Watership Down French word for rabbit. "Watership Down" has been described as an allegory, with the labours of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and Silver "mirror[ing] the timeless struggles between tyranny and freedom, reason and blind emotion, and the individual and the corporate state." Adams draws on classical heroic and quest themes from Homer and Virgil, creating a story with epic motifs. The book explores the themes of exile, survival, heroism, leadership, political responsibility, and the "making of a hero and a community". Joan Bridgman's analysis of Adams's works in "The Contemporary Review" identifies the community and hero motifs: "[T]he hero's journey into a
Watership Down Latins. "By basing his story on one of the most popular books of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Adams taps into a very old myth: the flight from disaster, the heroic refugee in search of a new home, a story that was already over a thousand years old when Virgil told it in 19 BC." It has been suggested that "Watership Down" contains symbolism of several religions, or that the stories of El-ahrairah were meant to mimic some elements of real-world religion. When asked in a 2007 BBC Radio interview about the religious symbolism in the novel, Adams stated that