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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 19, 2016 15:15:22 GMT -5
Hi! everyone first post...So, I've read some theories on the BB letters, but I still feel really confuse about this book. Does anyone have ideas about Lemony saying in the end of the Beatrice Letters, in the letter to his Editor, that he never thought there'd be two Beatrice Baudelaires? Since he wrote the thirteenth book at least a year after when the events occurred and included the shipwrecked Beatrice boat pics in The Beatrice Letters...what could he have meant, if he wasn't talking about Kit's baby?
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Post by Dante on Sept 19, 2016 16:42:39 GMT -5
Well, let's consider. He must have been referring to Kit's baby, of course; therefore, if he says something which appears not to fit with that fact, then we need to rethink our interpretation of what he said, not the conclusion it contradicts. So, you're referring to the thirteenth letter in The Beatrice Letters, and specifically to the line "Because I loved her so much, for instance, it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire." However, one fact that is missing from this statement is the time period during which Lemony believed it to be true. Obviously, by the time he wrote this letter, his misunderstanding had been corrected - and he does not state how long it has been since that correction. As such, there is no contradiction between this line and Lemony having learned while researching The End that there was a second Beatrice Baudelaire. ...Furthermore, since young Beatrice is ten, and ASoUE is complete and has been read by her by this point, it's quite possible that Lemony was lingering under the same misapprehension for a considerable period of time after The End took place before completing his research.
Does that answer your question?
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 19, 2016 17:11:51 GMT -5
[/quote]Well, let's consider. He must have been referring to Kit's baby, of course; therefore, if he says something which appears not to fit with that fact, then we need to rethink our interpretation of what he said, not the conclusion it contradicts. So, you're referring to the thirteenth letter in The Beatrice Letters, and specifically to the line "Because I loved her so much, for instance, it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire." However, one fact that is missing from this statement is the time period during which Lemony believed it to be true. Obviously, by the time he wrote this letter, his misunderstanding had been corrected - and he does not state how long it has been since that correction. As such, there is no contradiction between this line and Lemony having learned while researching The End that there was a second Beatrice Baudelaire. ...Furthermore, since young Beatrice is ten, and ASoUE is complete and has been read by her by this point, it's quite possible that Lemony was lingering under the same misapprehension for a considerable period of time after The End took place before completing his research. Does that answer your question?[/quote] Well, that is the quote I was talking about! "Because I loved her so much, for instance, it never occurred to me that there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire." But he says in The End that he knows the baby was adopted by the kids and her name is Beatrice. But in the Editor letter from the Beatrice letters, LS says that it's been years and years later since he read the sonnet. But in BB to LS #4, she says that she saw Lemony reading a sonnet 'in a glass case'. Which in the Editor letter, Lemony says it was years ago he read the sonnet 'in the glass case'. And in BB to LS #4, she mentions the pond, where people have assumed is from the burned down Hotel Denouement..And BB mentions in her second letter, that land takes years to recover from fire and she's looking out Lemony's office window.[/quote]
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Post by Hermes on Sept 19, 2016 17:27:56 GMT -5
I think you are taking it that The End was written soon after the events. Everything you say about (the future part of) The Beatrice Letters is right; and this shows that he did not know about young Beatrice until a long time after she was born. But he may have written The End even later than that. As you say, it was written at least a year after the events, but it may have been much more than that.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 19, 2016 17:46:06 GMT -5
[/quote]I think you are taking it that The End was written soon after the events. Everything you say about (the future part of) The Beatrice Letters is right; and this shows that he did not know about young Beatrice until a long time after she was born. But he may have written The End even later than that. As you say, it was written at least a year after the events, but it may have been much more than that.[/quote] But all of the other books were written soon after the events. Like in his Editor letters for books 1-12 he mentions that he's at different locations. I have heard that some details could have been added later though, like Klaus and Violet being mentioned years later. So you could say chapter 14 of The End was added later also... But wouldn't the second Beatrice have met Lemony before his note to his Editor in the Beatrice Letters? With the final BB to LS letter/card, she says to rip it up if he doesn't want to meet her, so it's implied that he must have met her since the card was intact right? But in his Editor letter, he says that it's been years since he saw the sonnet in the glass case, and BB says she saw him reading it in the glass case so...he didn't find out about Kit Snicket's daughter until she jumped from like 10 (when she saw him reading the sonnet in the library) to like age 15 or older?
