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Post by M David Steel on May 6, 2016 7:27:30 GMT -5
So I wonder where Lemony was going to and who he would meet with. Some new faces and some we already know off, but he's done in stain'd and isn't heading to the city either as he states in the last page. It's also made obvious in chapter thirteen that he won't be seeing any of the people again who he met during that time.
Any ideas on what he would have done following this?
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Post by Dante on May 6, 2016 10:16:35 GMT -5
Tried to find himself, perhaps? It's implied that he foresees spending a considerable amount of time in the Clusterous Forest, which isn't a great place to meet people - unless it happens to be the "strange forest" Beatrice and Olaf were on their way to.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on May 6, 2016 13:01:35 GMT -5
It's definitely an ambiguous ending for Lemony's character, and it's something I was confused by when I read it the first time. I already wrote about it in the ?4 General Discussion thread, but I'll try to order my thoughts a bit better.
Lemony is as uncomfortable in the Clusterous Forest as anybody else, so there has to be a reason why he is going there. There might be a time issue at play, since Lemony, by walking away from the others, is losing his chance to testify against Stew for murder. Although, theoretically, there might be another reason why he decides not to testify. I think this last part bothered me the most. We know he doesn't see the characters he leaves behind again.
He says there's "still work to be done"; Now, he might mean that in the grand scheme of things or as in right now. Since he appears to have a specific reason for going into the CForest, it seems like there's work to be done right now.
When looking at the exact 'Why' of his taking the BB statue with him, it might provide a clue to his intentions. Let's look at some options: a) He's holding on to the statue, so no one else can misuse it. That does not explain why he is going into the CForest. b) He's holding on to the statue, so he can destroy it. That does not explain, however, why he is going into the CForest, when he can easily burn/destroy it anywhere, as it's made out of wood. c) He's holding on to the statue, so he can use it. That means he is trying to find the Bombinating Beast. This brings in a new question: Why?
Options a) and b) hint at the possibility that Lemony doesn't want to do anything in the CForest and is just passing through (Maybe to destroy the BB statue along the way and/or leave it there), even though that puts him in apparently unnecessary danger and discomfort.
Option c) begs the question why Lemony would want to find a terrifying monster, that he has just seen even a biological expert like Hangfire can hardly control, which ended in his death. Lemony doesn't nearly know as much about the Beast as Hangfire, so he's risking his life to kill the Beast all by himself, for reasons quite unknown to us. This option however, is somewhat supported by a passage earlier in the book, which seems like it's definitely a foreshadowing device: His anecdote (sorry can't remember the page) about having to live for nine days in a forest when he was six years old, learning to hunt. We don't know of any other creatures in the CForest one could hunt, except for the BBeast.
As you can see, pretty much every single option is unsatisfying for the reader and fraught with uncertainty. This leads me to believe that that's what DH intended to do. Leave both the reader and the main character facing a figurative (and possibly literal) Great Unknown.
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Post by lorelai on May 6, 2016 14:43:15 GMT -5
I am very slowly working on a fic series that covers the end of ATWQ to Lemony's decision to research the Baudelaires, so hopefully I can provide a plausible answer.
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Post by gliquey on May 8, 2016 11:42:32 GMT -5
I have to say, the ending does confuse me a little... it is a rather odd place to end the series, but I suppose he couldn't just get back on the train with all of the people who watched him commit a murder, and it is a dramatic exit. If I recall correctly, Lemony is quite calm when he walks into the forest - he seems like he knows what he's doing - but if you think about the situation from another angle, it's a panicked child running away without enough time to think about where he's going. Although Lemony is always very harsh on himself during his narration (constantly reminding us how entirely wrong he was), it is worth mentioning that he has a strong bias and could have misremembered himself as more calm than he was, or be intentionally misleading whoever is supposed to read his accounts. Options a) and b) hint at the possibility that Lemony doesn't want to do anything in the CForest and is just passing through (Maybe to destroy the BB statue along the way and/or leave it there), even though that puts him in apparently unnecessary danger and discomfort. He might just not want anyone to try to follow him, and be willing to risk a trip into the Clusterous Forest to avoid the people who saw him kill Hangfire.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on May 8, 2016 14:49:53 GMT -5
Granted, sometimes when I do or say something embarrassing, I'd go into the Clusterous Forest, too, if it were nearby.
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