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rmc28It was cold, it was cold and the roof was made of bones.
This brings us to the end of part 1. If you haven't already seen them, there are some really in depth posts by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
siderea on what she gets out of reading Watership Down, which I found hugely interesting and very thought provoking. When LJ is behaving again, you will find them here:
Siderea Reads Watership Down: Introduction (Part 0)
Siderea Reads Watership Down: El-ahrairah to His Warren (Part 1)
Siderea Reads Watership Down: The First Sixty-Five Pages (Part 2)
[This post is part of my Watership Down read through. You are welcome to join in at any time; please read my introduction post first.]
This brings us to the end of part 1. If you haven't already seen them, there are some really in depth posts by
siderea on what she gets out of reading Watership Down, which I found hugely interesting and very thought provoking. When LJ is behaving again, you will find them here:Siderea Reads Watership Down: Introduction (Part 0)
Siderea Reads Watership Down: El-ahrairah to His Warren (Part 1)
Siderea Reads Watership Down: The First Sixty-Five Pages (Part 2)
[This post is part of my Watership Down read through. You are welcome to join in at any time; please read my introduction post first.]
no subject
Date: 2015-07-05 21:44 (UTC)Things that struck me on this rereading:
* Hazel's courage in going through the gap in the hedge - and his quick thinking to ask Bigwig (again) about Owsla training. After saving others, Bigwig provides the knowledge to allow others to save him.
* Hazel's almost frantic distraction on thinking Bigwig has died, and his natural appeal to Blackberry for help in distraction.
* The series of slightly off-kilter confrontations: first Hazel's pursuit of Fiver ending in quiet tension (which does eventually end in Bigwig biting his head off); the confrontation with Cowslip that happens entirely offpage; and finally the group's rage overwhelmed by Fiver's even greater righteous anger and explanation.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 12:32 (UTC)BIGWIG //sob (he's Eliot in Leverage, he's totally Eliot)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 08:47 (UTC)It was clear from the start that the weird thing going on in that warren was basically anthropogenic and rabbitivorous – the food obviously left by humans with an easy-to-guess motive, the rabbits well fed and healthy and not having to work hard for it and with obvious spare time and yet not actually happy, the occasional comments about 'accepting your fate', and on a metagaming sort of level the obvious fact that if Cowslip's warren was actually a good place to be then we wouldn't be only ⅓ of the way through the book :-) – but some of the specific knock-on effects on the rabbits' psychology had passed me by, and now that Fiver has laid them all out in plain view I should go back and have a proper look at them. The prohibition on asking 'Where?' that he mentions, for example; I'd seen occasional quirks of behaviour but not connected them to any very specific word or type of question.
I'm put rather in mind of games of induction – Mao, Eleusis etc – in which you have to infer a hidden rule from its cryptic manifestations. Sometimes you get it; sometimes you don't get it, but once it's explained at the end of the game you kick yourself and realise how everything you observed fits it perfectly; and sometimes (as in this case, for me) you find that the most critical clues had not even struck you as as significant at the moment you saw them, and when the rule is explained, you're left without even the satisfaction of an 'oh, so that was it' realisation. Fortunately, in this case I get to examine the replay!
no subject
Date: 2015-07-08 15:14 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-12 13:18 (UTC)But that seems to have expanded into a general prohibition on 'Where?' questions in general, even in contexts which have nothing to do with the mysterious absence of a rabbit. Hazel's early experience with the phenomenon involves being rudely cut off when he was asking more or less unrelated 'where?' questions: about the man who leaves food and shoots elil, and about the layout of the burrow. (OK, so the man isn't completely irrelevant, but the rabbits don't in general ignore him, and will cheerfully make statements about his activities – as long as there isn't a 'where?' question involved.)
So no wonder I was confused – that's a lot less obviously tied to a phenomenon of rabbit-disappearance than it could have been!
(I also failed to interpret the section in chapter 14 where Bigwig finds evidence of a snare having been there in the past, with an empty peg-hole and the marks of a rabbit struggling; and that one does make perfect sense with hindsight.)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 08:50 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-06 09:24 (UTC)Fiver's explanation is utterly mind-blowing for a child reader who is not expecting such deception from the narrative. It's still pretty mind-blowing now.
The description of Bigwig's injuries didn't quite scar me for life, but I did get flashbacks for weeks afterwards.
I remember reading an interview with Richard Adams in which he said that the only point at which his rabbits do not behave like real rabbits is when they chew through the peg to free Bigwig. I'm not sure that is completely true (I suspect that real rabbits don't communicate prophetic dreams or tell epic fables to each other), but I found it interesting that he chose to make that point.
And one thing I know now that must have been on Adams' mind was that the real-life version of Bigwig, Desmond Kavanagh, was killed in a trap set by German soldiers during the battle of Arnhem. Twenty-five years later, Adams helped him to escape in the fictional version of the story, his comrades getting him out of trouble rather than fleeing as they did in real life.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-07 11:03 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-09 07:15 (UTC)So, he thought that the rabbits were acting like humans when they free Bigwig... and yet the actual humans Adams was perhaps thinking of didn't chew through the peg.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-08 12:55 (UTC)Perhaps it's a 'smallest rabbit' thing to not try to explain himself better, or perhaps the last pieces of the puzzle only fell into place when Bigwig was trapped.
I was very pleased that Strawberry decided to come with them after losing his female. It strikes me that if just one rabbit finds himself unable to accept the cost of their easy life, then there is hope yet for the others to realise that they are paying too high a price for their relative safety. Not that they can really do anything about it, but... still. I wonder though, if Strawberry will be able to get back to the more traditional rabbit-roots or if he might be a liability to the others.