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Situational Irony
Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Watership Down is deeply rooted in traditions of European folklore and mythology. As such, Adams makes frequent use of poems, folktales, and proverbs within the text, including these as snippets throughout. Excerpts from various Western authors and playwrights can also be found at the beginning of each chapter, further connecting the rabbits' oral traditions to the human oral and literary traditions that inspired the novel.
Rabbit society is an ideal blueprint through which to explore early human societies. There existed, in human history, a time before written language—a time before books, or literature. Even when written language evolved, many people still did not have access to books or the education to read them. Consequently, many of the stories now considered important cultural artifacts in human societies were memorized and passed down from orator to orator, kept in the public consciousness by word of mouth.
This tradition persists in the modern day in the form of poetry—which, while always written down, is often read aloud to others. The structure of meter and rhyme help with memorization. Watership Down incorporates poetry's oral tradition as well as the oral tradition around folktales. Rabbits share stores and poetry alike with one another, drawing on collective knowledge passed down from generation to generation, much as early humans once did.
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