Watership Down Part III: Efrafra

[sholio]

Part I || Part II || Watership Down location post. Comments on older posts are always fine!

Moving on into Efrafra, or ...


.... Hazel and Bigwig invent espionage.

I love this section. Bigwig really gets to shine here, and we meet some great new characters. (Technically both Hyzynthlay and Blackavar appeared in Holly's account of the first trip to Efrafra, but this is the first time they come onstage, so to speak.)

Everything about Efrafra hits a lot harder than it did the last time I read the book. I don't know if I feel entirely qualified to talk about the totalitarian aspects of Efrafra in too much depth, but please talk about it in the comments! It's depicted well here, I felt - the constant fear of informers, the Council police, the way that Blackavar is forced to recant his crimes and praise the Council's mercy, the Efrafra rabbits being kept divided so they have no opportunity to organize.

General standouts from this section for me:

- Bigwig's uncharacteristically brooding and nihilistic attitude leading up his infiltration of Efrafra, including asking for probably one of the darkest stories in the rabbits' repertoire and trying to pick a fight with a fox that he can't possibly win. His terse farewell with Hazel and the others is also really a lovely moment.

- I really enjoy the details of life in Efrafra - well, maybe "enjoy" isn't quite the right word, but it's all so vivid and plausible and well thought out as totalitarianism applied to a rabbit warren.

- The escape from Efrafra in the storm is such a vivid and exciting scene. I appreciate the little inset map that shows you where all the action happens! It's also incredibly suspenseful. I'm really impressed at how Adams managed to get a sense of true menace to Woundwort and the Council police when we generally consider rabbits cute and unthreatening. But Woundwort is really terrifying!

- Bigwig insisting that they wait for Dandelion and giving him the opening that he needs to get to the boat is a really interesting contrast to Bigwig, earlier in the book, being the one who pragmatically argues for leaving members of the group behind: Fiver and Pipkin on the riverbank, the slower hutch rabbits during the escape. It's not that he's necessarily wrong, even, in those instances. It's just a really interesting change in him, from being the one to encourage survival of those who can escape by leaving the slower/weaker ones behind, to delaying everyone's escape so Dandelion can make it.

Thoughts on this section? Favorite parts? Anything you want to mention specifically, or favorite quotes, or anything not mentioned above?

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Efrafa is incredibly scary. It's very convincingly a place that's impossible to escape from, and everyone in it has either given up hope, is hopeful because they're too young and naive to understand what they're really up against (Nelthilta), is one of the people responsible for making it what it is, or is operating out of some state of "fuck you I got mine." The last group, interestingly, isn't completely irredeemable, as we'll see later. Under better leadership, they're okay.

In comparison to Cowslip's warren, the wrongness there is 100% a matter of choice. No one's stopping those rabbits from leaving, so a big part of the horror is that every single one of them has chosen to stay. In Efrafa, they're being forced to stay, so it's not a self-selected group like in Cowslip's warren. I think that's why we get a very rich and fascinating new cast of characters in Efrafa, but only three that we really get to know (and only four named at all) in Cowslip's warren. In the latter, they're mostly the same type of character, because if you're not, you leave.

I'm also thinking of the concept of safety, which is so crucial to both warrens. Cowslip's warren is safe except for the one danger that they're accepted and warped everything around. Efrafa is exactly the same, except its danger is itself; it's its own totalitarian rule which has destroyed itself to prevent its own destruction. (An incredibly telling moment is when Woundwort himself finds it suspicious when Bigwig says he wanted to join Efrafa. He was so close to a revelation about whether it was all worthwhile.)

It's really interesting to me that this is the only warren where female rabbits are actual characters and important in their own right, especially since their role in the plotline is that they're the resistance cell! Adams based some of the characters on his WWII buddies and I wonder if, maybe subconsciously, he started thinking of women's heroism once he left the mental model of "group of soldiers" and started thinking of "totalitarian state with pockets of resistance." He would have known about female resistance fighters in WWII.

[sovay]

He would have known about female resistance fighters in WWII.

"Some of these does can fight well when they're put to it."

