Do you consider this book to be an allegory?
- Diana Lowery
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Do you consider this book to be an allegory?
- NetMassimo
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Massimo
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Great Answer! What do you think the character of Brokenear was meant to represent?NetMassimo wrote: ↑13 Jul 2025, 14:45 I never read Watership Down, but I can say that this is the opposite of Animal Farm, in the sense that Orwell wrote an allegory of a Communist revolution and its descent into a dictatorship while this book is about a honest leader growing to run a democratic society. So yes, it's an allegory.
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I don't know if the author thought of any real person(s) while creating Brokenear. He might be a sort of archetype of the ruler who demands obedience and wants to be a total dominator over his people.Diana Lowery wrote: ↑14 Jul 2025, 10:10Great Answer! What do you think the character of Brokenear was meant to represent?NetMassimo wrote: ↑13 Jul 2025, 14:45 I never read Watership Down, but I can say that this is the opposite of Animal Farm, in the sense that Orwell wrote an allegory of a Communist revolution and its descent into a dictatorship while this book is about a honest leader growing to run a democratic society. So yes, it's an allegory.

Massimo
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Yeah, Brokenear definitely gave off those classic authoritarian vibes. Even if he wasn’t based on a specific person, he feels like a stand-in for that power-hungry ruler archetype we see in fiction.NetMassimo wrote: ↑14 Jul 2025, 10:33I don't know if the author thought of any real person(s) while creating Brokenear. He might be a sort of archetype of the ruler who demands obedience and wants to be a total dominator over his people.Diana Lowery wrote: ↑14 Jul 2025, 10:10Great Answer! What do you think the character of Brokenear was meant to represent?NetMassimo wrote: ↑13 Jul 2025, 14:45 I never read Watership Down, but I can say that this is the opposite of Animal Farm, in the sense that Orwell wrote an allegory of a Communist revolution and its descent into a dictatorship while this book is about a honest leader growing to run a democratic society. So yes, it's an allegory.

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Couldn't have said it better! I love finding similarities in disparate works and I think it's interesting to try and draw parallel's with Animal Farm here (for example, the relationship between Snowball and Old Major in Animal Farm has something of a similar dynamic to Bushytail and Bristle), but the two stories lead the characters down extremely different paths. But yes, definitely allegorical!NetMassimo wrote: ↑13 Jul 2025, 14:45 I never read Watership Down, but I can say that this is the opposite of Animal Farm, in the sense that Orwell wrote an allegory of a Communist revolution and its descent into a dictatorship while this book is about a honest leader growing to run a democratic society. So yes, it's an allegory.