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Post by Strangely on Feb 5, 2010 8:51:03 GMT -5
I've been rereading the series as of late and i thought about something. in the bad beginning we see the fire department passing the baudelaire's trolley, meaning that the fire had started. what's interesting about that is the fact that would mean the baudelaire mansion had caught fire within the ten to twenty minutes that the children had been gone. but what's even more interesting about that is the fact that the fire department would have assumed the children where inside the burning home as well considering they wouldn't know the children where headed to the beach. and my final point of interest is who informed Mr. Poe that the children where at the beach? after all the children that day had been rushed out of the house by their parents, nobody would have known they were there. also since the house did burn to the ground it is assumable that for several hours people might have believed that the baudelaire children were dead.
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Post by Dante on Feb 5, 2010 9:23:44 GMT -5
I wouldn't worry much about the continuity of the frontispiece; it's just there to introduce us to the various elements of Chapter One, which are the Baudelaires, the trolley, and the presence of fire.
As to who informed Mr. Poe where the children were, it says that they often like to go to Briny Beach. Mr. Poe probably had this on a list of locations to check while looking for them.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Feb 5, 2010 9:37:53 GMT -5
And Mr. Poe even says: "The fire department arrived of course... but they were too late." That says that by the time the fire department came, the mansion was already up in smoke. So if the fire department assumes the children were in the house, it would be too late for them. Eventually, the children would go home, to find their home in ashes, so it was only a matter of time before they were found, anyway.
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Post by Strangely on Feb 5, 2010 10:03:08 GMT -5
Of course the mansion was on fire when the fire department showed, why else would they be there? My point is that Mr. Poe and the fire fighters probably thought the kids were inside. I'm curious about how Mr. Poe found them, after all throughout the entire series Mr. Poe is portrayed as a coughing idiot who can't even remember the children's allergies, so I'm doubting Mr. Poe remembered they commonly go to the beach. It just seems odd.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Feb 5, 2010 10:06:33 GMT -5
I think the fire department were called while the fire was going, but arrived after it was over. Or at least over enough to call it a lost cause. As for Mr. Poe remembering they go to the beach, someone who knew the family better could remind him. A neighbor, perhaps; like I said, it was only a matter of time before the Baudelaires came home.
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Post by Dante on Feb 5, 2010 10:06:55 GMT -5
I imagine it's probably a matter of narrative convenience... oh, although the neighbours might've seen the Baudelaire children going out, and recognised that they sometimes take the trolley to Briny Beach.
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Post by Strangely on Feb 5, 2010 11:28:45 GMT -5
I'd say the entire building was engulfed in flames, so much so that it couldn't be saved. It was a big mansion I'm doubting the fire burned itself out within an hour.
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Post by Dante on Feb 5, 2010 11:34:30 GMT -5
Well, that's evidently the case; we see in Chapter Two that there's barely anything of the house left standing. The fire department might've been able to prevent it from spreading, though. If you trust them, that is.
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Feb 6, 2010 14:59:46 GMT -5
With it being the first illustration, excluding the cover image and 'Ex Libris' circles, and the first book, I think that Mr Helquist, being new to the series, wouldn't have put loads of thought into the logic of where the fire engine would be going and at what time and all those little details. I expect he thought a fire engine was suitable for the image and didn't really question it, or perhaps expect fans like us to be looking into it at such a depth. Anyway, the engine could be immaterial to the Baudelaire fire. There are also many reasons as to why Mr Poe knew they were at the beach, and with it being the first scene in the series, and quite an emotional one, how Poe knew they were there probably wasn't the first thing on Handler's mind.
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Post by Tiago James Squalor on Feb 14, 2010 10:09:57 GMT -5
Brett Helquist's illustrations are there for more illustrative purposes rather than follow any continuity whatsoever, as we can't tell much from each illustration except the final ones of each book, or at least this is the case IMO.
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