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Post by lsandthebooks on Sept 25, 2016 0:29:23 GMT -5
I know what The End revealed, but I'm talking about the Bauds mom. I was thinking, they wanted to name their kid Lemony or Violet, so if the names are after a dead family member.... She could have been like a cousin, and in the UA there is a V. name, on the Snicket family tree, written along the bottom, and it says V. was volunteer---and then it was ripped. And Lemony says in the Beatrice Letters that their engagement caused outraged parents and that Beatrice may have to betray her dad.
People mention the kids' allergies, but I reread. In Book 3, it says that both Violet and Klaus knew their reactions to peppermints, but Sunny didn't of course...well, why would the Baud parents let Klaus have peppermints if Violet had already reacted? If it was a Baudelaire trait especially from the dad's side, you'd have assumed all the kids auto had it right? The line says the Baudelaire allergies, not the Baudelaire family/trait allergies. Then in Book 12, Dewey says the allergy is something all 3 siblings share; he never says it was a Baudelaire parent or family trait.
Lemony does mention in LS to BB number either 4 or 5 she has peppermint allergies, so....if they got it from their mom what if she wasn't a Baudelaire? Everyone says she kept her maiden name, But Esme didn't, and Mrs.Caliban didn't...
Lastly I've seen different anagrams for Beatrice Sank from the Beatrice letters...one is Bear A Snicket, so I think I saw this next version or something like it, somewhere else which is, B Are A Snicket. But it's mentioned all throughout the End that Kit is preggo so...wouldn't this be like the ultimate red herring ending? And why would you say Beatrice Sank in code, when you have this huge picture of a crashed boat already?
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Post by Dante on Sept 25, 2016 3:09:59 GMT -5
Just a couple of notes:
The first is that the naming tradition isn't necessarily after a family member who had died - just anyone, apparently, if they were sufficiently important to the parents.
Secondly, your point about the peppermint allergies almost seems more like an argument that Beatrice was already a Baudelaire, but because TWW only mentions that the Baudelaire allergies are famously fast-acting, not that they are exclusively to peppermints, then it's quite possible that the peppermint allergy was inherited from their mother and the fast-acting nature of the reactions from their father. (I don't know if that makes medical sense, but medical sense doesn't necessarily apply to the series, and in any case the "Baudelaire allergies" may simply refer to the children and not the family more broadly.) As for Klaus finding out about his allergies, he and Violet could both have accidentally had some peppermints one day and discovered their inherited allergy at the same time.
Thirdly, "B are a Snicket" is ungrammatical and cannot be a correct interpretation of the anagram; "bear a Snicket," as you note, is something which was already obviously going to happen from the early chapters of TPP, so it's not really a secret, and as such I consider this reading to be possibly correct but a red herring for the true "Beatrice sank" arrangement. As for the question of why "Beatrice sank" would be a secret when it's all over the poster, you have to consider that the book was almost certainly not written with the inclusion of this poster in mind (or the punch-out letters, for that matter); the production of the book makes the anagram easier than it was probably meant to be.
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Post by gliquey on Sept 26, 2016 11:11:37 GMT -5
I agree with everything Dante said, but to add to the conversation: I believe allergies are usually inherited but this does not give us much information: it is plausible that either Baudelaire parent or both had the allergy to peppermints. From my very limited understanding of biology, I think allergies can either be caused by dominant or recessive alleles, although if it's recessive then both parents would need to at least be carriers. In either case, it would be possible for Violet to have the allergy and for Klaus to not have it. But this is besides the point: as Dante says, what makes medical sense may be irrelevant, and this is a world in which dozens of doctors come to see someone being decapitated and consider that to be a valid medical procedure, so I don't think the fact that the Baudelaire parents allowed Klaus to consume a peppermint after they knew about Violet's allergy tells us anything. I also think "the Baudelaire allergies" is a phrase used to describe the children, at least primarily, so I doubt Beatrice's allergy hints at anything important. I have never found any anagram other than "BEATRICE SANK" to be convincing - "A BRAE SNICKET" and "BEAR A SNICKET" are not ridiculous, but I don't imagine either of them were intended (coming up with two or even three 12-letter messages that are anagrams of each other would be no easy feat), and I find the plethora of other suggestions very unlikely. I also think that for the average reader, especially considering the books are marketed at children, finding the anagram "BEATRICE SANK" is hard enough with the illustration serving as a clue, so were it completely unrelated that would make it too obscure even by Handler's standards. The first is that the naming tradition isn't necessarily after a family member who had died - just anyone, apparently, if they were sufficiently important to the parents. For instance, Sunny could be named after S. Theodora Markson (from All the Wrong Questions), who was Bertrand's chaperone. (Although this idea was probably not intended by Handler per his answer to "What does the S. stand for?" in our interview with him.)
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Post by Hermes on Sept 26, 2016 13:00:07 GMT -5
Well, I think that the letter to the editor suggests very strongly that there is more than one anagram; that CASKET IN BRAE, like BEATRICE SANK, is supported by the picture; and that it's hard to see why he would be making so much of the word 'brae' unless he wanted to use it in an anagram or a code of some kind. As for whether the average reader could decipher it, I think he does leave some clues too deep for the average reader, as is shown by the fact that people are still wondering what the S stands for, though DH assures us that the answer is there.
As for Beatrice's maiden name, I think the strongest clue is 'because I loved her so much, I never thought there could be more than one Beatrice Baudelaire' - which suggests she was Beatrice Baudelaire when he loved her. The allergies are confirming evidence, if anything. Either Bertrand was a distant cousin (though there's a clue he was adopted), or he took his wife's name, perhaps because they inherited property from her parents, or because she was the last of her family.
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Post by Dante on Sept 26, 2016 13:18:54 GMT -5
There is, in fact, an alternative anagram-related explanation for TBL and The End's emphasis on the word "brae": As a red herring term to confuse those attempting to decipher the anagram.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 26, 2016 14:27:49 GMT -5
Well, yes, OK. He did that with Beatrices, I suppose.
Or alternatively it may be part of the 'mystery of life' aspect, intended to suggest that there are some secret messages that we cannot decipher. (LS to BB #5 strongly suggests that 'brae-man' is an anagram, with the questions 'What is a baticeer?', 'What is a brae-man?' and 'What is an anagram?' in swift succession. But it is not an anagram of anything we have ever been able to find.
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