getting down with the lupine

Watership Down is a story with which I am have finished. I cannot believe that any middle schooler might have been called to read this. My word! Not only is it, well, cruel in some places, but the religious sects, ideals, and rabbits placeing others under arrest is just nuts. I can see a few things in the thoughts behind it, but this is no exodus of history. This isn't Old Rabbit Testiment nor WWII flight, but rather flight of fancy with odd choices.

Hazel should not have been used as a boy's name.

The writing style is simple enough, almost like an improved me on my rough draft ... dialogue, then fill in the backdrop later. I mean this in that you could subtract the "blades of grass delicately whispering ..." and still get the feel for the land and the trials and death of the rabbits. I suppose that I might suggest either a mature middle-schooler to read it, but they'd have to find the first bit interesting, otherwise, they'd put it down and never read anymore. In the middle of it, while their trip is full of danger and learning, you wonder, "why?" I almost interrupted my own reading with a Princess Bride moment, "Who kills Humperdink?" Alas, I'll finish it soon.

I found some interesting sites on the novel, including a researcher trying to find in Hampshire (Great Britain), the areas noted in the book. The paperback version I am reading has a sad little blurred map that is unreadable. For those who read some or all of the Lord of the Rings, it's about like that. The mountains around Mordor about as tall as the lowercase m on 12 point font. Thanks for the barely useful map Tolkein!

Fans of Watership Down have drawn some much better maps that make sense. The time frame seems unclear until you read that it spans weeks. I thought at first that the rabbits were traveling in days, but the text is ambigious in parts. The author, trying to stay true to rabbit thought, denies time and remarks dawn, dusk noon, night, and midnight.

My next assignment, John McCain biography, as it seems, presently that it will be Hillary Clinton (boo -- hiss) vs John McCain for 2008.