Watership Down (Again)

No matter how many different books I read, my mind always drifts back to this book. I might reread it, or might not, or may just forget about it all together, which is exactly what I don't want to do.
Surprisingly, Watership Down is the only book by Richard Adams that I like so far out of the, um, 2 books that I've read by him. (And wow, I remembered his name!)
Watership Down just stands out to me by the depth in it's ideas. I probably have yet to figure out the full meaning of it even though I've spent so much time thinking about it.
My old entry on this book says something along the lines of "Hazel and Fiver want a perfect home where they can fit in." I still think that this is true, and I think that the books makes it quite obvious. Who wants to get picked on for a stupid piece of cowslip in their own warren?
I'm actually starting to think that (one of) the main ideas is perfection. It makes perfect sense! (No pun intended at first, but now that I look back it's kind of funny).
I think that a theme in this book is perfection because the whole point is that the homes Fiver and Hazel try to fit into aren't perfect.
In their original warren, they got picked on and hassled out of good food and high statuses because the weren't in the strongest group. In Strawberry's warren, the rabbits had to worry about the traps that farmers set up to catch them, a deadly secret that they kept. And in Woundwart's warren, the dictator of the warren, (I just said it all) the rabbits have no freedom, and are living in a kind of military camp.
None of the warrens they see and go to are perfect. They all have flaws one way or another. I guess that's why Hazel and Fiver want their warren to be perfect. And I guess this happens with humans too, when people see all the flaws around them and try to fix them. But flaws are so realistic, why bother to change? I guess I would want freedom, and a real family warren instead of other hostile rabbits, but sometimes you can't change anything even if you try hard, even harder that Hazel, Fiver, and all of their friends tried. For example, the flaws going on in the world right now, as you read this, there's war, trees being cut down, oil in the oceans, poverty, animals being abused, animals dying, humans dying, air pollution, land pollution, water pollution...I could go on forever and make this entry so long you couldn't even load the page without your computer freezing, and having a window pop up saying "The URL is not valid and can not be loaded", like mine. But somethings can't be fixed, no matter how hard you or I, or the whole world tries.

The Tale of Finding a True Home

Watership Down was a book I would have never imagined myself picking up to read, and ultimately, enjoying. Of course, I didn't pick the book out myself; Ann, one of my mother's friends, gave it to me as a birthday gift.
"She says she enjoyed it," I remember my mother saying, handing the stiff book over to me as I sat on the kitchen floor.
I wasn't particularly interested in it, mostly because an adult was recommending it. The book had been tossed aside for maybe a day or so before I actually started to read it.
I loved it. After the first page, I was hooked. The detail was vivid , and I strained myself to read every little word. Put together, it made a lot of sense.
Watership Down is about a rabbit named Hazel and his brother Fiver on their adventure to find a home where they fit in. They escape the warren that they live in with the help of some others like Dandelion, Bigwig, Pipkin, Blackberry, Hawkbit, Silver, and Speedwell.
On their journey they make new friends, like Strawberry, from a far-away warren, as well as enemies like the dictator Woundwort, who runs the military-like warren called Efrafa.
I read about the rabbit God, Frith, who controls the sun, and listened to stories that Dandelion told about El-ahrairah, a rabbit folk hero, also known as the Prince with a thousand enemies.
Watership Down made me think about what "home" means to someone, and if it can be perfect. If it's a place that's run by who's the strongest and has the most power like Hazel's warren. If it's some place that's full of unsaid things that clog the air. If it's a place where you're supposed to follow all the rules and be a type of slave to a dictator.
Shouldn't home be a place that we like to be? Aren't homes supposed to be perfect? Why not?
Watership Down made me think about what home is supposed to be like, and what Hazel and Fiver are looking for. I loved this book, and it's a great read for almost anyone.
Watership Down is a tale of friendship, brotherhood, family, and adventure. I pretty much guarantee it will make you think more about the world, like it made me. :)