Watership Down: Chapter 20 Summary & Analysis

The rabbits are astonished not just to see Holly alive, all the way at Watership Down, but to find him in such a miserable state. The reality of seeing Holly so beaten and broken is more frightening for Hazel and his group, in many ways, than encountering the Black Rabbit himself. Hazel tells Dandelion to go back to the ditch and fetch Bigwig, and meanwhile send Speedwell back up the hill to tell the others. Hazel becomes aware of the presence of another rabbit—it is Bluebell, also from Sandleford. Hazel tells Bluebell and Holly that no matter how exhausted they are, they can’t stay here for the night—they’ll have to come up the hill to the burrow. Holly says he can make it, and Hazel, Bigwig, and Dandelion help the injured rabbits climb the hill.

The next day, Hazel, Blackberry, and Strawberry discuss construction on the new warren and the best way to make a large, stable meeting-room at its center—which they plan to call the Honeycomb. Throughout the rest of the day, Strawberry and the others dig happily in shifts. When a hawk flies overhead the rabbits take cover in their scrapes, but see a field mouse lost in the grass, paralyzed by fear. Hazel calls out to it and offers it shelter in the burrow, and the mouse makes a mad dash inside, narrowly avoiding the hawk. Bigwig reprimands Hazel for offering shelter to a strange animal, but Hazel tells the mouse to stay as long as he pleases.

Dandelion emerges from his burrow to update Hazel on Holly and Bluebell. After a very bad, sleepless night, Holly is finally awake and doing better—Bluebell has taken him up to silflay. Hazel and Bigwig decide to go out and talk to them. Out on the down, Holly asks about Hazel and Bigwig’s journey, and they proudly state that everyone they left the warren with has made it here today, in spite of some injuries along the way. Strawberry approaches and asks if they can all sleep in the nearly-finished Honeycomb that evening and perhaps hear Holly and Bluebell’s tale. Holly agrees to tell his story to everyone but warns the others that “it will strike the frost into the heart of every rabbit that hears it.”

Back at the warren, Holly reunites with Silver and thanks Fiver for attempting to warn the Threarah about his vision of Sandleford’s destruction. They all head down into the Honeycomb, but the mouse Hazel rescued earlier stops him on the way. He says he plans to leave, but that in exchange for Hazel’s help, he will make himself available to Hazel whenever he might need the favor returned.