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Post by Foxy on Sept 28, 2018 13:33:13 GMT -5
Chapter 5 of THH: "And Sunny twisted her teeth this way and that, trying to open one of the locked file cabinets in the B aisle, thinking that perhaps the file was inside, filed under Baudelaires, but when the lock finally broke just after lunch, the youngest sibling opened the cabinet and saw that it was absolutely empty."
Chapter 6 of THH: ""There must be something else," Violet said. "We have to find this file. It has crucial information about Jacques Snicket and V.F.D." "And about us," Klaus said. "Don't forget that." The three children looked at one another. "Baudelaire!" Sunny whispered. Without another word, the orphans ran to the B aisle, and hurried past Babbitt to Babylon, Bacteria to Ballet, and Bamboo to Baskerville, stopping at Bat Mitzvah to Bavarian Cream. As the door continued to fissle behind them, Klaus tried nine keys in a row before finally opening the cabinet, and there, between the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony for young women, and the delicious filling of certain doughnuts, the children found a folder marked "Baudelaire.""
So much for the filing cabinet in the B aisle being empty.
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Post by Dante on Sept 28, 2018 16:15:05 GMT -5
How good is Sunny's reading comprehension during THH? It merely says that she tried "one of the locked file cabinets in the B aisle," and not the alphabetically correct one for "Baudelaire" specifically.
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verballyfundaffodil
Reptile Researcher
I'm rerereading the series now, solving mysteries--I think I'm a Very Fine Detective.
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Post by verballyfundaffodil on Sept 28, 2018 16:24:30 GMT -5
I noticed that too! If I'm remembering correctly, there were also a few of the end words that were out of order alphabetically (___ to ___), but I don't have my notebook with me right now to cite it :/ I was hoping it was a form of code maybe? A few of the words were foreshadowing towards later books (agh I wish I had my notebook, but I believe there were end words relating to the island in TE), so maybe they were in code? Some sort of Verse Fluctuation Declaration? As for the B cabinet being empty, I originally regarded it as a mistake in Mr. Snicket's work, but, come to think of it, could another VFD member have come in and left it for the Baudelaires? There's a theory that Beatrice was in the hospital at the same time as her children, and I know that it's unlikely that a mother would just leave her children alone in a hospital, but, according to ATWQ4, VFD members aren't suppose to acknowledge or recognize any other VFD members they may come across while on a mission.
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Post by Dante on Sept 29, 2018 3:46:12 GMT -5
The issue isn't one of another volunteer coming in between-times to leave the Baudelaire/Snicket file in the cabinet; as quoted above, the cabinet was originally entirely empty, but on the revisit it's implied to also contain folders on bat mitzvahs and Bavarian cream. I think the only solution which holds up is that Sunny simply picked the wrong B-aisle cabinet.
This isn't to say that the books never make mistakes. verballyfunddaffodil, if you're ever able to look up which of the file categories were out of alphabetical order, I'd be interested in your observations; I had a quick glance just now and the only one I noticed was Hal quoting "poetry to pills".
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Post by Foxy on Sept 29, 2018 14:10:15 GMT -5
How good is Sunny's reading comprehension during THH? It merely says that she tried "one of the locked file cabinets in the B aisle," and not the alphabetically correct one for "Baudelaire" specifically. I apologize for being cranky. I got to that point in chapter 6, and it gave me writer's block while working on TSBD (am I allowed to give my fanfiction an abbreviated name?). I can appreciate this explanation, and I think I may have thought of something funny to turn this event into as well. And verballyfundaffodil , thank you for pointing that there are antialphabetical words. I would love to read more of your research!
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verballyfundaffodil
Reptile Researcher
I'm rerereading the series now, solving mysteries--I think I'm a Very Fine Detective.
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Post by verballyfundaffodil on Sept 29, 2018 14:48:08 GMT -5
Foxy It says somewhere around page 95 (I think, I'm going off of page numbers I've written down from when I had the book but I'm using a downloaded version of the book without page numbers) that the files are labeled, "Jacket to Jack-o'-Lanterns" and "Jackline to Jacutinga," even though these intersect alphabetically. Earlier in the book, Hal tells the Baudelaires that the library contains "everything from poetry to pills, from picture frames to pyramids, and from pudding to psychology-and that's just in the P aisle, which we're walking down right now." You mentioned the poetry to pills, but the second and third sections he lists are PI-PY and PU-PS, so they intersect too. I thought this was awful, seeing as Hal himself said, "paperwork is the most important thing we do at this hospital," the lack of organization would be detrimental to Heimlich. Then I remembered his method of filing information using completely arbitrary and trivial information he sees as he glances at the file... Moving to the end words referencing events in the books, the words I've noticed are, "Sheepshank" (a type of knot, like the Devil's Tongue or the Sumac), "Shipwreck" (TE), "Snowball" (TSS), and "Smoke," (which can be found in almost all of the books), although there are probably more to be found. Personally, I think the alphabet issues were unintended by DH, but they could be disregarded as Hal's mistakes, and I think the end words are intentionally referencing things relating to the Baudelaires and VFD, although, not knowing everything about VFD and its members, we don't understand all of the words. What do you guys think?
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Post by Dante on Sept 29, 2018 15:20:48 GMT -5
There being lots of intersections surprises me less than the one anti-alphabetical example (though I think there are some systems which would argue for Jack-o'-Lantern to go before Jacket, but that's by the by); I strongly suspect that Handler was paying attention to the internal alphabet of those examples, and not how they overlapped with each other. So long as they were fun combinations of words, they stuck; and in that respect I don't wholly disagree. We can always argue that those categories didn't necessarily denote actual filing cabinets; but, as you point out, we can also argue equally well and perhaps more strongly that Hal's work isn't perfect. I apologize for being cranky. There is nothing to apologise for. It was a legitimate question.
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