I'm sorry, but for the life of me I can't remember who wrote this book! So, please, somebody let me know, so we can add his name to the title!

So, who's read Watership Down? Did you love it, or hate it? What did you think about Frith, or El-ahraira?

Personally, I find Wateship Down both wonderful and disturbing. It's a fascinating work of the Classical Fantasy sort. But Frith, and the Black Rabbit, and all that is rather creepy to me.

This is directly related to me watching the animated movie as a child. Both Frith and the Black Rabbit look very weird and creepy, and as a small child, I was utterly terrified. The movie portrayed blood and death in rather odd, twisted ways. It's possibly the only creepy animated movie. Anyway, it creeps me out.

When I re-watched the movie this year, I really felt (for lack of a better way to put it...maybe there isn't a better way) a sense of evil about the way blood was portrayed (there was just something...pagan about it), and about the Black Rabbit, and especially Frith.

As a kid, Frith was just scary, and of course the Black Rabbit (the rabbit equivalent of the Grim Reaper) and blood was creepy. But now I understand a little better about Frith. Frith is really horrible, an all powerful but ever changing god, who drinks the blood of his peoples (metaphorically) and who created evil and death.

Frith is the sun. The sun is portrayed as a great spinning golden circle, but its boundaries are always changing, and when its arms reach down to earth, sometimes they curse things, changing the trees and animals into monsters and dead things, and sometimes they bless and heal, and sometimes (while the moviemakers are portraying abstracts) bathing the ground in blood, or making it look like blood, or actually consuming the blood or other things! Frith is really terrifying. G.K. Chesterton was right when he said, "The sun was always the worst of all the gods."

The Black Rabbit is just creepy. The animation, however, is brilliant. The Black Rabbit never actually moves (except his eyes, which blink, but don't move around), he just slides across the screen, sort of like a rabbit in rigor mortis. He's black (duh), and his eyes are red, and sometimes only his head appears, not his body. Strangest of all, unlike the other characters, who were drawn with pen and ink, the Black Rabbit was only drawn with a sketching pencil, making him look incomplete, and like a shadow instead of a substance. When the Black Rabbit take Hazel to Frith, one of the sun's fiery arms covers up Hazel, and then he disappears, as if Frith has consumed him.

Last, of course, is the blood. Blood has always been seen as a symbol for life, and spilt blood for death. But the Black Rabbit and Frith add an extra level horror to death. Blood seems to be everywhere in this movie, and it's always a harbinger of something bad about to happen.

Finally, the rabbits are rather "mystical" and a few of them a Seers. These Seers see very strange things, and often their visions are deceptive and people get hurt, but sometimes the visions are helpful and save lives. The visions are not necessarily related to Frith, but seem (at least in the book) to have more to do with some sort of "life force". In the movie, these visions are accompanied by lots of abstract animation and strange shapes and colors. When a rabbit tells Hazel about how his warren was gassed by humans, the animators show shapes of dying rabbit heads (they don't have bodies in this bit, a bit like the Black Rabbit) in truly horrible positions and shapes, packed together into the tunnels, and even the gas looks creepy and somehow alive and evil.

Watching the movie has really changed how I see the book, and I'm somewhat sorry to say that this story, which used to be a favorite of mine, now ranks rather low in my opinion.

*Note: I do not claim to have special spiritual sensitivities or gifts. I think my reaction to the movie was an emotional reaction. However, it was an emotional reaction to some very bad (and scary) spirituality. I don't doubt that I would react the same way if I witnessed a satanist ritual. I must confess that I, a seventeen year old Senior who is not afraid of the dark, did not get much sleep that night. I was really very scared.

**Double Note: My interpretation of the movie and book is my own, and yours may very well be different. I, of course, am me, and you are you, and that alters our perceptions.

*EDIT*

Author name added.

Thank you so much for writing this up, Neil! I have thought so many times, why on earth isn't there a review for Watership Down, it is such an epic book. And it was written by Richard Adams. I prefer the book to the film, and it ranks highly in one of my favourtie books. Really, what is protrayed in a film can so often differ from the book and really not be how the author imagined it, it's a shame it spoiled the book for you. I never had a problen with the 'spiritual' side because it was all make believe, so it was like their god, their world etc. I may be wrong but it just never bothered me.

I love this book! Its the only animal book I really ever liked. I did not find it pagan at all. And Richard Adams himself said


I also think the cartoon is one of the best animated movies I've ever seen.
I saw it when I was 8 or 9 and it didn't really disturb me any. (In fact it triggered my interest in the natural world leading to my one time hobby of bird watching.)
I can easily see how it could disturb some people but I hardly think it is satanic.

You've given me a lot to think about, Neil. Thanks .

First, I'll say that I've never seen the movie. From Neil's description of it, I certainly wouldn't want to, either (and might I add that certain animated movies can be scarier than live action ones)!

However, I read the book for the first time last year. I started out not expecting much, and was quite blown away with the depth and brilliant writing style of it. I'm not a fan of animal stories, but this was written in such a way that it was distinctly "animal," while not being lower-class fiction in any way. The animals were convincing characters. The setting was brilliantly described from a rabbit's point of view. The character development (especially of Hazel as a leader) was exquisite. The conflict, suspense, and tension were masterfully orchestrated throughout.

