Symbolism In Watership Down

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Not all fantasy stories start off like fairy tales. Watership Down is one of them. The characters in the book resemble living beings struggling to survive and find shelter, with nature being the rising conflict against the characters. The symbolism in this book, along with the characters and the type of conflict occurring are all factors that tie together with the setting that greatly resembles 1939 Germany. The setting of Watership Down resembles 1939 Germany The setting shows great resemblance to the countryside of 1939 Germany. “The story takes place in 1900’s Europe.” (Richard Adams) Unintentional or not, this gives us a great clue as to which continent this story is unfolds in, along with the date. Germany is a part of Europe. “Toward …show more content…

There’s religions and there’s different societies. I’m going to talk about how the society that the warren run by Cowslip abides by Hitler’s enforced ideology. “And then as we were running out Silver said to Cowslip, ‘Surely you’re coming?’ And Cowslip simply turned his back. . .’Hills or Inle, it’s all one to me where you go. You hold your tongue.’ (Watership Down, 1972) In this part of the book, Cowslip directly ignores concern involving another individual because he and others around him practice Marxism. Marxism is the belief that an individual should sacrifice for the better of the common good, but the defect with that ideology is that people start to believe that individuals by themselves are not important if lost, as they are expendable. Despite what WW2 media has told us, the Nazis believed in Marxism, and Hitler supported it. Hitler felt that a certain group wasn’t contributing to the common good, therefore, he felt they were going against what they stood for. “Watership Down makes an eloquent study of individual and social behavior. . .” (Victoria Gaydosik, Bloom Literature) (Darn I should’ve put a better quote than that.) Watership Down has a lot of interesting societies that live their own way without thought to change their mindset. If you do practice something enough, it doesn’t become a routine, it becomes an unconscious state that you cannot escape from. It becomes an invisible thought barrier that wraps around your mind, blocking out any alien thought, concept, etc. Closemindedness leads to toxic

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