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| December 4, 2009
Richard Adams is best known for Watership Down (reviewed below), his wonderful novel depicting the epic journey of a group of brave rabbits to find a new home and a more peaceful existence. The Plague Dogs, published five years after Watership Down, portrays two dogs undertaking an even more perilous and ambitious journey. They are also in search of a new home and a measure of peace, but this time the animals are running against time, away from men with guns, limelight-hungry politicians, and a muckraking journalist, and running far from the research laboratory where they were tortured needlessly and for no compelling reasons at all.
There are a few good men in The Plague Dogs but they remain in the background until the very end of the novel. All of the bravery and kindness comes from four-footed beasts. They are also the ones struggling with moral and existential questions about their roles and purposes in life. Bred to be obedient to a master, the dogs must learn to think for themselves and of themselves. In the process they illustrate the extent of their hearts and the force of their desires. Their Herculean and cooperative efforts underscore the pettiness, selfishness, and weakness of the humans around them.
What is so moving about The Plague Dogs
is that the dogs really just cannot understand why the humans at the
research center failed to act as responsible masters. Snitter, the
smaller dog who had long-ago experience of a good master, tries to
explain the researchers to the larger dog, who never knew the gentle
hand of a human, "They weren't real masters, Rowf. They didn't
particularly want you to be a good dog. They didn't;t care what sort
of dog you were. I don;t know what they did want. I don't believe
they knew themselves." That is the horror of the situation: the
dogs were at the mercy of an unmovable, incomprehensible force and no
matter what they did, the torture would continue. They cannot go back
once they run away, because anything, even dying in the wild, would be
better than more experiments at the hands of such humans.
Adams
writes powerfully of the twisted logic behind animal research and the
moral turpitude of research carried out without care for the animals
comfort or peace. One of the good humans recruited against his will
into the quest to hunt and kill the dogs (who are wrongly believed to
be infected with bubonic plague), states, "I dislike the whole
business of experiments on animals, unless there's some very good and
altogether exceptional reason in a particular case. The thing that
gets me is that it's not possible for the animals to understand why
they're being called upon to suffer. They don't suffer for their own
good or benefit at all, and I often wonder how far it's for anyone's.
They're given no choice, and there's no central authority responsible
for deciding whether what's done in this case or that is morally
justifiable. These experimental animals are just sentient objects;
they're useful because they're able to react; sometimes precisely
because they're able to feel fear and pain. And they're used as if
they were electric light bulbs or boots. What it comes to is that,
whereas there used to be human and animal slaves, now there are just
animal slaves. They have no legal rights, and no choice in the matter."
The Plague Dogs
could be read as a manifesto for animal rights but it is even more: it
is a compelling, fast-paced, and complex novel about the struggle for
self-determination. That the characters fighting to be free and in
control of their own destinies are dogs does not take away from the
majesty of their quest or the grace of their efforts. Adams is a
lyrical writer, willing to take his animals far into the realm of what
we deem "human" emotions, and allows them to struggle and mature before
us in a way that is believable, incredibly moving, and in the end,
inspirational.
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| November 29, 2008
I've never much liked anthropomorphic animal novels but I really enjoyed reading Watership Down by Richard Adams yesterday. It is a long book but I had a lazy day, the day after having seventeen people here for Thanksgiving dinner, and I spend it ensconced in a chair, reading this riveting tale of rabbits, the book recommended to me by my ten-year old. I really must thank him. I rarely put the book down, from start to finish. What a lovely and gripping story; I was taken in by the bravery and heart and cunning of the rabbits, by their moments of spirituality and the moments of "do or die". And the female rabbits were ever bit as brave as the males: hurrah!
Although in the book there are rabbits of true brave-hearted standing (almost mythically charged with goodness and enlightenment), there are no truly evil rabbits here, and I liked that touch of optimism. There is more a sort of misguided fierceness than evilness in the rabbit that chooses to hold his governed ones under terror and control, and I won't tell you how things turn out for him but given the optimism I mentioned above, you may be able to guess. Nevertheless, the final showdown will grab you and shake you, as if you were a rabbit in the jaws of a fox, and you will be gasping by the finish.
Watership Down, published in 1972 and of which TV and film versions have been made, is obviously popular and the popularity is warranted. Read it on a cold day by a warm fire and consider yourself a lucky rabbit indeed to have such a warm warren as the winds buffet outside.
Last note of recommendation: the descriptions of the English countryside, especially those of the down at dawn and at dusk, are evocative and charming and very real.
And finally, to quote a lovely rabbit proverb (the "thousand" are the enemies of the rabbits but I read it as joining in with the stars to mourn the death of a loved one: I'm the reader and I can read it how I like, no?):
"My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today."
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