Monday, October 27, 2014
Blog Post 4
The new book I am reading, "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, is probably the best book I have read this year, not including books I've reread. "Watership Down" is the survival story of rabbits as they try to create a new burrow in a large and dangerous world. I find two particular aspects of this book extremely appealing. The first is that several times throughout the book, there are chapters that tell a story within the story, basically one of the rabbits tells a story about El-ahrairah, who is supposedly the first rabbit from long ago, known to be a trickster. These stories somewhat resemble ancient human stories, mostly originated from Native American cultures, I believe. Basically these stories serve the pretense of explaining things such as, why rabbits have long legs, or why so many animals eat rabbits, or why rabbits are known to sneak into farmers crops, and so on. These little chapters, while not moving the plot along, are entertaining and especially fun because El-ahriarah always does some amusing trick on another animal. The second aspects I really enjoy in this book is the fact that it uses rabbits. I have read books with cats, bears, wolves, and many other animals as the main characters, but for some reason it seems strange that rabbits, Nature's all-you-can-eat buffet, the heroes. I think it adds a fascinating twist to the story, as the rabbits are constantly faced with danger, such as the unknown and large expanse of predators, such as owls, hawks, men, dogs, etc..., and live in constant fear. Instead of being brave and heroic, the rabbits are merely trying to survive, and live in fear and run because they cannot fight these threats However, I have a feeling there will be a fight coming up, as the rabbits are currently planning on rescuing some domestic rabbits from a farm, guarded by a bunch of cats, which seems ominous. One other thing I enjoy about this book, which I only just realized, is the interesting character of Hazel, the protagonist of this story. While he is the leader of his group of rabbits, he recognizes the skills of each other member of his group and what they have to offer. Hazel became leader because he acted, his willingness to strive ahead and do what was needed set him apart from all other members of his group including those with something more to offers, such as the powerful Bigwig or future-seeing Fiver. Hazel is a perfect leader not because of his own skills, but his ability to combine the skills of those around him into a single, functional body.
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This was an awesome analysis. I especially love how by writing this, you realized something else about Hazel, the leader and protagonist in the story. It is like what Ms. Romano said about writing whatever comes to mind, you will eventually learn something new by doing it. I also loved how you were thinking about the authors choice of using rabbits as opposed to other animals. I also loved how you talked about how even though rabbits are usually the victims, the author has portrayed them as heroes in this book. I also loved how you did not just summarize, you interpreted and analyzed what was going on. I want to hear more about this and about the choices that he/she makes. Is the author all knowing of the rabbits? is the story told through the perspective of one rabbit? And why did the author choose to use a certain lens?
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could also talk about how the story is set up and describe the dialogue. We have been talking about dialogue a lot in class and it would be very cool to know more about how the author created rabbits having dialogues.
Also, I understand that this is a book about bunnies rescuing other bunnies, from what I have heard, but I am confused about the themes that run through this book. You wrote about the chapters about El-ahrairah that tell ancient stories but what are the points of those stories? What does the author want you to know and take away from this book upon completing it.
Overall this way a great blogpost---keep it up!