Waiting for Bigwig
Let the rabbits of ‘Watership Down’ guide you through the complex politics of the climate crisis
“If we continue as we are, temperatures will carry on rising, bringing even more catastrophic flooding, bush fires, extreme weather and destruction of species.”
from COP26 Explained, UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021
Next year will mark the 50th anniversary of Watership Down, Richard Adams’ adventure novel featuring a bunch of bunnies who must leave their countryside warren because of encroaching human development. This classic novel is beloved and has inspired big questions like: What is the perfect society? How do we create it? And how do we recognize the enemy who would stop us?
Richard Adams’ daughters protested that Watership Down was “just a story about rabbits.” But this novel can absolutely be considered a treatise on community, for when the group of young buck rabbits leave their home, Sandleford Warren, each brings strengths and skills (a superpower?) that help the group as they seek their ideal home.
I think though, at its heart, Watership is an ecological novel, for it is ultimately about the ruin humans bring when they collide with a purely natural environment. And when I consider each main character and the archetypes they embody, it…
