Watership Down and Tolkien

[kohaku]

I once read somewhere that Richard Adams was inspired by Tolkien. I thought it would be fun to discuss what aspects of Adams writings were inspired by Tolkien. I have read the Plaque dogs and Tales from Watership Down, but I am most familiar with Watership Down and therefore I will concentrate on that.

I think the biggest evidence of is the fact that Adams gives the rabbit society a history and a language. The lapine language is not nearly as developed as Tolkien's languages, but there are consistencies in lapine as far as root words, suffixes, etc.

Watership Down is an adventure story that includes traveling, fighting, and finding solutions to problems, just as in tolkien's stories.

There are different rabbit societies just as there are different races and traditions in ME. Example, efrafa was a warren with an entirely different structure than Watership down, which was also different than their home warren.

these are just a few, feel free to discuss, disagree, or add more.

[kohaku]

does nobody want to discuss this?

[Naurwen]

I have read watershipdown and have seen the film and admire it greatly but i think for books like that you should read David Clement-Davis's books called The Fire Bringer and The Sight. In my oppinion they are very good books and you should read them ispecially if you liked watershipdown. :)

[kohaku]

thanks, perhaps i will check those out, i'm running out of stuff to read right now

[Tar-Palantir]

Originally posted by Naurwen
I have read watershipdown and have seen the film and admire it greatly but i think for books like that you should read David Clement-Davis's books called The Fire Bringer and The Sight. In my oppinion they are very good books and you should read them ispecially if you liked watershipdown. :)

I read "The Fire Bringer", and thought it was a pretty poor rip-off of "Watership Down". Don't get me wrong, it was ok in & of itself, but "Watership Down" is a classic - and was written a good 25 years earlier.

[Naurwen]

Originally posted by Tar-Palantir
I read "The Fire Bringer", and thought it was a pretty poor rip-off of "Watership Down". Don't get me wrong, it was ok in & of itself, but "Watership Down" is a classic - and was written a good 25 years earlier.
I still think the Fire Bringer is better but yes they are very alike. Its asthough they have been written by the same author the style of writing is the same. The redwall books are all the same kind or thing but still slightly different. It's just like someone mimicking LOTR because it is very good so they make the're own version.

[kohaku]

i tried reading the redwall series but couldn't get into it. i got halfway through The Long Patrol. the idea was good, but too many of the characters acted exactly the same. Watership down had a little of the same trouble, but i thought most of the important rabbits were very well characterized and distinguishable, especially considering they were wild rabbits, not human-like animals.

[Naurwen]

you've got a point there, the charactors in redwall are pretty much the same. I still manage to enjoy the books though but i have to admit that i think i am growing out of them.

[kohaku]

I'm posting here in hopes of reviving my old flop of a thread. Adams actually states somewhere that Tolkien was one of his inspirations, would anyone like to help discuss in what ways his writing shows this? Add some more stuff to my list, or tell me why my list is wrong, anything!!!

[YayGollum]

Okay, okay, okay. I gots to do something for this patheticalness. :rolleyes: Sure, I read Watership Down. Sure, the fact that they have their own mythology and everything makes it something like LOTR, but I can't think of much else right now. Huh. Who was that seagull dude? He was the only one I cared about. He was pretty original, right?

[kohaku]

Hey now;) Yeah I probably would have guessed Kehaar was your favorite. hhhmmm perhaps you can compare him to Gollum, get a discussion going!

[YayGollum]

Well, I haven't read that book in a long time, but I don't see why you think it's much like LOTR. Maybe it's some crazy rabbit version of the hobbitses travelling west way before LOTR? But then, I just know that it happened. I don't think a story was ever written about it. oh well. Hm. That evil dude doesn't remind me of any LOTR type evil dude. Maybe Saruman, if you feel like thinking for a while. I hated that creepy little psychic rabbit. Ick. oh well. The cat was cool, though. *runs off to find a copy of Watership Down*

[kohaku]

well it's not THAT much like LOTR, that's what's fun about discussing it. you have to look closely to find tolkien's influence. i'm not really looking for direct comparisons between characters, i don't expect to find that. i'm looking for deeper rooted and less obvious connections between the two author's writings.

[YayGollum]

Okay, well, I found a deeper rooted and less obvious connection. the thing where it could just be this guys rabbit version of the hobbitses moving west. oh well. Let me see here. What else? The humans coming in and messing up their little warren in the first place is like Saruman messing up the Shire. Ummm... *can't think of much else*

[jallan]

Stories about talking animals who yet inhabit an animalistic world have been on the outskirts of literature.

Much of Beatrix Potter’s work falls into this category. There was Felix Salten’s Bambi. There were numerous books by Thornton Burgess (http://www.thorntonburgess.org). There was Walter R. Brook’s Freddy the Pig (http://www.freddythepig.org) books.

(I recall once reading some speculation, that the first of these, Freddy Goes to Florida, originally titled To and Again, might possibly have been an influence on The Hobbit.)