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Post by Teleram on Sept 19, 2016 17:56:04 GMT -5
kinda off-topic, but your response should go below the words " [/quote] ", isandthebooks
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 19, 2016 18:16:48 GMT -5
Thanks, I thought that should be there, but I hit the button and that didn't show? Edited my replies to make it semi more clear anyway...including this one lol
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Post by Hermes on Sept 20, 2016 10:18:15 GMT -5
But all of the other books were written soon after the events. Like in his Editor letters for books 1-12 he mentions that he's at different locations. I have heard that some details could have been added later though, like Klaus and Violet being mentioned years later. So you could say chapter 14 of The End was added later also... There are lots of passages through the series which imply that Lemony is researching the events long after they happened. It's true that there are also a few passages in TSS, TGG, and especially TUA which imply he is just behind the Baudelaires, which is a great source of confusion to us. The best explanation is, as you say, that there was a first draft (perhaps distributed privately through VFD libraries) which he late revised. In any case, The End may have been delayed because it is set in a place which is hard to get to. I don't think he means that now, as he writes the letter, he cannot believe that there is more than one Beatrice Baudelaire. He means that it never occurred to him that there could be, until he was made aware of it. (Just how he became aware of it is not clear; if you read the passage carefully, it says that he realised there were two BB's before young B contacted him.)
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 20, 2016 16:42:44 GMT -5
There are lots of passages through the series which imply that Lemony is researching the events long after they happened. It's true that there are also a few passages in TSS, TGG, and especially TUA which imply he is just behind the Baudelaires, which is a great source of confusion to us. The best explanation is, as you say, that there was a first draft (perhaps distributed privately through VFD libraries) which he late revised. In any case, The End may have been delayed because it is set in a place which is hard to get to. Can you quote from where you saw Lemony say that: 'it says that he realised there were two BB's before young B contacted him.' I reread the Editor letter from the Beatrice Letters and didn't see that. I think he says in the same paragraph that when it hit him there were 2 BBs, he had letters from both already. And HA! Figured out this messing up quote feature by messing with the html.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 20, 2016 17:20:56 GMT -5
'It was quite some time before I received the first of Beatrice Baudelaire's letters that I realised that all of Beatrice Baudelaire's letters could be found not just in the first Beatrice Baudelaire but in the second Beatrice Baudelaire....'.
This is odd: you'd expect him to say 'quite some time after'. That would make sense; because he loved (the first) BB so much, he did not at first realise there could be another, so when he got the letter from young B he did not at first understand it. But in fact he definitely says 'quite some time before'.
But in any case, whatever you make of that, by the time he writes this letter he knows there are two BB's. He's just saying there was a time when he didn't realise this. So we don't need to delay his finding out until long after he meets young B. Even if he didn't work out who she was until after getting her first letter, he can still have done so before he met her (and before he wrote The End).
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Post by lorelai on Sept 21, 2016 11:29:16 GMT -5
I agree with Hermes (and Dante's earlier posts). Lemony's confusion and avoidance in the bulk of the book is because he's not sure who is writing to him, or if that person is an imposter, but he is aware of young Beatrice existing before her letters arive. I believe you could certainly say The End's epologue was written later on from the rest of the book--Lemony has to find the island, Kit and Olaf's graves, and read all those entries while dealing with all the emotions these things bring up (and he read Bertrand and Beatrice's aentries too, which only exaserbated things)--so there was probably some time between TE being written and when it was published. Also, looking at the copywright, The Beatrice Letters was published a year BEFORE TE, which I don't think we need to incorperate into the fictional timeline, but that is part of the reason why things in TBL can be so confusing: we're meant to figure out the mystery that doesn't make sense until a chapter we didn't know we'd get in a book that hadn't been released at the time clarifies the seeming impossibility.
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Post by Dante on Sept 21, 2016 11:52:12 GMT -5
I'm not sure what the copyrights say, but take it from somebody who was around at the time: TBL came out one month before The End. September and October 2006 were quite a time to be an ASoUE fan.
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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 21, 2016 13:36:26 GMT -5
Yes, I read that from the old Amazon reviews! And I agree with Hermes, that Lemony does say that he knew about the other Beatrice before her first letters came...so I don't know the answer either. I did post a new Q though so since you've been around so long I hope you'll answer.
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Post by lorelai on Sept 23, 2016 13:13:53 GMT -5
Oh I believe you both!! Even with a month between books, the who is Beatrice mystery still hadn't been addressed in the series until TE--that was my only point.
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