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Post by Dear Dairy on Mar 4, 2009 23:36:26 GMT -5
First of all, hurrah for cow-disguised henchpersons!
Second, in regard to Nathaniel Hawthorne having religious connections: Just about everything Hawthorne wrote had a religious-based theme. Hawthorne, as a descendant of one of the judges at the infamous Salem witch trials, felt a burden of guilt for his family's part in that debacle all his life. (He even changed the spelling of his name from Hathorne to Hawthorne in an effort to distance himself from this notorious connection.) In an attempt to come to grips with that guilt, his writing was often in the form of moral allegory, exploring the complexity of sin and its psychological effects on individuals; he believed that evil was inherent in humanity. As far as Handler's adding Hawthorne's name in that list of oaths, I think he was making a sly jab at Hawthorne's tendency toward the moralistic tale, and giving a knowing nod to readers who would grin when they read Hawthorne's name in that context.
An interesting side note, which may or may not have relevance to ASoUE, is found in Hawthorne's preface to The House of the Seven Gables: He states that its moral is that "the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones and... becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief." The workings of the "parent generation" of VFD certainly affected the lives of their children (Baudelaire, Quagmire, and so on) in mischievous, unfortunate ways, wouldn't you say?
One final note: Hawthorne wrote "Rappaccini's Daughter," a story in which the main character is named . . .
*drumroll*
BEATRICE!
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Post by Mijahu on Mar 5, 2009 0:10:01 GMT -5
AHH! I'm absolutely in love with all of the literary allusions in this series.
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Post by Hermes on Mar 5, 2009 10:44:17 GMT -5
Dear Dairy: that's very intersting. I wonder how many literary Beatrices there are? As for the Shakespeare figurehead, I wouldn't read too much into taking Shakespeare as representing Prospero or vice-versa for the purposes of the illustration; I'd assume Helquist was just making the Shakespeare link explicit, or indeed, "canonical," if you like - that is, the name isn't just a coincidence but was chosen for its Shakespearean significance. This is an issue you can raise about many of the literary allusions in the series; do the characters recognise the allusion, or do they just accept it as a regular name with no literary intent behind it? Is Detective Dupin chosen by Olaf on a whim, or a deliberate literary reference by V.F.D.? Have the Baudelaires ever commented on how they and Mr. Poe share their names with poets? One place where we know VFD is using literary references is with the Queequeg. The figure of Melville on the Queequeg uniforms can be seen as paralleling the Shakespeare figurehead on the Prospero (which confirms your view that we don't actually have to see Propero as representing Shakespeare).
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Post by cwm on Mar 5, 2009 11:12:40 GMT -5
Stephano goes into the house; the children stay outside arguing with Mr Poe; then Lucafont arrives. It is emphasised that he's got there very fast, too fast to have got there from town in response to Stephano's call. If he's in the neighbouirhood, might Stephano have called him by walkie-talkie (which we know he has from TBB)? Thank you. I think Lucafont must have been lurking in the area ever since around the same time as Stephano arrived; either that, or he was already at the house. I'm sticking with my earlier theory that he was dispatched by Stephano at some point between Monty's murder and his departure with the Baudelaires to get rid of the body and to cover up the murder should anyone - such as Mr. Poe with the Baudelaires' belongings - come to the house, maybe telling them they'd left for Peru and that Monty was still alive (hence he would already be wearing the fake hands, since a hook-handed man would set off alarm bells - Olaf apparently didn't bring the disguise kit with him). The 'doctor' story could have been something prearranged or improvised. Possibly he was staying in the town and had only just arrived when Stephano, the Bauds and Mr. Poe got back, since he apparently hasn't had time to move the body - and the body is in the worst place possible if they want to disguise what has happened. Olaf seems to have prepared for all eventualities here - he has made the death look like an accident, he has sent a phony doctor to the scene to avoid people thinking otherwise. Let us assume that my theory is correct; Lucafont is already there, posing as a doctor. Let's imagine an alternate timeline where there isn't a car crash - maybe Mr. Poe is delayed or something - and Stephano successfully takes the Baudelaires to Peru. Mr. Poe would then come to the house to find it answered by Lucafont. If Lucafont has already moved the body by this point, then he can state that he is a housekeeper whilst everyone is away, and that Uncle Monty and the Baudelaires have already departed for Peru. Weeks or even months could pass before Mr. Poe assumes that anything is amiss. If he has not moved the body, he can state that he is conducting a post-mortem (or autopsy, since this *is* a US book) and that the children and Stephano have been taken to the local hospital to be treated for shock. Mr. Poe will probably drive to the city at once, giving the hook-handed man time to vamoose and destroy all evidence as to the crime; once Mr. Poe realises that the children are not at the hospital, it could still take him a long time to realise what has happened. This is a throughly clever plan; its only flaw is that Olaf underestimates the Baudelaires' intelligence; Klaus and Sunny prove that he's lying on at least one count and Violet gathers the evidence. He's also undone by bad luck, namely the car crash, which I suppose is ironic.
