Socialism, Female Characters in YA, and Redwall

[twirlynoodle]

A few years ago, when Occupy was doing their thing and their grievances and agenda were in the news, I had this thought:

These are clever, resourceful, idealistic, fit young people in their prime, who evidently don't mind a bit of discomfort to prove a point. If they want to reject the system, why don't they pool their resources, launch a

Comments

[ericadawn16]

Because that only helps them, not other people still suffering from those problems. There are still off-shoots of Occupy buying up mortgages and educational debts for others and helping out in other ways.

Short of making your own private island or finding a very small country somewhere,  I'm not sure how legal your idea is...everywhere else is already owned by a country and they don't like having areas secede from them. Heck, the Ukraine had been separate for years and Russia still fought to get them back.

[twirlynoodle]

Oh, I never considered secession to be part of the equation, more just a self-sufficient, self-contained, non-profit community which wouldn't be of much interest to the government because it would be of no interest to the IRS. Like a monastery. Incorporate as an NFP and register as a Conscientious Objector and that's all the independence you need.

If people joined them en masse, starting their own similar communities, the number of people dropping out of the economy would make the people in charge sit up and listen, in a way that a bunch of tents in a city park would not. If you can't change The System (as was evident) then prove you don't actually need The System. If it wants you back it'll change; if it doesn't, well, you don't need it anyway. And the people participating would be better off because they would no longer have to scramble for rent money and would be getting plenty of fresh air, exercise, and organic food

[tigerannesims2]

A guy I work with is really, really into the whole "Ringing Cedars" thing. He's Polish, and he says it's apparently a huge thing in Eastern Europe. After he pestered me about it a bit, I went a-googling, and came up with quite a few stories about people who found out the hard way that living in the middle of the forest, with no clothes on, in winter, wasn't as blissful as they had expected.

Society will never be perfect, because humans can't ever become perfect, but it's built by humans, for humans, in accordance to thousands of years worth of finding out what works for us and what doesn't. Utopias are always experiments, and they fail to take into account the flaws of human nature, or thinks that those flaws can be corrected. But that's naive, because humans are daaaaaaaark.

"Liberal brainwash", huh? My parents were also a bit worried about that. And they were pretty close to being socialists themselves! x)

[furtech]

If I had read the Redwall books as a kid, I would probably be a fan, too. However, the things that would have attracted me to the books when young-- particularly the black-and-white villains/good-guys-- bother me as an adult (and I read the books as an adult). The vermin=evil=should-be-killed has echoes of WWII propaganda (probably from his experiences growing up during WWII).

I kept wanting him to have good foxes, ferrets or rats-- even just one or two. Nope. Even the titular character of Outcast of Redwall seems to support that even vermin raised by good folk cannot help but be "bad".

The first few books were enjoyable reads, but the same themes and characters started to become stale. I wish his storytelling and characters would have gotten more sophisticated as he wrote (as with the Harry Potter books), but that never happened (and in fact, became more and more juvenile and predictable as the books went on.

[twirlynoodle]

I agree with you for the most part, and I can't imagine liking them so much discovering them as an adult. I've always thought, though, that the assignment of species to characters is more effect than cause (i.e. you are an otter because you are good, not good because you're an otter), in the way species tend to be assigned in animated films, but then we veer into super hypothetical metaphysics which I don't think the books warrant at all. I liked the world and adventures. Philosophical implications are Pratchett's domain.

I did notice even as a teenager an abrupt change in quality after Martin the Warrior, and my rereads were limited to the first six in the series. I suspected a ghostwriter at the time because the output increased dramatically as well, and there were occasional glimmers of the 'real' B.J., but looking back at it now that might have been simply the shift from writing something he cared about to churning out books for money. Who knows

[furtech]

I never thought of looking at the characters that way ( "you are an otter because you are good, not good because you're an otter"). Huh. That kind of characterization reminds me more of C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" -- but he was very much into the metaphysical stuff you talk about

[twirlynoodle]

Lewis did the metaphysical and so did Grahame (Wind in the Willows), and Jacques is definitely following in their footsteps (especially Grahame's) even if he keeps clear of the metaphysical in his own writing. There was a little more of that in his non-Redwall books, if I recall, but not as well-developed. I wonder if the class associations made him uncomfortable swimming in that pool, or if leaving school at 15 he just didn't get exposed to the sort of stuff that would have brought greater philosophical depth to his writing. We may never know.

It surprises me that for all the people who raise the same objections you do to the 'speciesism' - especially ones in my generation - no one has looked at it from the other angle. Surely they all grew up with the same animated films I did? It's not like I'm applying some esoteric logic to it, I was just assuming it worked on the same basis as Robin Hood and The Lion KingI hear you on the redemption thing, but, well ... not every story can be a redemption story, I suppose. I wonder if that

[anathelen]

I read Redwall in college and really appreciated all the understated female characters. Thanks for reminding me of them! I'm glad I'm not the only person who decided to revisit British books when they went to England. I packed two Aubrey-Maturin books, a Sherlock Holmes compendium, and Persuasion, and just sucked up the Englishness. It was absolutely lovely to update my mental photo gallery

[nasubionna]

Thanks for writing this. Redwall (and the other books set in the same universe) was very dear to me as a child, too, and I still have my autographed copy. Like you, I no longer have a need for it the way I once did, so it's been many years since I've read it. So I appreciated reading this rundown/reminder of the great female characters. It's sad that when I was a kid, the fact that there were lots of terrific women characters didn't phase me at all, because, duh, of COURSE there are diverse women characters! But now, as an adult, it is much more surprising to me that they were there. Sigh.