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Musings: The Fate of Rabbits in Watership Down

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Scribner, 2005 (reprint edition)

ISBN-13: 978-0743277709

Available:  Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

I am reading Watership Down with my daughter.  It’s one of my favorite books. She is a little younger than I was when I was first given my copy, but I read it by myself and we are reading it together (never let anyone tell you that kids outgrow reading aloud with loved ones). It’s a long book and it’s possible that many of you have never read it, although you might have been traumatized by the movie as a child (I’ve never seen the movie, myself). People who love a fast-moving plot might lose patience with Watership Down and its fearful, brave group of rabbits on their journey to a new home. But stick with it, and the personalities of the rabbits and their dilemmas start to catch you.

So far, in our reading, the rabbits have escaped arrest, fled into a forest, successfully avoided a skunk and a dog, crossed a river, crossed a road, and traveled for a long distance to finally find what looks like a safe place for a new home, only to be approached by a large, well-fed, and generous rabbit who offers to adopt them into a nearby warren where all the rabbits are large and well-fed, there are no threats and no need to search for food. My Goblin Girl looked at me and said, “These rabbits are going to sacrifice other rabbits, aren’t they, so they can stay well-fed and healthy?”

Have I mentioned that I just re-read “The Lottery”? This prediction gave me chills.

I’m going to spoil the story for you and say that’s kind of exactly what happens.The rabbits in the warren have an unspoken arrangement with the farmer nearby. He kills off all their enemies and leaves them vegetable heap scraps, and they pretend they don’t know what has happened to rabbits that go missing because he’s caught them in a trap.

“Either that, or they’re cannibals”.

Cannibal rabbits?

Given her second guess, I don’t think she read ahead.

“Why do you think that?”

“Because the rabbits are too nice and too healthy and that’s always a trap. Like in The Silver Chair, the giants were kind to Eustace and Lucy but their cookbook had a recipe on “How to Cook Man”. So the rabbits either want to sacrifice Hazel or eat him”.

She’s currently leaning more toward the “cannibal” theory, rather gleefully. Never let it be said that children’s literature is sunny all the time. Those cute, fluffy, bunnies clearly are dangerous creatures. As is a well-read child.

Watership Down is sometimes read as an allegory dealing with different ways of organizing society. And this part of the novel tells us a lot about our current moment. The rabbits of the warren are willing to ignore any question that might force them to think about the brutality behind the bargain they have made, because as long as they don’t, they can enjoy a comfortable, and mostly secure life. They have normalized the disappearance of friends and family as just part of the price they pay to keep their lives easy.

The rabbits of the warren are actually scarier than the people in “The Lottery”. In “The Lottery”, everyone knows someone participating in the drawing is going to be next. The consequence is totally horrific, but at least people know what’s going on. The rabbits of the warren, though, don’t tell Hazel’s band about the arrangement they have with the farmer, that he sets traps to catch them in exchange for their easy life. Instead, they welcome the new rabbits, whose presence makes it less likely that the original rabbits will be the ones trapped, so Hazel’s bunch don’t know what to expect. The original rabbits don’t have to see what happens, so as long as they don’t talk about the missing, they can pretend nothing’s wrong. It’s not viscerally horrific like the events of “The Lottery”, but the “I didn’t see the consequences of my actions so it never happened” attitude is terrifying, because it is so real. It’s a good thing this is a story about rabbits.

I can see why my daughter prefers the cannibal rabbit theory. Nothing says “it can’t happen here” like a carnivorous bunny of evil.

Beyond the particulars, here, I want to say that the predictions she made, based on things she’s read in the past, show how essential it is to read, and hopefully, to read widely. If everyone could see the shape of a narrative, and think critically about the words set in front of them, the world, I think, would be a better place. I don’t care what format you are using for your reading, DO IT. And talk about it with as many people as you can. Seriously, I am a boring person to listen to if you don’t want to hear about books, but I will talk to you about them as much as I can.