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Post by Hermes on Mar 5, 2009 12:11:44 GMT -5
I think Lucafont must have been lurking in the area ever since around the same time as Stephano arrived; either that, or he was already at the house. He arrives by car, so he isn't actually in the house. He may have been hiding just round the back, I suppose.
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Post by cwm on Mar 5, 2009 12:28:05 GMT -5
Ah yes.
Presumably Lucafont just appearing would have looked suspicious; I daresay he did have a means of a quick getaway around the back.
I wonder what the exact nature of his fake hands are. Apparently he's able to pick things up with them, so they can't be completely solid.
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Post by Dante on Mar 5, 2009 12:59:35 GMT -5
I assume that they are sculpted in such a fashion as to allow him to hook fingers around things and wedge things into the palm. In other words, I suspect that these are slightly clenched hands. They'd probably need to be, to hide the hooks, but I imagine it's something we shouldn't think very hard about - much like Olaf's wooden leg next week, aye?
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Post by cwm on Mar 5, 2009 13:32:51 GMT -5
Aye. I suspect Sunny realises he never moves his hands leading to the discovery of the hook-handed man.
Moving on to the make-up covering the tattoo: why does he not do this every time? He puts make-up on the eye in TWW, TMM, TAA, TEE or TVV - although perhaps not TAA or TVV - and he has an additional disguise.
I suppose the sweat generated by the leg being inside the pegleg could remove makeup...but who's to say the trick wouldn't work twice? TRR only works because Violet manages to talk Mr. Poe into rubbing the make-up off after presenting the evidence found in Stephano's suitcase.
One wonders why Stephano murders Monty in the Reptile Room - it would really make no difference to his plans if he did it in the living room. At the very least he shouldn't leave the body there for all the time after he's killed, since it's hardly inconspious.
The Baudelaires staying awake through the night is particularly chilling because Monty is being murdered at that very moment.
The TRR article on Wikipedia, in a moment of original research which probably needs to be removed, suggests that Monty's murder could have been avoided if the Baudelaires hadn't told Stephano about Monty tearing up his ticket. This is one of the rare times when the Wikipedia ASOUE articles have a point - it could even be that Stephano's original plan was to wait until they got to Peru to murder Monty.
As per the retconning in TUA, the showing of Zombies in the Snow the party sees of course includes the coded message warning Monty of Olaf and the survivor of the fire.
I personally don't believe in the theory that Monty's assistant Gustav is Gustav Sebald, so one wonders if Monty knew Gustav Sebald hid coded messages in his films or not. V.F.D. has several different codes, so possibly Monty knew there could be a coded message hidden in the film, hence his seeing it, only for it to be in a code he never learnt. (Did he skip a codemaking class at the V.F.D. training school? That'd be the easiest solution if a little implausible.)
