Watership Down

Hazel’s rabbits sometimes use floating wood to accomplish their aims. Early on, Blackberry realizes that a piece of driftwood can be converted into a crude form of transport to carry the wounded Pipkin across a small river. Later, Blackberry realizes that a punt tied to a river shoreline can serve as an escape vehicle for the rabbits’ scheme to liberate does from Efrafa. In both situations, Blackberry makes what is, for rabbits, ingenious use of materials. These incidents symbolize the protagonists’ willingness to think widely and creatively instead of limiting themselves to what rabbits already know.

The Honeycomb is the great central hall of the new warren on Watership Down. The hall is the idea of Strawberry, who remembers the design of a similar hall at Cowslip’s warren. It’s a gathering place where the rabbits can socialize safely underground. The Honeycomb symbolizes Hazel’s belief in cooperation, friendship, and ingenuity.

The “iron road” is a set of railroad tracks that confront Hazel’s rabbits during their journeys to Efrafa. When escaping from that warren, Holly’s team crosses the tracks and are saved when their pursuers are stopped by a train that, to them, is “full of fire and smoke and light and it roared and beat on the metal lines until the ground shook beneath it” (314).