most popular books written for children or adults. He also writes poetry, non-fiction, and has served as editor of children’s books. In 1973 he received the Guardian award; he became a Fellow in the Royal Society of Literature in 1975. Adams now lives within 10 miles of his birthplace.
Sources:
Wikipedia
biography.jrank.org
Return to Camelot:
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
The legends of King Arthur and his Roundtable lie deep in the consciousness of the Western mind. The young boy, pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone and suddenly finding his birthright, the tragic triangle of King, Queen, and the trusted Knight Lancelot, the brooding, compassionate tutor Merlin; all these images contribute to our view of ourselves and the values upon which our society is built. T.H.White’s The Once and Future King is a fanciful retelling of the Arthurian legends that served as the basis for Disney’s The Sword in the Stone and the Broadway play Camelot, followed by the Hollywood film. Actually a tetralogy, comprising the first four novels in his series, the book has recently regained popularity as a high school text and is well worth a read. The fifth book in the series, The Book of Merlyn, was published separately and finishes the story of Arthur’s reign in England.
Synopsis
In Book One, Arthur, nicknamed “Wart,” is training to be a squire in the house of his uncle. While lost in the forest one day he meets an eccentric old man named Merlin who comes to tutor at his uncle’s castle. Though he is only the squire-in-training, Wart becomes Merlin’s protégé’, and over the next six years is transformed into a series of animals in order to gain wisdom and strength from each. On a visit to London after the death of the king, Wart is sent to retrieve his knight’s sword, and impulsively pulls a sword from a stone in the city square. This fulfills the prophecy about the next successor, and Wart is immediately named King of England.
The second book chronicles Arthur’s rise as King, his development of a ruling philosophy and his marriage to Guenivere. Her involvement with Lancelot and the eventual downfall of Camelot are chronicled in the third and fourth books. The saga ends immediately before Arthur’s final battle against his illegitimate son Mordred. In the final scenes Arthur strives to defend his kingdom and faces his own demise, yet knows that “Camelot” will live on in the hearts of people who love freedom.
What Makes it Great?
The Once and Future King is an artful blend of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur with the legends of Robin Hood and some clever new inventions of White’s (such as Merlin’s method of education, which is to transform Arthur into a series of animals). The book also reflects its modern setting, as England was sinking into the second of its great world wars. White was deeply pacifist, and uses the education of Arthur as a way to explore the evils of war and the never-ending cycle of violent nationalism that eventually will destroy any civilization if unchecked by higher principle. In his final lesson from Merlin, Arthur (still ‘Wart’ at this stage) is transformed into a goose. The wild geese in their migration are a thrilling sight, and White brings us into their quiet, dignified world in order to teach us something about ourselves. Arthur asks a female how battles are fought among the geese. At first she does not understand his question, then is shocked at the notion that geese would fight, not their natural enemies, but among themselves. ‘What creature,’ she asks, ‘could be so low as to go about in bands, to murder others of its own blood?’ What creature indeed?
The four novels, though grouped as one now, are very different in tone and scope. The first, The Sword in the Stone, is a children’s classic, and might easily be read to a young child. It is the book upon which the Disney movie is based and offers us the cranky, magical Merlin, who transforms Arthur both figuratively and literally. The remaining books are aimed at older readers, and offer a chilling portrait of the darker side of chivalry, as Arthur struggles to develop a new philosophy that will become the basis of democratic society in the Western world.
The character of Merlin anchors this series, and the key to Merlin’s foresight is that he is actually living backwards, so that the past for him is the future for everyone else. This causes him to be quite muddled at times, and is the basis for both comic and tragic moments in the narrative. White uses Merlin’s foresight (actually hindsight) to weave elements of modern life into the fabric of legend. Jousters discuss their tournaments in the jargon of cricket matches, and knights discuss the psychological implications of questing after mythical beasts in the forest. It is a delightful blend of wit, arcane information and romantic legend, with some moments of pure inspiration.
Did You Know?
White wrote to a friend that in autumn 1937, “I got desperate among my books and picked [Malory] up in lack of anything else. Then I was thrilled and astonished to find that (a) The thing was a perfect tragedy, with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognisable reactions which could be forecast[ . . . ] Anyway, I somehow started writing a book.” The novel, which White described as “a preface to Malory”, was titled The Sword in the Stone.
Here Merlin tries to explain the problem of thinking both backward and forward:
“You see, one gets confused with Time, when it is like that. All one’s tenses get muddled, for one thing. If you know what is going to happen to people, and not what has happened to them, it makes it difficult to prevent it happening, if you don’t want it to have happened, if you see what I mean? Like drawing in a mirror.” (257)
Whenever you have a great teacher paired with a willing student, a situation is created where the author may wax free with his or her philosophy. This is certainly the case here, but White (through Merlin) actually has some very wise things to say. At once a fantasy novel, a political treatise, and a psychological exploration of modern man, The Once and Future King is a delightful omnibus to board.
I have carried a quote from The Once and Future King in my planner for twenty-five years now. When I happened upon it I had one of those rare moments where I knew that a piece of information would matter to me all my life, and it has. In case it might matter to you as well, I’ll share it here:
‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you.’ (342)
Quotations taken from The Once and Future King. G. Putnam’s Sons, New York. 1987.
Talk About It
Why is Arthur’s life so tragic? Why shouldn’t The Once and Future King end happily, with Camelot thriving, Guinevere faithful and Arthur wisely ruling a democratic kingdom? Why is his project doomed to failure, or is it?
About the Author: T.H. White
Tere
nce Hanbury White was born in 1906 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and educated at Cambridge. By nature White was reclusive, sometimes isolating himself for long periods from human society; he spent his time hunting, fishing, and looking after his unusual collection of pets. From 1930 to 1936, he taught as an English master at Stowe School and spent a great deal of time studying obscure subjects such as the Arthurian legends.
He was so fascinated by Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century romance, Morte d’Arthur, that he decided to write his own interpretation of the legend of King Arthur. Malory’s work was built on a Latin text, written in 1136 by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who traced the line of succession in Britain to a descendant of the Roman Aeneus named Brutus, who conquered a race of giants in Britain. His descendant was Arthur, a Welsh king who conquered the Anglo-Saxons but was eventually adopted as their legendary hero. Monmouth’s text was probably drawn from Celtic lore, and Malory expanded the legends to include the romantic ideas of chivalry prevalent in his day.
White, impressed with the depth of Malory’s characters and the scope of the narrative, found the story relevant to his day as well. He called his five novels a ‘footnote to Malory.’ The first novel was The Sword in the Stone, which became a modern classic and a 1936 Book-of-the-Month Club selection. The Once and Future King was the basis of the Lerner and Loewe musical, “Camelot.” White enjoyed a large popular audience in addition to a smaller, but intense, group of admirers that he had from the start of his writing career. On returning from his American lecture tour, he died at the age of 57, onboard ship in Athens, Greece.
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