Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Watership Down, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Epic Journey
Violence and Power
Authoritarianism vs. Democracy
Home and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
As Dandelion finishes his tale, Acorn catches the scent of something strange. Suddenly, the ferns part, and an animal’s face peers through them—it is a lendri, or badger. Bigwig urges the rabbits to hurry and flee, and they follow him through the fern and onto a new path. The rabbits streak through the woods until they come upon a river—though it is only twelve feet wide and a couple of feet deep, to the rabbits, it seems immense and appears to be a dead end. Fiver states that they shall all have to cross the river, but Bigwig is deeply skeptical. Though rabbits can swim if they have to, they are not strong swimmers—and all of them are exhausted to boot. Hazel knows, though, that if Fiver thinks they should cross the river, his intuition must have told him that it will be okay to do so.
The rabbits’ journey intensifies as they encounter threats both animal and physical. Everything around the rabbits seems designed to test them—just, perhaps, as Frith intended. Hazel and his group soldier forth, though, in the face of fear and danger, relying on their intuition and the gifts they possess to see them through.
Themes
