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Shardik, by Richard Adams Richard Adams was born in Newbury, England in May of 1920. He was the youngest of three children, a sister, Katherine, and a brother, John. (Richard had had another brother but he died at the age of three from influenza. ) Richard was his father's favorite. George Adams (his dad), spent most of his time with young Richard teaching him about all the nature in the area. Richard grew up a few miles from the town of Newbury on a three-acre piece of land with a house named Oakdene.
Richards father was a doctor at the local hospital in Newbury and his mother, Lilian Rose Adams, was a nurse. Richard spent most of his childhood at home and out wandering around Newbury, enjoying its beauty. At about the age of 10, he was sent to the Horace Hill boarding school. After a few years, he was sent to another prep school, Bradfield, and at the age of 18, received a history scholarship to Oxford University. At the age of 21 he was enlisted in the British Army.
Adams has produced a variety of different writings. Along with his numerous novels: Watership Down, Shardik, The Plague Dogs, The Girl in a Swing, Maia, and Traveller. This essay is going to focus on the great novel by the Richard Adams, called Shardik. The core issue that we want to investigate is whether Shardik bear is truly God or was he just caught up in tangled web mere coincidence and prophecy. Shardik was really representing Gods existence in the novel because his presence made people think that miraculous things can happen and they did happen throught the story. Shardik was Adams 1974 follow-up to his phenomenally popular debut, Watership Down.
The title character is a gigantic bear who is the god of the primitive Ortelgan people. The hunter Kelderek becomes Shardik's greatest disciple and, eventually, ruler when the bear finally does make its return. Shardik starts off with an incredible description of a forest fire. You feel like you are right there witnessing it.
A huge bear escapes the flames and finds its way to Ortelga, a land on the outskirts of the Bekla Empire. The timid hunter Kelderek sees the animal and tells a priestess that the long awaited bear-god has returned to its people. The bear is Shardik. The people of Ortelga become convinced that Shardik has returned to help his people reclaim the Bekla Empire, which once was theirs. We see many fantastic things presented by Adams in his work, that give the reader the idea of how powerful can be the state of believing in God and his miracles. Shardik is a fantasy of tragic character, centered on the long-awaited reincarnation of the gigantic bear Shardik and his appearance among the half-barbaric Ortelgan people.
Mighty, ferocious, and unpredictable, Shardik changes the life of every person in the story. His advent commences a momentous chain of events. Kelderek the hunter, who loves and trusts the great bear, is swept on by destiny to become first devotee and then prophet, then victorious soldier, then ruler of an empire and priest-king of Lord Shardik- Messenger of God only to discover to ever-deeper layers of meaning implicit in his passionate belief in the bears divinity. A gripping tale of war, adventure, horror and romance, Shardik is a remarkable exploration of mankind's universal desire for divine incarnation. Thus we see that people of all times believed in God and wanted to express this belief in stories that sometimes seem to be fantastical but there is always a great portion of truth in it. Throughout the novel, Adams puts in various ideas and themes that are meant to make the reader think twice about their relationships with nature and themselves.
This novel sets up the themes of freedom and survival, which are also found in two of his other novels, and the theme of the stupidity and cruelty of man to the earth and her creatures. The Plague Dogs, Adams third novel, is about two dogs who escape from an animal research station and try to fend for themselves in the hills of England. Room, a large, black, strong mongrel who has a mean temper and who has a deathly fear of water due to the experiments performed on him. Sister, a fox terrier who has fits and has the power to see the future because of the brain surgery performed on him in the research station.
Together, they meet up with a Tod (fox). The Tod helps them survive while reporters follow the dogs and spread dangerous rumors of the plague, getting politics involved. The themes in this novel are similar to the ones in Watership Down: survival, freedom, and human cruelty, but added to this list is the theme of rights. In this case, the right of animals, but in some of his other works the theme extends to those people who are less fortunate and are in awful situations. The characters in Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, and Shardik all undertake a search for freedom, and survival. Along their quest, they are tested by nature (and sometimes man) to see how strongly they really want to be free. (Those that do not, end up dying, either physically or by giving up hope and returning to their previous situations in a worse condition than when they left. ) Those that succeed end up free, although along the way they may have nearly died, but they were striving for their freedom and a better way of life, struggling to survive.
Adams, during WWII saw many people he knew die. They died at the hands of the enemy, but some died because of faulty planning and muffled leadership. Adams describes a certain plan, Operation Market Garden, in which thousands of his comrades died, and thousands more were taken prisoner due to the poor planning of upper ranking generals. Adams was, of course, one of those who came through the Operation unharmed. Looking back, though, after the Operation and after he returned home, he had to keep on struggling to survive among all the grief that consumed him at the time. He said that he had never felt any lower at any other time in his life than when he returned home from the service.