The political implications of Watership Down are not something I noticed as a kid and they aren’t related to why I’m reading it with the Goblin Girl now. I just loved the story, and it’s worth reading just for the adventure of it. But I see them now, and just how very human Richard Adams’ rabbits are.

Watership Down is not horror, by a long shot, but it does show how the horrific can become an everyday, normalized experience. So, how’s your reading going?

 


 

Posted on March 14, 2017 by , Reply

Musings: What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013 (reprint)

ISBN-13: 978-0374533656

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, Audible

 

I’m straying from horror fiction here, but What Money Can’t Buy goes into some really gruesome and horrifying topics, the kind that made my skin crawl, and certainly not what I expected in a book about market-based economics (I know, the topic of economics is already gruesome and horrifying to some people), and I really wanted to share my reaction with you. In the book, Michael Sandel poses a question to the reader that he never really answers: are there some things that should never be for sale? A lot of economists would answer “no”. Selling or trading out of self-interest, according to them, is the most efficient way for people who want things to get them. Seems logical, right? The devil is in the details.

Maybe you shrug your shoulders at the idea of lobbyists paying people to stand in line for them and hold places at Congressional hearings, preventing ordinary citizens from getting in (unethical and unfair, but not actually gruesome), but what about selling babies to the highest bidder? If it means people who can pay for it get what they want in the most efficient way possible, many economists would be okay with that, even if it seems creepy or unethical. Sandel presents two kinds of arguments that can be used to counter this. The first is fairness– it’s not fair for some people to be able to pay to have access to Congress at the expense of others– and the second is corruption– it degrades democracy to limit access to those who can pay. Even if, on an individual level, we are okay with this, is it moral and healthy for us as a society to sell access to Congress, or children to the highest bidder? (I am certain neither democracy nor children should be for sale, but you probably guessed that).

Here’s the part that I found viscerally gruesome and horrifying, though. Once everything is for sale, life and death become commodities, too. Did you know employers like Wal-Mart take out life insurance policies on their employees that have huge payouts to the company when the person dies? That person’s family may not collect anything, while the company gets hundreds of thousands of dollars. Apparently there are a lot of companies that do this. Has yours invested in a payout for them on your life? Because that’s creepy and seems really unfair, as well.   Did you know about viatical insurance? That’s where a terminally ill person with maybe a year left to live sells the value of their life insurance policy at a discount to an investor so they can pay for medical care. If the ill person dies, the investor collects the life insurance policy. If the person doesn’t die within a year, the investor loses the money. While most people don’t make this investment with the specific goal of profiting off death, the investor has to hope the ill person dies.  How awful is that? Hoping someone will die so you can cash in on it? When AIDS drugs to extend patients’ lifespan became available, some particularly unpleasant investors actually harassed the ill person– and it’s the investors who described the longer life spans as “horror stories”.  A state legislator actually voted against programs to help AIDS victims and then invested in viatical insurance for AIDS patients. That is not human nature at its best.

I should not be surprised at the existence of death pools–  a game where players make bets on what celebrities will die in a particular year. 2016 must have been a bonanza for them. There’s not actually a huge amount of money in play– it’s just really, really morbid. It’s even been the topic of a movie, with celebrities getting mysteriously knocked off. If there isn’t a horror novel out there that has used this yet, it’s just waiting to happen.

For me, THE most disturbing thing, though, was discovering that there was a proposed market in terrorism futures, suggested by our own Department of Defense on the theory that if the traders were backing their trades with their own money, they would use the abilities and research skills they used to trade futures in other markets to successfully predict assassinations and terrorist attacks. Congress, thankfully, shot this idea down. But this is the question Sandel poses us: does the end justify the means? If terminally ill patients can get the treatment they need, does it matter that an investor profits off their eventual death? If we can predict and prevent a terrorist attack, does it matter that it leaves a dark mark on the investors’ morals? Economists would say the moral issues are irrelevant, but are they really if they corrupt us? It’s not something that ends up affecting just one indivdual, but the way we all experience the meaning of life and death. I am really distressed at the idea of life and death being treated as commodities, although it probably happens in smaller ways every day.

