Redwall (book)
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Image:RedwallBookCover.jpg Redwall is a fantasy novel by Brian Jacques. It was originally published in 1986, and is the first book of the Redwall series. Coming in at 416 pages long, the book was illustrated by Gary Chalk, with the British cover illustration by Pete Lyon and the American covers by Troy Howell.
Contents |
Plot
The novel centers on the fate of its eponymous abbey and the characters contained within. Redwall was founded by a great mouse hero named Martin the Warrior, who swore himself to peace when he did, and his followers throughout the ages have done the same. One of its novitiates, Matthias, dreams more of times of adventure than a life of quiet servitude, but he is counseled to patience by his elders. Redwall Abbey is a fixture in the local community, which mostly revolves around Mossflower Wood, and was designed to be a place of refuge for the beasts of the forest in times of trouble.
Trouble arrives in the form of Cluny the Scourge, an evil, infamous rat, and his horde of vermin. The foebeasts arrive at the beginning of the book and make their headquarters at the Church of St. Ninian, to the south of Redwall, with the intention of taking the Abbey for themselves. The Abbey inhabitants refuse to back down and make ready to defend themselves if necessary, especially since most of the inhabitants of the surrounding area are now within its walls. None of them are particularly martial, but Redwall folk, and indeed much of the Mossflower population, are generally described as slow to anger but fierce fighters when aroused, and they are able to make an effective defense. But Matthias, fearing that Cluny will still overrun them, begins a quest to find the legendary sword of Martin the Warrior, which is supposedly hidden somewhere in the Abbey, stored away against a rainy day. He is helped particularly by Methuselah, an old and grizzled librarian mouse. Matthias is a brave-hearted young mouse, if small in stature (obviously), and as the story continues, his natural leadership abilities begin to emerge.
Image:RedwallUSCover.jpgClues to the location of Martin's sword, as well as his shield and the sword's scabbard, have been built into the Abbey. Matthias recovers the latter two, and with Methuselah's help eventually divines where the sword is hidden. Unfortunately, it isn't there any longer, having been stolen by a wild sparrow tribe years previoiusly. A few years after that, however, the snake Asmodeus stole the sword from the sparrows. The continuing search leads Matthias to the Abbey attics, where a fierce and chattering tribe of sparrows live, and then to the lair of the gigantic snake Asmodeus. Along the way he acquires several allies: Log-a-Log, the leader of a local band of shrews; Basil Stag Hare, wandering do-gooder and general cad, and Warbeak Sparra, a princess of the sparrow tribe who becomes Matthias's friend when they are forced to work together against the insane sparrow king. He succeeds in retrieving the sword from Asmodeus's cave (in the process killing the snake) and rushes back to Redwall to save his friends.
Cluny, in the meanwhile, has been attempting a number of unsuccessful strategies to gain entrance to the Abbey. He finally "persuades" the dormouse Plumpen to allow him into the Abbey, and by stealth and treachery Cluny takes over Redwall. However, his victory is short-lived; barely has he declared himself Redwall's new ruler when Matthias returns. He, his allies and the assembled Redwall population turn on their captors; Matthias himself takes on Cluny, and defeats him by crushing him under the Abbey's main bell. The novel closes with an epilogue, stating that Matthias has married the mousemaid he loves and now has a son, Mattimeo (a portmanteau of the names Matthias, Methuselah and late abbot Mortimer), who will doubtlessly succeed his father as the Warrior of Redwall. This trend seems to taper off as the novels progress.
Trivia
- A number of characters in the Redwall series have names that seem allegorical to their biblical counterparts. Most notably in this novel are Methuselah; who was the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, and a fiendish snake named Asmodeus, perhaps after a fallen angel, that terrorizes the land around Redwall abbey.
- Redwall, as the first book written, contains no references to other books and so although it has a definite place in the chronology, appears to occur several hundred seasons after the last book before it in the chronology. The gap between Salamandastron and Redwall is an indefinite period of time in which all bloodline links to the earlier past and most physical links are lost. Notable exceptions are the tapestry and sword of Martin. The only past character mentioned except Martin the Warrior is Joseph the Bellmaker, and only then in the name of the bell, which is destroyed in the book, presumably taking all knowledge of Joseph with it. However events in Mattimeo make clear that such links do survive as, being written after Mossflower, Mattimeo contains references to it.
Discrepencies
As Redwall was the first book in his series, many of the defining traits of the series had not been hammered out.
The World
- Redwall appeared to take place in the real world. Cluny was referred to as a Portugese Water Rat at one point. Additionally, Methuselah claimed that one of the accounts of Cluny came from a town dog. The horse present in the early chapters was the size of a normal horse, and the wagon it pulled was scaled to the same size - an entire army of rats was able to ride in it.
Size Descrepancy
- Matthias was able to land in the mouth of a cat, indicating that the cat/mouse sizes were the same as in real life.
- A snowy owl was big enough to catch and eat mice.
- A horse was big enough to draw a cart that carried an entire army of rats
- Constance the badger was described as far bigger than the mice and rats repeatedly, able to carry a fish in her mouth that the mice couldn't move. She also lifted a table, and was able to outfight rats while unarmed.
- Asmodeus the viper was big enough to swallow rats whole.
- A beaver was described as being similarly big.
Redwall Descrepancies
- In Redwall, references were made to the Order of Redwall being an actual religious order.
- Redwall Abbey was described as being home to The Order. The Woodlanders were invited inside the Abbey walls for protection when Cluny invaded, but they did not live there.
- The beaver in Redwall was the only one to appear in the entire series.
- John Churchmouse, in particular, lived with his family in St. Ninian's Church. Reference was made to their poverty. In latter books, everyone lives in the Abbey, in comfort.
- In Redwall, Guosim was a character, and the Guerilla Shrews were called the Guerilla Shrews. In later books, the shrews themselves were referred to as the GUOSIM, and no mention of the character Guosim was made, even in Mattimeo (which took place at a time where she had only died relatively recently). The Shrews did not rename themselves after her, indicated by the fact that they were referred to as Guosim in books chronologically earlier than Redwall.
- Bees can communicate in Redwall, indicated by a statement at the end of the book where the Guerilla Shrews learned to speak the bee language so they could trade and argue. This was not noted in other books.
- Foxes are indicated as not all evil. It is mentioned that Abbot Mortimer used to trade tomes with "wandering healer foxes". Sela The Vixen's brood of foxes was referred to as a particularly bad one, indicating that they were an exception and not the norm.
Translations
- (French) Rougemuraille: Cluny le fléau
- Tome 1 : Le Seigneur de la guerre
- Tome 2 : L'Épée légendaire
- Tome 3 : La Vipère géante
- (German) Redwall: Der Sturm auf die Abtei
- Die Mauer
- Die Suche
- Der Krieger
- (Dutch) De Roodburcht
- De Aanval
- De Zoektocht
- De Krijger
- (Finnish) Soturi Matiaksen Miekka
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