He was able to write his novels with knowledge of what it was like to have to struggle to free one's self from whatever is holding him back, and keeping him from surviving in an environment suitable and acceptable to him. Threat of Man/Human Cruelty Love the animals. Adams book is the implication that some of mans victims are clever enough to keep us from getting away with it, and that we might even learn from them something about escaping the beastliness ourselves. He shut his eyes then, and scrabbled head-downward at the turf, for he did not want to see the pack close in, did not want to see the Tod leaping, snapping and biting, outnumbered thirty to one, the blood spurting, the tearing, thrashing and worrying, the huntsman whipping his way into the turmoil and the Tods body snatched, lifted high and knife-hacked for brush and mask before being tossed back-oh, so merrily-among the baying foxhounds. The strongest theme in The Plague Dogs, and Shardik is the roles that humans play in the lives of the animals. Cruelty, and fear of humans are just two of the main issues that Adams tries to invoke in his books.
In Shardik, the rabbits live in constant fear of humans, the strongest of their thousand predators. Humans wanting to build houses in the same place as the warren threaten the small group of rabbits out of their home. The rabbits dodge gunshots, roads, train tracks, and other man-made evils. Adams clearly is showing that humans are evil and dangerous in the eyes of animals. Humans are creatures to be feared and loathed. They are very self-centered, and only think of themselves.
In as much as Mr. Adams has a message for his readers, Id say it is to make them more sensitive to the complex balance of nature, more aware of the needs and ways of other species (and the effect of human actions on them), more mindful that we are creatures too, and must live in harmony with the others who share our world... Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hooves, And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels, And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs. The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled; And the hedgehog's household the sapper unseals... Humans, in Shardik, are depicted as enemies.
In The Plague Dogs, they are destroyers. At the Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental) Station, animals are treated like paper. Once they are used, they are thrown away. Adams clearly despises animal testing. He depicts all of the scientists at the station to be cold, ruthless, and incapable of feeling any type of emotion. He wants to persuade his readers to hate animal testing too.
He gives many examples of what goes on in the Station, what types of experiments are performed, and the attitudes of the scientists performing the experiments... was looking over the interim reports on the smoking beagles... Of course it was open to people to give up smoking, but this would plainly be an intolerable demand to make, as long as experiments on living and sentient animals held out a chance for something better... The dogs, trussed and masked, were ingeniously compelled to inhale the smoke from up to thirty cigarettes a day... after about three years they were to be killed for dissection and examination... Well, I mean, how long do we go on using the same guinea pigs?
Use them up, of course, answered Dr. Boycott rather shortly. They cost money, you know. Apart from that, its only humane. The Littlewood Committee report had an entire chapter on wastage. We dont use two animals where one will do.
Well, this lot have all had tar doses on both ears now, and the ears removed in just about every case-every case where theres a cancerous growth, thats to say. Adams life has been filled with nature. His childhood was spent living in nature and listening to his father teaches him about nature. He respected nature as a child and he respects nature now. His job, before he started writing, was that of an air-pollution expert with the British Department of the Environment. So, Adams actually decided to devote his life to the preservation and the continuing study of nature.
It is no wonder that Adams would write books that try to make people realize how precious and fragile the balance of nature truly is, and how humans are throwing that balance off. After WWII, nothing is known since Adams likes to keep his family life private. Nature/Scenery Nature and scenery are a minor theme, but they are worth mentioning because they helped to create Shardik, and Maia. Without the scenery, and Adams in-depth knowledge of nature, the atmosphere would not have been so successfully set, and the stories would have come across to the readers as being all wrong. In Shardik, the scenery helps to make the rabbits more dignified by showing perspectives.
If the novel had been written from a human perspective, everything would have been read at a taller level and the reader would never have been able to discern nuances or the feelings that the rabbits displayed. Adams had to write at a level more suitable for rabbits, not humans. In Maia, Adams weaves an imaginary world. By describing all the details, as seen by a young girl, the images become clear in ones mind. The reader can see what Maia likes and what shes afraid of.
He can see how splendid or grand the barons hallway is, and how dumpy the motel looks. In a world unknown to anyone, the scenery and nature are just as important as the characters are. Adams themes of Freedom, Survival, Threat of Man and Human Cruelty, Dignity and Rights, and Guilt all have some connection to his life. They all also pertain to all people's lives. Adams was writing novels based not only on his own experiences of his life, but he was writing to try to get a particular point across to the general public. He was trying to create awareness.
If the readers of his novels found his straightforward messages and took them to heart, he did create awareness. Thus we may state that Shardik was a godly figure in Adams novel and it represented how humans believe in God and divine incarnation. Bibliography: Adams, Richard. Shardik. New York: Avon Books, 1975.
Adams, Richard. The Plague Dogs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , 1978. Adams, Richard.
The Girl in a Swing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , 1980.
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Research essay sample on Shardik By Richard Adams
