The rabbit's description of the countryside replicates exactly Newberry, England. Richard Adams explains in a note to readers that Nuthanger farm is a real place, like all other places in the book .Cars drive the roads. People keep dogs and gardens. Badgers, cats, and the foxes-- enemies typical to real England exist and endanger the rabbit's survival. Moreover, they themselves behave as an average wild rabbit anywhere in the world behaves. They fight instinctively over does, silflay (feed) in the evening, and go tharn "freeze as rabbits are apt to in front of bright light. This is no fantasy, Adams researched rabbits thoroughly and even suggests that if anyone who wishes to know more about the migration of yearlings, about pressing chin glands, chewing pellets, the effects of over-crowding in warrens, the phenomenon of reabsorbtion of fertilized embryos, the capacity of buck rabbits to fight stoats, or any other features of Lapine life, should refer to that definitive work The Private Life of the Rabbit .
Watership Down's fastpaced mood and fascinating external conflict kept me turning pages. Would the rabbits ever establish their own burrow and live in peace? The language didn't trip me up either. Often in lengthy description my attention wanders, and I skip a paragraph. Adam's kept his description clean, and exact. He created pictures in your mind without you recognizing it.
Arthur, Hercules, and Robin Hood "the leaders of legend are all the strongest, deftest, and wiliest. At first glance, Hazel seems to lack these qualities whereas some of the other rabbits posses them. He is laid back, compassionate, yet round character, but in his previous burrow not even in the Oswla. He is not the strongest like Bigwig, or the cleverest like Blackberry, or even gifted with second sight like his brother, Fiver. Then what makes the other rabbits follow him? Why the despair when they believe him dead? When Pipkin had planted in himself, like some somber tree the knowledge that Hazel would never return his bewilderment exceeded his grief: and this bewilderment he saw on every side among his companions.