Blackavar's backstory if I'm not mistaking it (I am doing this conversation with my copy of the book in storage) also plays into the importance of does in Efrafa, with his mother being raided from another warren and him growing up between his dead father's reputation as an officer of the Owsla and his living mother's much less starry-eyed attitude toward Efrafa and his own eventual feeling that being half-Efrafan is a mark against him, to the point where he allies with the (I don't argue with your description of them) female resistance cell in the Right Fore.

[sholio]

I'm also thinking of the concept of safety, which is so crucial to both warrens.

Yeah, I think one thing that hadn't hit me until this reread is how the truly warped warrens (Cowslip's warren and Efrafra) are warped as a direct response to humans threatening them and crowding them to the margins. It's humans twisting them even when humans aren't directly involved and the rabbits' own agency in responding to the threat is part of the problem.

That's really fascinating about the "who chooses to stay" factor vs. not having any choice about it! This also makes me think about how Woundwort's determination to exert control over every area of his warren's life, including whether rabbits can leave, is what ended up causing his downfall; if he'd just let the discontented ones leave, there wouldn't have been a problem, but of course he couldn't.

(An incredibly telling moment is when Woundwort himself finds it suspicious when Bigwig says he wanted to join Efrafa. He was so close to a revelation about whether it was all worthwhile.)

Oh, this is another really good point that I hadn't thought of! And same for the points about female resistance fighters; that is really interesting.

[sheron]

I wondered throughout the book if the author was aware that while the rabbits are thinking "yeah, evil humans are killing us just because they could" the rabbits they encounter exhibit some of the same "human" traits/behaviour. There isn't actually that much separating the two species on the ethical front.

[scioscribe]

This whole section really emphasizes how much I adore Bigwig: his inability to leave Blackavar behind even when he knows how much additional trouble it could be to take him is really lovely, and I think it's both part of what you say above re: him and Dandelion and also part of what Adams mentions in his intro to my copy, about Bigwig being based on an officer Adams knew. It feels like an interesting variation on "leave no man behind." If Bigwig had to, he could leave someone to die, but it goes against his grain and honor to leave someone behind to be slowly tortured and humiliated.

Love both Blackavar and Hyzynthlay, and I really liked Hyzenthlay becoming one of Bigwig's main allies in Efrafa.

I really love how Woundwort is completely thrown by the idea that Bigwig "wants" to be part of Efrafa, and how naturally he can't admit that--he can't even completely admit it to himself. But it's a great character moment that he knows that there's just something wrong about someone consciously choosing the kind of life he gives his rabbits, especially when it's a strong, capable rabbit who doesn't necessarily need his protection.

[sheron]

>I adore Bigwig: his inability to leave Blackavar behind even when he knows how much additional trouble it could be to take him

THIS!!

[rachelmanija]

Bigwig doesn't give up just because something's impossible. I love that he refuses to leave Blackavar - and also that Blackavar turns out to be a lot more than a tragic figure once he escapes the role.

[sholio]

Adams mentions in his intro to my copy, about Bigwig being based on an officer Adams knew

Oh, I didn't know that - what a cool thing to find out!

I really like all the rabbits, but Bigwig has always been the one I have the biggest soft spot for, and I think the Efrafra sequence is a big part of why. He's at his best here in a number of ways - brave and cool under pressure, tactically smart, and also compassionate. And as mentioned elsewhere, I really love that Blackavar turned out to be very useful once they had him on board - but that wasn't why they took him along.

I also really enjoyed the little detail that the escaped Efrafrans viewed Bigwig as their leader and refused to take orders from anyone else. Part of it is the Efrafran focus on hierarchy, of course, but like I mentioned in the comments to the previous part, it's a really interesting contrast with the way that the hutch rabbits were afraid of him and didn't want to follow his lead.

[sovay]

Thoughts on this section? Favorite parts? Anything you want to mention specifically, or favorite quotes, or anything not mentioned above?

Hyzenthlay! I remember loving her introduction as a character—so silent at first that neither the reader nor Bigwig can tell whether her spirit's been successfully broken, then her silence means that she's thinking over his plan and evaluating it as intelligently as exactly the ally he needs and then she's all in planning with him—but I love that she, too, is a seer, and the visions she fears have become clouded now that her "heart is in the frost" all come true as soundly as Fiver's. I love her and Bigwig as co-conspirators.