Sandel covers other issues as well. Also included in the chapter on markets in death, he described bundled life insurance policies sold to banks being packaged into tradable securities that would generate income as the holders of the policies died, and could be sold to pension funds– pretty grim stuff. Other areas he mentions include paying to jump the line in a number of contexts, from Congressional hearings and national parks campsites to airports and amusement parks; providing incentives in areas as varied as paying kids for grades, carbon offsets, and selling the right to immigrate; naming rights and commercialization in contexts including nature trails, sports stadiums, jails, and schools; and the way markets can degrade or demean human relationships, volunteerism, and civic pride. My sense is that Sandel is counting on us to recognize that, while the efficiency of markets is beneficial in some contexts, the “better angels of our nature” cannot be bought. Yet. If we don’t examine the way commericalization and trade are affecting our society, though, those markets in life and death, and in so much else, will become more and more troubling, and we will see a great deal more of unfairness and corruption infecting our world. This is excellent, if disturbing, food for thought, as we navigate through today’s political, financial, and civic structures and issues.


Posted on March 1, 2017 by , Reply

Musings: I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora


I Kill the Mockingbird by Paul Acampora
Square Fish, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-1250068088
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

I will preface this by saying it is not horror. It is, however, an amazing middle school/YA title that book lovers of all ages ought to know about, and I personally loved it.

I Kill the Mockingbird  examines the effects of hope, love, grief, and literature on the lives of three teenagers who decide to become literary saboteurs as a tribute to their recently deceased English teacher, Fat Bob, who intended to assign just one book(his favorite) as summer reading: To Kill a Mockingbird. Lucy, Michael, and Elena are best friends and book lovers looking forward to summer reading, but as school lets out, the other students are unenthusiastic. Lucy devises a plan to get people reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and enlists Michael and Elena to help. The three of them decide to secretly create and publicize a conspiracy to make it impossible to find a copy of the book, traveling by bus to libraries and bookstores to hide all copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, and leaving flyers behind that advertise a website they’ve built to create buzz about their conspiracy. Taking advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media channels, their little conspiracy rockets out of control as they build a following all over the country, with copycats hiding the book in other communities and demand for copies of To Kill a Mockingbird rising. Lucy’s summer also involves more personal grief, uncertainty, and growth, as she deals with her feelings when her mother returns home after a protracted and nearly fatal battle with cancer and considers whether she’s willing to risk her friendship with Michael by taking it a step further.

It’s wonderful to see how the lives and families of these three friends are so integrated and familiar with each other, and to see how independent and motivated these kids are, in a world where relationships seem to be fragmented by distance, overscheduling, and social media. And as a book lover, and someone who really believes in getting people (and especially kids) engaged in reading, this was an absolute joy to me. While the plot is well-paced, and the book is a quick read, books, reading, and discussions of the ideas in books (and especially in To Kill a Mockingbird) also have a major role. However, while these are integral, they are not didactic– exactly the kind of thing you would hope to see in the lives of book-loving teens and their families. Near the end of the book there is also a really fascinating part where the characters debate whether burning books, even library rejects, is ever acceptable. The practical application of this is never tested, though, leaving us to struggle with our own answer to that question.

The characters were complicated and enjoyable, the plot was original, and the story of these three teens as they grow and change, and change the world, during the summer between the end of middle school and the beginning of high school, just lifted my heart. I Kill the Mockingbird is a thoughtful, funny, sad, and inspiring book that offers no easy answers, and just might make you crack open a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird yourself.

As a final note, the publisher suggests this as an appropriate book for ages 10-14. On its own, I agree that this is appropriate for this age group, and would include older teens as well. However, I can see this book inspiring kids to try To Kill a Mockingbird, and some 10 year olds are still in fourth grade. Even Fat Bob, the eighth grade teacher in this book, suggests that it can be best read and understood after eighth grade. I suggest that discussion of this would be warranted with elementary aged children interested in taking this further.

Posted on January 14, 2017 by , Reply
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