Sunflash

[Shadowed One]

You know how in Outcast of Redwall Skarlath calls Sunflash well, Sunflash! But in Mossflower Bella says that her son is Sunflash. So is this just an odd coincidence, or is there a logical reason for this?

[Free Thought]

They are both the same badger.

[Shadowed One]

I know that, I am just wondering how Skarlath gave him the name he already had unknowingly.

[Redwaller]

Skarlath explained it in Outcast.

[Ungatt Trunn]

Skarlath explained it in Outcast.

I forgot: what was the explination? Its been a while since I've read The Outcast of Redwall, so I dont remember it top hole, as a hair would put it .

[Blazemane]

Skarlath does seem to just come up with it on the spot, so Bella talking about it in Mossflower does seem a little exact to me, too.

I don't think Brian Jacques ever wrote out an explanation for this, but it's still possible that he was implying one--which is that it was destiny that Skarlath would come up with the same name Bella and Barkstripe had given to him at birth.

Jacques wrote Outcast well after he wrote Mossflower; since he obviously remembered or looked back at the name he had given Sunflash in that latter book, it seems like there had to be some reason that he would feel the need to have Sunflash's name lost and then discovered in the first place. One possible explanation for this is that Jacques had simply forgotten that Bella knew Sunflash's name in Mossflower, and so, when he felt the need to tell the reader of the significance of Sunflash's name, he accidentally felt safe having Sunflash's name invented there on the spot. But that seems rather unlikely, because in The Outcast of Redwall itself, he writes Bella as remembering Sunflash's name long before she meets him again at the end of the book. It seems like it would be really hard for Jacques to not realize his mistake since he made it not just between books, but within the story of one self-contained book. When he got to page 205 or so in Outcast, how could he not be thinking--"wait... how come she knows his name?" And yet, he never explains her knowledge there, either.

But there is another natural explanation for why Brian Jacques actually devoted time to "inventing" Sunflash's name, in my opinion. And that is that for Jacques, there was something he could say with that scene--there was a bit of story he could tell. Swartt gave Sunflash a demeaning name (Scumstripe), so when Skarlath not only gives Sunflash a better name, but actually manages to unwittingly recreate his actual one, it seems like a small victory of good over evil. In this was intentional, then Jacques was not making a mistake at all.

I can't be sure that that's what Brian Jacques meant to do, but it seems like a possibility to me, and either way, I think it can be read that way whether Jacques meant it or not. And for me, that takes away some of the "plot-holeness" of it if it was an oversight.

[Ungatt Trunn]

A good explanation, Blazemane!

[Shadowed One]

Yeah, it was very good!

[Blazemane]

Thanks, both of you!

[Leatho Shellhound]

Yes, that's a good one. And then at the end of the book, isn't his name changed again?

[Shadowed One]

Yes, it gets changed to Sunstripe.

[Ungatt Trunn]

Yes, it gets changed to Sunstripe.

He changed it to show that he had conformed to peace, or something like that...

[The Shade]

Yes, it gets changed to Sunstripe.

He changed it to show that he had conformed to peace, or something like that...

I'm reading the book, yeah he did.

[rachel25]

I love outcast and there for I have tried to learn everything about it and I do think it was a coincidence  I do think if I met a badger like Sunflash and had the chance to name him i'd name him Sunflash because it just suits him to a T   

[naima]

i just finished reading outcast of redwall this morning. i think bella said that she dreamed that his name was sunflash. i also seem to recall that sunflash remembered the names of his parents and grandparents using the power of the dream before he'd made it to salamandastron.