[sheron]

Yes, I really loved her and the way she was useful and thoughtful!

[rachelmanija]

I love her too. It just occurs to me now, but each warren we meet has a seer - Fiver in Sandleford, where he's ignored and of low social status; Fiver in Watership Down, where he's respected and listened to; Silverweed in Cowslip's warren, where his knowledge is understood but twisted into something beautiful and morally horrifying; Hyzenthlay in Efrafa, her visions crushed by despair and revived by hope. She's a poet too, but though her words are beautiful she doesn't pretty up death and despair. She's telling her truth and it resonates with her listeners.

[sheron]

Oh I hadn't thought of that -- that each warren had a seer. That's so neat.

[oracne]

Oh, wow, I hadn't noticed that!

[sholio]

Oh, that's a really great point! I hadn't thought about that.

[selenak]

Hyzenthlay being a poet as well as a seer was what I was thinking of when we were discussing in the earlier post whether poetry itself is negatively connotated in the book via Silverweed's example. It's not - and it works as an outlet for Hyzenthlay which doesn't provide an excuse/prettification for the daily horror she experiences but tells it, and the listening Bigwig is touched in a way he wasn't by Silverweed's. To me, Bigwig earlier wanting to hear the story of the Rabbit of Inlé before going on his mission is related - a story is also art that expresses/captures emotional truth.

[rachelmanija]

Oh, yes, good point. The other rabbits are nervous about Bigwig wanting to hear that story because they're just thinking that it's dark and scary in a time when they're already scared in the dark. But it parallels what Bigwig is doing - he's voluntarily walking into rabbit Hell to save his warren. He needs to hear about someone else who did that.

What do you make of the end of that story, with the timeslip and the young rabbits of El-ahrairah's warren who don't recognize or care about the sacrifice he made? That part isn't paralleled in either Bigwig's journey or the book as a whole, as far as I can tell. It reminds me of the Sharkey section of Lord of the Rings.

[selenak]

What do you make of the end of that story, with the timeslip and the young rabbits of El-ahrairah's warren who don't recognize or care about the sacrifice he made?

Alas I have to break the mood and say it's probably the attitude parodied early in the Beatles' movie A Hard Day's Night where the old guy accusingly says "We fought the war for you!" I.e. Generation WWII feeling underappreciated by the rebellious young 'uns from the 1960s and early 1970s, seeing them as ungrateful and self indulgent and ignorant. I could be wrong, but one reason why A Hard Day's Night was able to use that gag was because "We fought the war for you!"/"We fought the war for this lot?" was something that really was said and printed a lot specifically in Britain in the 1960s, and "so ungrateful!" a chief accusation.

ETA: in the larger context, the "veterans feel ignorant youth has no idea what hell they went through, don't care and show no respect" isn't unique to 1960s Britain, of course. There are more than enough examples for the huge alienation felt between (some) soldiers of the memoir and poetry writing type during and after WWI, too. Though I think Very Brittain is way more self critical than the male memoirists when in "Testament of Youth" she describes how after her return to Oxford post WWI for a time she felt insulted by every laugh among the students (many of whom were now younger than her) and how it came across as ignorant and denigrating the horror that had been to her until (partly through her friendship with Winifred Holtby) she was able to leave that mentality. But if we look at how their war experience may have influenced writers, including Adams, it might be worth considering this aspect, too. Especially since for the post WWII ones, see also Evelyn Waugh in the "present day" sections of "Brideshead Revisited", there isn't just the sense of the pre war society irrevocably gone (like in The Scouring of the Shire), but specifically resentment of the younger generation as clueless and ungrateful, and I think that is connected to the way society and specificall youth culture changed in the 1960s, on a scale that hadn't been perceived to be there in earlier wars.

[sovay]

I.e. Generation WWII feeling underappreciated by the rebellious young 'uns from the 1960s and early 1970s, seeing them as ungrateful and self indulgent and ignorant.

Seconding that it feels post-WWII to me, too. I'm reminded of a line from Emeric Pressburger's The Glass Pearls (1966), where the gap in memory is invoked much more seriously: "Perhaps nowadays they treated such cases as routine. The war, the Nazis, the camps, War Criminals were old hat. To everybody under thirty, the whole period must appear as mythical as the Boer War."