Form aside, however, I can see what y'all are saying about the strange spirituality of the book. I'm reminded of old legends, certainly. But that doesn't mean that this backstory in any way bettered the book. I think I would agree that a less dark backstory--or none at all--would have suited the book better. Especially if the author meant nothing harmful by it, or indeed intended it to lighten up the story, then he could've done a better job of it.

Just my two cents here!

I sometimes tend to have different interpretations of literature than most, but I felt that (aside from some plot elements which were cut out to reduce the length) everything about the movie was very accurate portrayal of the book. To me, the movie just makes some things clearly by virtue of allowing us to see them.

I was aware the the rabbits do not worship Frith. But there are times they seem rather afraid of him.

By "pagan" I did not mean that Richard Adam's work was based on any real-world religion or myth. I have thought (and talked) extensively about this subject, and have come my own conclusions about it. Putting them as simply as possible is to say that there was something terribly wrong with the Rabbit mythology, and it troubled me. But there is a lot more I could say about it.

As far as quality goes, though, the cartoon is rather good. It's certainly better than anything else from its period.

Satanic? I didn't say that, and I didn't mean that. Something can be wrong, dreadfully wrong, without having anything to do with Satanism. Then again, if there is, as Paul said, a demon behind every idol, then all wrong things are at least, if they aren't already at the point, steadily marching in the direction of the demonic.

G.K. Chesterton has a story in which Father Brown (a catholic priest and detective of sorts) stumbles upon Turkish dagger. Father Brown is in a rather aesthetic mood, and the shape of the dagger bothers him, because it is, as he puts it, a "wrong shape". By which he does not mean and the incorrect shape for a dagger, but a moral corrupted, inherently wrong shape. The dagger looks cruel, to Father Brown, more like an instrument of torture than anything else. But this is because Father Brown is familiar with the culture and religion from which the dagger comes, and knows very well how those people feel about the dagger.

Likewise, I was not so much troubled by the images in Watership Down, but what the images represented. Frith as a god who turns innocent creatures into monsters, a god who consumes his people, a god who willfully spills blood across his creation. The Black Rabbit as a representation of death in all its hideousness. Blood everywhere, showing how inescapable the rabbit's curse to be hunted by all things has become. It's really not right if you stop to think about it.

And a book or film can be all those things without being allegorical. That's a highly technical term for a very specific thing that I wasn't really talking about.

All I can say is I saw the animation when I was 8 or 9 and was greatly disturbed by it. >.<

I saw the movie and read the book as a child, and neither disturbed me then, but it's been a long time, so I'm interested in finding out if my view would be different now that I have more spiritual discernment.

I have never seen the movie (nor heard of it, until now), but I read the book several years ago (five or six, I think).
I liked the book. It didn't feel as dark as the movie Neil described. There were some dark parts, and some violent parts, but the cheerful and warm parts balanced them out, for me. And blood does not bother me.

As for the mythology, nothing scared me about it, though there may have been parts I didn't fully understand. Some were funny, some were thought-provoking, and a couple were confusing. But I did not try to examine them. I just read them, thought "Okay, that's what the rabbits believe", and left it behind.

The book was not as scary as the movie sounds, and I was young, reading it for the adventure only.

Ok I think I understand where you're coming from now. I still don't agree but I do understand your concerns.

Is the animation a Don Bluth film? (That kind of describes his style from what I have heard and the one film I've seen by him)

I read the book a couple year's ago on Jay's recommendation. It wasn't disturbing to me, it was pretty interesting.

It wasn't a Don Bluth film.

Speaking of Jay, it would be interesting to get his thoughts on the subject.

Ironic, Jonathan, haha. I've been wanting to write a response to this for the past few days, and I had just written it up and was about to post it, when you said that.

I haven't watched the movie, though it is in my want-to-watch list. I have read the book several times, though, as well as reading it aloud a couple times. So I'm very familiar with it.

The thing that struck me about the book was how much like LotR it was, as far as its approach to mythology and morals. And if you look at it from that perspective, you can learn a whole lot from it. There aren't allegories... there are reflections and parallels that are internally consistent.

The other thing to consider is that it is set in an altered cobha of Earth. The cobha is that animals are sapient, like humans, and that they have a dispensation similar to that between Abraham and Moses. There is no chosen nation, there is no savior as of yet, just God and His Law (which isn't as clear cut as in the Mosaic period).

Frith is creator God, and he is none of the things the movie evidently portrayed him as. In many ways, he is like Iluvatar. He was indeed worshiped, not just feared. A point underscored by Fiver's impiety by saying "U embleer Frith."

El-ahrairah is not a Christ figure, but he is a sort of Abraham figure. He was legendary in his exploits like Robin, and he was also revered as the father of the rabbits. Good rabbits followed his example, bad rabbits did not. He did not define 'good' though. In the end, it is El-ahrairah and not the Black Rabbit of Inle which takes Hazel away to join his ousla, akin to Jews being carried away to Abraham's bosom.

The Black Rabbit of Inle is not a god of death, rather he is the angel of death. He is good, and grants life to El-ahrairah as well as to his people. He is wise, but to be feared.

So all in all, I think this is one of those books which takes on the view which you bring to it.

I enjoyed reading your thoughts. Now I'm even more interested in rereading the book.