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Watership Down
travelling companions, had to partake in extreme objectives. Some of these objectives included tackling the horrendous terrain which included crossing rivers and escaping a storm, defending themselves from crows and other animals and avoiding humans and their inventions. All these encounters are examples, which show that the characters from Watership Down have obstacles related to us humans.
Hazel, Blackberry, Silver, Buckthorn, Bigwig and Strawberry, just to name a few, are not just travelling companions but are also very good friends. The power of friendship in the story may not seem as such an important topic at first, but as the climax builds, we can tell that the need for friendship becomes evidently visible. Throughout the story there were times when fellow rabbits had to ask their peers for help, ninety-nine percent of the time help was given. This confirms that friendship is indeed a dominant force during the length of the tale. The different variety of friendship can be divided into many segments, some which include trust, loyalty and love. These three topics occur frequently during the discussion of camaraderie and as a result are important in the story and also to humans. Humans, like a lot of other living creatures need friendship to revolve around the society. Basically, everybody needs a friend or two to help them get somewhere in life, that’s why we have friends. They may help us in many ways, when we are miserable, when we have problems; they also help us cover up when we are in trouble. A fair amount of issues that the rabbits deal with in the story are almost the same as what we humans deal with. For example, love was shown in the story when Hazel showed his affection for Strawberry. It’s not any different in the book then it is in real life. All the book tries to say is that the rabbits deal with the same dilemmas as us.
You might not think how there ever could be a religion in a story like Watership Down, but if you have read the book thoroughly, there is a belief but not a religion that the rabbits believe in. Almost all the rabbits, either from Hazel’s party or from a separate warren, believed in Frith, the rabbit who created the world and El-ahrairah, the prince rabbit who had so many wives and children he couldn’t count them. To the rabbits, Frith was like God to the Christians, Gaea to the Ancient Greeks and Ptah to the Ancient Egyptians, all who were believed by their religions in creating the world. On the other hand, El-ahrairah was more of a mix between Zeus (from the Ancient Greeks) and Julius Caesar (from the Ancient Romans). El-ahrairah has Zeus’s sex drive and Caesar’s pride. The story about Frith and El-ahrairah can be summarized to this: ‘Frith created the world and everything on it. He created the animals [next page]