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 realm of terrors to bring back some boon to save himself and his people" is a powerful element in Adams's tale. This theme derives from the author's exposure to the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell, especially his study of comparative mythology, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" (1949), and in particular, Campbell's "monomyth" theory, also based on Carl Jung's view of the unconscious mind, that "all the stories in the world are really one story." The concept of the hero has invited comparisons between "Watership Down's" characters and those in Homer's "Odyssey" and Virgil's "Aeneid". Hazel's courage, Bigwig's strength, Blackberry's