Introduction
Richard Adams’ novel Watership Down, first published in 1972, initially gained recognition as a bestseller and subsequently attained the status of a classic within the canon of children’s literature. The narrative chronicles the journey of a small band of rabbits who, forewarned of an impending disaster, abandon their original warren and traverse the English countryside in search of a new habitat. Reflective of the conventions prevalent in literature featuring anthropomorphic animals, the rabbits in Watership Down are imbued with distinctly human traits: they possess complex language, elaborate mythologies, sophisticated problem-solving abilities, and a quasi-monarchic social structure replete with hierarchical military rankings.
Given this anthropomorphism, the academic discussions about the novel have predominantly concentrated on its allegorical dimensions or human-centered elements. Scholars have examined aspects such as the rabbit mythology and the function of storytelling within the narrative. Additionally, critical analysis has explored the meta-textual dimensions of the work, including its genre classification, often treating the fact that the protagonists are rabbits as a relatively marginal consideration.
The Anthropomorphism Debate
In animal theory within literary studies, scholars debate whether they should avoid or embrace anthropomorphism. This debate fundamentally revolves around whether anthropomorphism is inherently anthropocentric—thus potentially detrimental to human-animal relations—or whether it might serve as a means to challenge anthropocentrism and facilitate a more empathetic understanding of animals by encouraging humans to adopt animal perspectives, thereby fostering less anthropocentric attitudes and treatment toward non-human beings.
Critiques of anthropomorphism generally fall into two primary categories. The first argument asserts that anthropomorphizing animals risks reducing them to mere surrogates for human attributes and concerns. In Animal Theory, Derek Ryan examines how this critique is often relevant to theoretical discourses about animals, which frequently transform animals into symbols or metaphors primarily to elucidate human issues. Critics contend that animal representations as just stand-ins for human desires and fears or as contrasting elements in the analysis of human language weaken the fundamental aspects of animality within the psychoanalytic framework. This perspective suggests that such anthropomorphization obscures the distinctness of animals by projecting human characteristics onto them.
The second category of arguments against anthropomorphism is grounded in the belief that comprehending the subjective experiences of animals is fundamentally beyond human capacity. As Ryan notes, the imaginative endeavor to explain the animal world may inadvertently become a form of distortion or falsehood. Philosopher Thomas Nagel’s seminal 1974 essay What Is It Like to Be a Bat? profoundly influences this view. Although Nagel primarily focuses on addressing the mind-body problem in philosophy, his central thought experiment vividly illustrates the limitations of human attempts to understand animal experiences. Nagel contends that bat sonar, while undeniably a mode of perception, is fundamentally dissimilar to any human sense, making it difficult to conceive what it is like to be a bat. He argues that attempts to imagine being a bat, such as envisioning oneself with webbed arms or navigating through echolocation, only reflect what it would be like for a human to mimic bat behavior rather than genuinely capturing the bat’s subjective experience. This critique underscores the inherent challenges in grasping the essence of animal consciousness and emphasizes the limitations of anthropomorphic interpretations.
However, several theorists have contested Nagel’s position. Mark Payne, a scholar in his work The Animal Part, contends that Nagel’s critique of imagination is misplaced. Payne argues that Nagel’s characterization of imagining the experience of being a bat as a mere “unactualized dressing up,” wherein humans metaphorically attach prosthetics to replicate an animal’s body, unjustly limits the scope of imaginative empathy. Payne further asserts that Nagel’s focus on the sensory discrepancies between humans and bats neglects the fundamental commonalities shared across species: “We share the ground of our being with all the other animals thinking our way into the life of any one of them only requires us to extend to them the same sympathy that we use to think about the lives of other human beings.” This perspective on shared existence and empathetic understanding also underpins Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s notion of “becoming-animal,” as well as Anat Pick’s concept of “creatureliness.” These theories challenge Nagel’s conclusions about the constraints of human imagination by positing that it is feasible to imagine if not fully comprehend, the animal mind. They suggest that while a complete understanding of an animal’s sensory experience, such as echolocation, might be beyond human grasp, the effort to imagine such experiences is not inherently futile.
In support of this viewpoint, Jane Bennett, in her book Vibrant Matter, articulates that anthropomorphism can facilitate the discovery of resonances and resemblances across disparate categories. Bennett posits that anthropomorphic perception can illuminate structural parallels between the material forms of “nature” and those in “culture,” thereby revealing isomorphisms that might otherwise remain obscured. This perspective underscores the potential of anthropomorphism to bridge the divide between human and animal experiences, suggesting that it can provide valuable insights into the nature of both.
Anthropomorphism in Watership Down
The novel’s attention to rabbit physicality extends to more subtle behavioral details. The description of one rabbit “opening and shutting his mouth and licking his lips, much as a cat does when something disgusts it” in response to seeing a dead hedgehog, for instance, emphasizes the animal’s anxiety. Similarly, when Hazel returns to the group after scouting ahead, the narrative notes, “They raised their heads and gazed at him, all together, for a moment, before returning to their feeding.” These detailed observations of rabbit behavior ground the story in the animality of its characters. Despite the rabbits’ internal anthropomorphism, they do not perform any actions that cannot physically happen for real rabbits, thereby anchoring the narrative in their authentic animal experience.
