Parallels Between WD and LotR

[omorka]

It strikes me that there are a great many similarities between Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Adams's Watership Down:

Romanticization of unspoiled countryside, almost to the point of worship

Forests are romanticized, too, but they're also dark, scary, and perilous

The characters who serve as narrative voices live in underground burrows

Non-human languages are used, especially for names (although Tolkien's are much better)

Evil is portrayed as totalitarian in the extreme

Technology is also portrayed as inherently evil (although the LotR movies played this up more than the books)

The "good" form of leadership is explicitly not democracy; instead, it's a well-advised monarchy (at least in Adams's book, the leader is "proclaimed" by his followers; in Tolkien, he has the Divine Right)

Leadership and obedience styles are based on the author's war experiences (different wars, though)

The main character actively chooses to 'go on' at the end

Also, I'm shocked to the bone in retrospect that Papa C. didn't have us read Watership Down as the contemprary British novel instead of HHGttG, given that he had picked "leadership" as the theme for our year. WD is all about different styles of leadership - The Threarah's, Hazel's, the lack of leadership in Cowslip's warren, General Woundwort's, and the secondary leaders' - Bigwig's, Holly's, and Campion's.

Comments

[pinesandmaples]

The reason he didn't pick Watership Down is because it's usually read in 9th grade for honors English and 10th grade for normal English. Maybe your high school skipped it, but every school around Jackson reads it in 9th or 10th grade so it would be redundant to read it again at MSMS.

It's a good book, and I wish more people had enjoyed it when we read it in high school.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

I don't know what the state curriculum looks like now; I should probably look it up sometime. However, in the late '80s/early '90s, there was no one book you could be sure every student in the state had read. In fact, the only things you could be sure everyone had read at all were three Shakespeare plays - Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet. My 9th grade pre-AP English class did Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, R&J, a Dickens novel (don't remember which one), and twelve tons of short stories, plus some poetry and sentence diagramming.

I've never been assigned WD at all, in any course, high school or college.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

I've never been assigned WD at all, in any course, high school or college.

Neither have I, come to think of it.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

I'm still surprised my senior English teacher (the aforementioned Papa C) got away with using The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as one of his novels, in 1991 in northeast Mississippi.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I recall it being on a recommended Summer reading list my freshman or sophomore year. It was never covered in a class, and I had read it years before then anyway.

[theoldone.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I looked at WD, looked at my reading list, and said, "rabbits?"
I may get to it someday.