Watership Down: Chapter 49 Summary & Analysis

With their leader gone and the threat of the dog lingering in the air, the Efrafans cannot renew their attack on Watership Down. None of them have any motivation beyond saving their own lives. Campion leads the rabbits back to Efrafa, though there are only fourteen or fifteen in the group. As they make their way back to their warren, they are set upon by elil, and lose many of their numbers, including Vervain, to foxes and stoats.

Groundsel remains at Watership Down, having surrendered to Fiver after the dog’s attack. A few more Efrafans followed him in the confusion, and they, too, are welcomed into Watership Down without much fanfare—the Watership Down rabbits are too focused on their own. Bigwig is near death, and Hyzenthlay helps nurse him back to health. Hazel is nowhere to be found, and Pipkin leads a small group to Nuthanger to search for him, but they go only a short distance before running into their leader himself.

Back at the warren, Hazel immediately goes to Bigwig. Though the larger rabbit is weak and hardly conscious, Hazel tells him how proud he is of him. Bigwig jokes, in Kehaar’s accent, that he has “finish Meester Voundvort,” and Hazel helps him up to silflay. Bigwig, sitting in the grass, announces that he’s done with fighting for good. He asks how Hazel got back to the warren, and when Hazel replies that a man drove him back in a hrududu, Bigwig does not believe him. Hyzenthlay, though, appears to corroborate Hazel’s story—she reminds Bigwig of her vision back in Efrafa.