A key point in this passage is that it helps to enhance the distance between the reader and the rabbits rather than bridging it. The passages immediately preceding this excerpt offer detailed descriptions of the landscape and closely follow the actions and thoughts of the rabbits in a narrative style that minimizes the narrator’s presence as a mediator between the plot events and the reader. It draws attention to the fact that the narrative appears from the reader’s point of view when, in contrast, the excerpt in question begins with a direct address from the narrator to the reader. This direct engagement underscores the limitations inherent in the reader’s ability to fully imagine and inhabit the rabbits’ world, suggesting previous imaginative efforts might have been flawed. In this regard, the text appears to align with Nagel’s perspective on animal subjectivity, which posits that such subjectivity is fundamentally inaccessible to human understanding.
Nevertheless, the novel’s meticulous attention to rabbit physicality highlights commonalities between human and animal existence rather than emphasizing their differences. Pick’s definition of “creatureliness” in Creaturely Poetics supports this interpretation. Pick suggests that the corporeal reality of living bodies provides a meaningful foundation for exploring shared aspects of existence between humans and animals. By introducing the term “creatureliness,” Pick creates a unified category that includes humans and animals, focusing on their prevalent status as living bodies. She asserts that the creature, as a result, is first and foremost a living body, emphasizing that a focus on corporeal embodiment can reveal shared existential conditions experienced by all creatures.
In her essay Vulnerability, featured in Critical Terms for Animal Studies, Pick introduces the concept of vulnerability as a critical framework for understanding the complexities inherent in human-animal relations and the problematic nature of the human-animal distinction. Pick posits that vulnerability represents a universal existential condition shared by all living beings due to their embodied nature and a defining feature of the asymmetric power dynamics between humans and animals, wherein animals often experience a heightened vulnerability compared to humans. She articulates this duality as the condition of fragility and finitude shared by everything that lives and as susceptibility and exposure to orchestrated violence that affects some lives more than others, summarizing that vulnerability is universal but unequally distributed. Thus, Pick’s concept of creatureliness is intricately linked to the notion of vulnerability, framing it as a fundamental existential state that characterizes all embodied creatures.
The theme of vulnerability is similarly pivotal in Watership Down, particularly as illustrated through The Story of the Blessing of El-Ahrairah, which encapsulates many of the novel’s central motifs. When examined through Pick’s lens, this myth emerges as a profound exploration of vulnerability as the core of rabbit existence. The myth portrays rabbit life as one in which all the world will be your enemy, suggesting that the primary means of defense lies in the ability to escape and in the collective survival of the community rather than the individual: “Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.” The novel’s narrative continually addresses vulnerability, particularly in the early chapters that depict the perilous journey from Sandleford to Watership Down. These chapters vividly convey that every environment is fraught with danger, and each encounter is fraught with fear, thereby highlighting vulnerability as an existential reality of rabbit life.
However, the notion of vulnerability discussed by Pick is not exclusively concerned with the general state of animals in the wild or the specific vulnerabilities of prey animals. Instead, Pick’s analysis primarily focuses on the vulnerability of animals to humans and the violence inflicted upon them by human actions. This distinction is also evident in Watership Down, where the rabbits’ vulnerability is depicted both in their struggle for survival in a hostile world and in the context of human threats and interventions. The novel reflects this unequal distribution of vulnerability, emphasizing the additional layers of danger and exploitation that arise from human-animal interactions.
The strategic placement of the account of the destruction of the Sandleford warren towards the latter part of the novel carries significant implications. At this point, the story fully immerses the reader in the anthropomorphized viewpoint of the rabbits, introducing them to their subjective experiences and emotional landscapes. The earlier sections of the narrative have worked to bridge the perceptual gap between human and rabbit subjectivities, emphasizing commonalities and fostering a deeper understanding of the rabbits’ experiences from a human perspective.
The revelation of the warren’s destruction by this stage disrupts, or at least recalibrates, this bridge of understanding. The extreme violence and harrowing details of the warren’s obliteration starkly contrast the anthropomorphized attributes and relatable qualities emphasized throughout the novel. This juxtaposition helps to underscore the disparity between the anthropomorphized traits of the rabbits and the brutal realities imposed upon them by human actions. The unflinching portrayal of the destruction and its consequences accentuates the violent and oppressive aspects of human-animal interactions, underscoring the inherent conflict and power imbalances.
Conclusion
This thematic exploration reveals the nuanced complexity of Watership Down‘s treatment of animality. On the one hand, the novel employs anthropomorphism to foster empathy and blur the distinctions between human and rabbit experiences, emphasizing shared creatureliness and the common existential condition of vulnerability. On the other hand, the novel underscores the significant species distinctions, particularly in the context of human actions that perpetuate violence and exploitation. This dual focus illuminates the unequal distribution of power and vulnerability, revealing how anthropomorphism can bridge and underscore the gaps in understanding between species.
Bibliography
- Adams, R. (1972). Watership Down. Rex Collings.
- Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University Press.
- Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
- Nagel, T. (1974). What Is It Like to Be a Bat?. The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.
- Payne, M. (2010). The animal part: Human and other animals in the poetic imagination. University of Chicago Press.
- Pick, A. (2011). Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. Columbia University Press.
- Pick, A. (2018). Vulnerability. In L. Gruen (Ed.), Critical terms for animal studies. University of Chicago Press.
- Ryan, D. (2015). Animal theory: A critical introduction. Edinburgh University Press.