What Richard Adams might have observed is that Tolkien had written a children’s book called The Hobbit, using many of the normal conventions and normal style of children’s literature, and then followed it with a sequel using many of those same conventions, but a sequel that, astoundingly, was not really a children’s book at all.

One could have characters like Gollum and Treebeard in a book that was not a children’s book or an adult book, but just a book.

I don’t know whether my speculation has any truth to it, but certainly Watership Down is a similar attempt to take conventions of a particular kind of children’s story, especially those of Thornton Burgess, and use them unashamably in what was intended to be a story for adults.

Of course, there was George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but that was a satire rather than a tale about animals for the sake of the tale and the animals.

As Kohaku points out, Adam’s care with a rabbit language, instead of just using English, is very Tolkienesque.

Also, there is the suggestion, through the tales of El-ahrirah and occasional psychic incident, of a supernatural purpose and providence behind the scenes that works through the actors in the mundane world.

[kohaku]

Hmm, interesting speculation. In what ways would you say that Watership Down incorporates the conventions of a children's story? I am reminded of Bugs Bunny... I watched a documentary one time that explained that even though it is a cartoon it was originally intended for adults. I suppose the idea of talking rabbits off on an adventure is by itself a typical plot for a children's story, but has been tweaked to appeal to a more mature audience. In many ways, Watership Down reminds me of Animal Farm because we witness the breakdown of one society and the rise of another, although it is not so obviously satirical.

I always looked at Fiver's "psychic powers" as plain old intuition, rather than anything supernatural. I have surprised myself before with my own intuitive powers, and my experience with animals tells me that are quite adept at picking up subtle hints. Of course, the stories of El-ahrairah are the mythology, maybe even religion, of the rabbits, in a way that is similar to Tolkien's stories of the creation and history of middle earth.

[jallan]

You can find beast fable before Watership Down.

But in beast fable the animals inconsistantly vary between animal and human characteristics. Compare the Br’er Rabbit stories as an example, or the medieval stories of Reynard the Fox, or the Amerindian tales of Coyote, or Hare, or Raven.

Humans sometimes appear in such tales on a level with animals and the animals interact with them on the same level, while at other times humans are humans and beasts are beats.

Similarly in The Wind and the Willows where Rat and Mole and Badger have underground houses like English cottages, and Rat even has a boat. Toad seems almost totally part of human society.

Bugs Bunny and similar animated creations seem to derive mostly from this tradition.

On the other hand Felix Salter’s Bambi and Thornton Burgess’ books presented animals more realistically save for an increased ability to communicate with one another and something like human intelligence.

I don’t know where this genre of children’s story actually began, a kind of science-fiction with the premise that animals can communicate with each other at close to human level and think in human ways but otherwise behave exactly as animals behave.

Orwell’s Animal Farm seems to me to derive from this kind of story, though Orwell breaks more and more away from it as he continues and his pigs become more and more human. And Orwell is primarily writing satire, and so drawing also from beast fable.

But Richard Adams keeps within the genre of Salter and Burgess. Animals remain animals and their behavior is supposed to match observed animal behavior and to be realistic in that way, with a bit of stretching.

The animals in Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories somewhat transcend that genre, but only barely.

One might also compare some of the animal episodes, especially the episodes of the wild geese in T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, though these move more toward satire and parody.

But Adams writes a story that is intended to be appreciated for its own sake, not for satirical or allegorical significance. The main difference between Salter and Burgess is that Adams writes a more complex and difficult story than normal in the genre, a story not written especially for children, realizing that there was no reason why one could not expand the reach of such a tale beyond what Salter and Burgess had done.

It was well writing The Lord of the Rings that Tolkien realized that the supposed appeal and special connection of that kind of literature with children was false, an historical literary accident.

Similarly there was no particular reason why the kind of stories about most naturalistic animals that had been written for children, mainly, need be written only for children, why adults might not also enjoy this kind of animal fantasy.

As to Fiver’s powers, Adams presents “plain old intutition” as something more mysterious and psychic than just common sense.

Kehaar also seems to me to be the kind of character one would be more likely to find in a children’s story than in an adult tale, like Tolkien’s Gollum and Treebeard.

[Vixen Evenstar]

I read Watership Down. Excellent book. You know, now that i think of it, even just his style of writing reflected Tolkien a little. The characters where awsome.

[MacAddict]

I know nothing about Watership Down except that my brother watched the movie of it and says it has more gore and violence than Saving Private Ryan and should be rated R. And its supposed to be a kids movie!



~MacAddict

[kohaku]

yeah, it's a pretty gory movie. Made in the seventies, I believe. I like it, but as in most cases the book is much better.

With all the new movie technology, I'm hoping to see a good live-action movie of it in the future. I think it could be neat if somebody did that.

[Rhiannon]

I hate the movie of Watership Down. Passionately. I saw it when I was little and it gave me nightmares for years. So it was only recently that I finally read the book and loved it.