[sholio]

She's such an interesting and complicated character! (Which sounds a bit weird to say about a rabbit, and yet.) I also really loved the co-conspirator part of the book; she's such a good Efrafran foil/ally for Bigwig.

[sovay]

I also really loved the co-conspirator part of the book; she's such a good Efrafran foil/ally for Bigwig.

I don't think I romance-ship them, but I definitely competence-ship them.

[selenak]

I think Efrafra was the first fictional depiction of a totalitarian state I've come across as a child - well, almost teen, I was twelve when first reading this book. It was completely terrifying on an in-story level, and I did recognize the parallels to what I'd learned in school about totalitarian dictatorships. What strikes me now is that as a child, I saw these as "historic" - this was the early 1980s, so the Eastern Block was still there, but I still thought "Hitler and Stalin and Mao" rather than "oh, that's how citizens of the GDR might feel". Whereas now, when reading the scene where Bigwig first sees Blackavar, I immediately thought of the Belarus blogger kidnapped and then paraded on tv. "The Council has been merciful".

Back to Efrafra: like everyone else, I'm really impressed with how Adams manages to make it absolutely terrifying while still playing by the rules, so to speak -i.e. the Efrafra rabbits don't have special superpowers or a magical macguffin enabling them. Even the idea of rabbits able of wounding and killing rabbits has been introduced before - if the Sandleford Owsla had caught up with Hazel and friends for good, Hazel and Bigwig at least would have been in for a very unpleasant fate, Cowslip & Co do strike at one of the Sandleford survivors when the later ask about Hazel. It's the way everything is organized down to the slightest detail in Efrafra, who even the violence isn't spontanous but planned, and how the punishment of dissidents includes systematic cruelty and public humiliation that's new.

Woundwort himself is an excellent final Big Bad, not least because he's clever. That he's suspicious of Bigwig at the start because he knows, even though he can't admit it publically and even mentally only partly, no one in their right minds would want to join Efrafra to me is foreshadowing his later moment with Hazel - you know the one I mean - where for one heartbeat he gets it. But of course he's way too invested in his own power to do anything about this other than double down in oppression. That's also why he can't let Hyzanthlay and the other does who wanted to leave go when in fact it would have benefited not just them but the warren. The Chief Rabbit of Sandleford Warren was a bad leader because he was too inflexible, too self satisfied to consider doing something about Fiver's warning, but Woundwort is incapable of allowing dissent (or take up suggestions of change like letting some of the rabbits go) because it would mean giving up some of his power, and that's on a whole different level.

In terms of fictional tyrants, I also appreciate that Woundwort isn't the Caligula type. Nothing against the occasional mad emperor! They can be great to hiss at and be entertained by! But part of what makes Woundwort so chilling is that he's sane, imo. Evil, but sane. He doesn't torture baby rabbits for breakfast for his personal fun, he hands out punishments to dissidents to deter future dissidents, which is a different brand of evil. And he also actually shares elements with Bigwig - fighting against Elil instead of running is an idea they both had as young bucks. It's his utter lack of compassion or empathy that makes Woundwort who he is.

[sovay]

That's also why he can't let Hyzanthlay and the other does who wanted to leave go when in fact it would have benefited not just them but the warren.

That part of Woundwort and his regime is especially believable to me: that it is counterproductive to continue Efrafa as it is, overcrowded, self-consuming, but he goes on enforcing it because it is more important not to lose the power. The cruelty is beginning to become inefficient, no longer to produce results, and he goes on; the system goes on. And that looks very familiar.

[selenak]

Very true. Also what Hyzenthlay tells Bigwig re: her and Thetnuniang having ended up in the same group, which since they had been the leaders of the rebels made no sense from the pov of the regime, but happened anyway because the order "two in each group" had been given and was blindly obeyed, without thinking about the content and the sense of it. Woundwort's system has produced rabbits who do obey without ever questioning, but mistakes (from the pov of the order giver) like that are the result.

[viridian5]

I wonder if part of Bigwig's change to "leave no rabbit behind" came about partly from his development through the story. His original warren valued physical strength and a kind of aristocracy, but over the course of his journey he's been saved and had his life improved by rabbits and ideas he once might've scorned.