Commentary on the Book Outcast of Redwall

[Wylder Treejumper]

For discussion related to the book Outcast of Redwall.

@James Gryphon: If these topics are considered unnecessary please delete.

[belle]

It started out as interesting, but the ending was stupid. The moral of the story was basically, "If you're a vermin, you're born evil, always will be evil, even if you sacrifice yourself to save your adoptive mother in the end because maybe you wouldn't have done it if you'd known you'd actually die (?), and the main characters will preach the lesson at the end, rendering the whole story pointless because it was no different from any other Redwall book." I have to say the same for Taggerung - as much as I love the other aspects of the story, making Tagg get adopted by vermin was really pointless.
Besides, two thirds of the book wasn't even about Veil, and when they finally introduced him, they just made vague allusions to him "stealing things" from Dibbunhood to prove he was evil. As an example, they showed him stealing a pit of honey. Really?

[Delthion]

No, that wasn't the meaning of the ending. The meaning of the ending is that you AREN'T bound by your birth, he struggled, because of his bitterness and the (justified) qualms of the elders. Eventually, these things lead him to be banished, much like the vole in Eulalia! Then, at the end he proves that vermin are capable of being heroes.

Veil wasn't the subject of the story, Skarlath, Sunflash and Swartt were the main characters, the Redwallians were just added to show depth.

[Ashleg]

This book should be called something else.
"Sunflash's Magical Journey to Somewhere" would even be more fitting because the book was more about that than Veil.

[Delthion]

Outcast of Redwall sounds much cooler though.

[Ashleg]

It does, but I remember being so peeved that Veil wasn't the main character!


Or we could just call it "The Controversy Book" because that's what it is. Yep.

[Delthion]

I remember not minding that Veil wasn't the main character, and finding Skarlath awesome in the highest degree.

[James Gryphon]

@belle: I'd have to reread the sections with just Veil to say for sure (which is hard to do, considering how I like the rest of the book so much, and it'd be hard to pick it up and not read it ), but at first glance, reading between the lines of what his wiki article says, maybe it wasn't so much the theft he did as his attitude about it. Redwall Dibbuns "borrow" food all the time, but I don't know that they consistently lie about it when they're confronted. Apparently Veil did and had previously done that.

We also see his darker side come out when he talks about getting rid of Bunfold's honey pot, just out of malice. Maybe Bunfold was mean to him, but we've seen other strict Abbey figures with unruly dibbuns, and none of them that I recall ever responded close to the way Veil did. I think it's fair to say that there was a degree of nastiness there that wasn't present in the other younglings. The poisoning wasn't something he did just out of the blue; it was the (admittedly drastic) culmination of a visible, gradual progression of bad behavior.

Del does have a point with his post. I think it's fair to say that the "meaning" of the ending is ambiguous. Judging by the way Mr. Jacques answered those who wrote him about it, it seems that was exactly the response he was looking for; he wanted his readers to think about it and decide for themselves.



Talking about the vermin = evil thing in general... I believe Mr. Jacques once said something to the effect of the quote that can be found on Snowfur's page, namely, "Cluny isn't evil because he's a rat.  He's a rat because he's evil."

The problem we can readily perceive here is that the characters can often tell the difference based on the other characters' species, namely, whether they're "vermin" or not.

It's worth noting it wasn't always that way. In the first three books, they did seem unaware of this distinction. Abbot Mortimer is willing to treat the rats with compassion and respect we quickly find out they don't deserve; Martin is concerned about the deceased old searat on the seashore, and the Abbey sees nothing wrong with letting an all-vermin troupe into their walls in Mattimeo. If they remained consistently like this throughout the series, I don't think anyone would have a problem with the perceived bias.

There is some trouble with that, though. If it was written this way, then readers would start asking why the Redwallers are so stupid and naive as to keep letting those who are obviously villains behind their walls, and that they should be able to tell the difference because the bad guys are always certain species... so, for what it's worth, Mr. Jacques was kinda trapped between a rock and a hard place. You can either follow the world's premise of by-and-large racially segregated morality to its reasonable conclusion of prejudice, or you can have the characters remain impossibly, illogically ignorant of the way their world works, and get knocked for that instead.

Needless to say, neither result is very satisfying. It might've worked better to cast just character's personalities, not their alignment, by species, but he would have had to write things differently from the very first book to make that work.

I hate to say it, but I think this issue is something that's probably best left not thought too much about, if we want to enjoy the series the way it's meant to be done.

This book should be called something else.

@Ashleg: I still like my proposed name for it, which I posted on the old forum: "Sixclaw".

[Ashleg]

I remember not minding that Veil wasn't the main character, and finding Skarlath awesome in the highest degree.

If I tell ya'll the truth about how I feel about Skarlath, you'll want my head on a pike.

[Delthion]

Skarlath was the best bird character and the second best Redwall character to die in the series!

[James Gryphon]

This is just my personal opinion.

I don't know that I agree on Skarlath; if I made a list of who I thought were the best bird characters, I don't think he'd come up in the top #5, and maybe not even the top #10. In my list of protagonists who died, I don't expect he would perform any better. It's not his fault, but he spent too much time doing things off-page, and (perhaps because of that?) he didn't show as much distinct personality as he might've.

Don't get me wrong; he functioned as an incredibly effective sidekick (although he was outdone in that same book by Nightshade), but I'm not sure he's a particularly standout character in his role as a representative of good birdkind.

[alexandre]

This book should be called something else.

I have always thought the titles of "Eulalia!" and "Outcast of Redwall" should be switched. If you think about it, Orkwil was more important to Eulalia! than Veil was to Outcast, and they were both outcasted.

[James Gryphon]

Maybe so, but Orkwil was only kicked out for a few days before they overturned the decision (admittedly, due to extenuating circumstances), and it was done without too much in the way of hard feelings from either party. Veil left vowing bloody revenge, and never returned. Being outcast was definitely a more significant moment in Veil's life than it was in Orkwil's.

[alexandre]

Being outcast was definitely a more significant moment in Veil's life than it was in Orkwil's.

True, but Orkwil being an outcast was a much more important detail in the books plot then it was for Veil even if it kind of did effect Veil himself more than it did Orkwil.

[Groddil]

Being outcast was definitely a more significant moment in Veil's life than it was in Orkwil's.

True, but Orkwil being an outcast was a much more important detail in the books plot then it was for Veil even if it kind of did effect Veil himself more than it did Orkwil.

Not really. :p

Spoiler ahead:

Orkwil could have just as easily discovered Gorath even if he wasn't exiled, though. Veil's exile caused Bryony to leave the Abbey, and kick the plot in motion. If it wasn't for his exile, Sunflash would've been captured or died at the end of the book, and/or, even if Bryony left anyway, she'd be dead instead of Veil.