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Post by Hermes on Mar 6, 2009 12:13:22 GMT -5
One wonders why Stephano murders Monty in the Reptile Room - it would really make no difference to his plans if he did it in the living room. At the very least he shouldn't leave the body there for all the time after he's killed, since it's hardly inconspious. I suppose doing it in the Reptile Room makes it a bit more plausible, at least at first sight, that a snake did it - though once we are told that the snake unlocked its cage, got out and killed Monty, and then locked itself up again, plausible pretences have been more or less abandoned anyway. . No, I've always been puzzled why people think this. Gustav the assistant died before the events of TRR, whereas Sebald must have been alive afterwards - he lived long enough to give an extract from his script to Lemony, though apparently not long enough to get it back. Besides which, how can Gustav the assistant be warning Monty about Stephano, who was only hired after his death? It's certainly odd - Lemony clearly expects Monty to have known Sebald code, and so, presumably, did Sebald himself - that, indeed, is one of the main reasons for thinking Monty was a member of VFD. Perhaps Sebald is the same age as Monty, or a bit younger, so the code hadn't been devised when Monty was at school? If he had kept up with training he would know about it, but we've already seen reason to think his links with VFD were rather weak in recent years.
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Post by Dante on Mar 7, 2009 4:02:36 GMT -5
It's looking increasingly likely that I won't have time to read TRR - I have a lot of work on at the moment - so there's something I want to mention from memory: I'm pretty sure it's in this book that Violet and Klaus at some point say "Thank God" and "Pray that this works," and I find it interesting that this is really the only time religion is depicted as something that they actually engage in rather than something in the background (like offhand mentions of the Cathedral of the Alleged Virgin and bat mitzvahs).
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Post by cwm on Mar 8, 2009 7:47:41 GMT -5
I think 'pray that this works' is TEE? Or is it both?
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Post by Dante on Mar 8, 2009 9:32:49 GMT -5
Hm, now that you mention it, there is a certain TEE vibe to that. But I'm fairly sure that "Thank God," at least, is TRR. I just remember rereading before, and the religious reference sticking out like a sore thumb.
Edit: I mean, honestly, correct me if I'm wrong. I'd ask about it whenever it came up, it's just I'm pretty sure it came up in TRR, and I've just got so much other work to do at the moment that I don't have time to reread it myself.
Edit Again: "Thank God" is TRR page 84. And incidentally, Dr. Lucafont's "You're the boss" is 113.
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Post by VKSB on Mar 8, 2009 14:40:39 GMT -5
I'm only about half way through the book so far, and this probably was already said...but one thing that I don't get is why Uncle Monty didn't know Count Olaf. They were both in VFD so I just assumed they would know eachother previously..
This is one of my favorite books in the series. I just love Uncle Monty.
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Post by cwm on Mar 9, 2009 11:05:13 GMT -5
TRR and TWW are most seriously affected by the post-TEE retconning, I think.
There are a bunch of theories. He could have been pretending not to know Olaf to avoid alarming the children, and simply failed to take action until it was too late. He could genuinely have not seen through Olaf's disguise.
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Post by Sora on Mar 9, 2009 13:54:24 GMT -5
I'm only about half way through the book so far, and this probably was already said...but one thing that I don't get is why Uncle Monty didn't know Count Olaf. They were both in VFD so I just assumed they would know eachother previously.. This is one of my favorite books in the series. I just love Uncle Monty. This was somewhat addressed in LSUA when Lemony remarks to Sally Sebald that he does not think Monty ever learned the Sebald Code. Montgomery Montgomery very easily could have been just an associate of VFD, someone who did favours for them on the sly of his real work with the herpetological society - which he has a genuine interest for. As a result of this casual relationship certain knowledge - such as Olaf's treachery easily could have slipped by. Continued discussion on TRR may continue - but as a week has passed we officially can begin discussion on TWW.
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