|
|
Post by s on Oct 2, 2005 18:03:14 GMT -5
I think that Handler did like George Orwell. There were a couple more allusions in the series to him - like the doorman in TEE saying he didn't know whether there were 48 or 84 floors in the building. Orwell wrote 1984 in the year 1948, the title being an anagram of the publication year to say that the horrible "future" was really the present. The doorman not knowing the difference was Handler's way of agreeing, I think. Plus, mind-control did play a big part in both 1984 and Animal Farm, so Dr. Orwell being a hypnotist was apropriate, evil or no. Holy cow, you're right! You're absolutely correct! I can't believe I never caught any of that... Queequeg was a character in Melville's Moby Dick - he was an islander and was covered with tattoos. Hmmmm.... That's interesting. We're going to read Moby Dick later this year in English class, I believe...I'll look out for him then. |
|
Antenora
Detriment Deleter 
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891 
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Oct 2, 2005 19:34:17 GMT -5
If I remember correctly, Queequeg's extensive tattoos were a map of the constellations.
Plath Pass in TSS is named for Sylvia Plath, a rather morbid poet. She wrote a poem about mushrooms that reminds me somewhat of the Medusoid Mycelium.
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
|
|
|
|
Post by smileyman457 on Oct 4, 2005 14:45:09 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by deanna. on Oct 4, 2005 19:10:34 GMT -5
Someone might have already said this, but I read somewhere that there once was an emperor named Nero and he played the fiddle while Rome burned, not bothering to do anything about it. Hehe.
|
|
|
|
Post by Sixteen on Oct 5, 2005 8:15:09 GMT -5
Someone might have already said this, but I read somewhere that there once was an emperor named Nero and he played the fiddle while Rome burned, not bothering to do anything about it. Hehe. And some suspect that it was Nero who started the fire. |
|
|
|
Post by s on Oct 5, 2005 18:08:47 GMT -5
I don't seem to recall Plath Pass. My English teacher last year was very much a fan of Sylvia Plath, though...
|
|
|
|
Post by Rowan on Oct 7, 2005 15:28:22 GMT -5
Olaf's alias in TVV, Detective Dupin, is an allusion to Edgar Allen Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which featured the fictional detective, Auguste C. Dupin.
|
|
|
|
Post by Brian on Oct 10, 2005 9:00:25 GMT -5
This is interesting - I recall reading on a site that kept tally of these literary allusions that the whole series was an allusion to TS Eliot's The Waste Land, because that is in turn full of literary allusions. This is reinforced by the fact that Eliot's poem played a small part in TGG.
|
|
Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
|
Post by Antenora on Oct 10, 2005 9:39:51 GMT -5
I think Quidditch.com's Lemony Snicket section says something to that effect. Something about The Waste Land being so intricately full of allusions that ASoUE is nothing compared to it. And Eliot alludes to several writers whom Snicket also alludes to--Dante, for one.
|
|
|
|
Post by SnicketFires on Oct 17, 2005 16:30:52 GMT -5
In The Miserable Mill, page 98, there is a reference to "Ahab Memorial Hospital" which, of course, refers to Captain Ahab of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
|
|
|
|
Post by Flaneur on Oct 18, 2005 6:22:05 GMT -5
tAA, page 39:
Several years before this story took place [...] the Baudelaire family went to a county fair in order to see a pig that their Uncle Elwyn had entered in a contest.
This is a reference to E. B. White, whose first name was Elwyn, the author of Charlotte's Web, a book about a pig.
An interesting thing about Mr. White was that newspapers began somewhat inexplicably calling him by the name of Andy, and it stuck.
|
|
|
|
Post by LBeall on Oct 26, 2005 23:23:16 GMT -5
Bertrand, the name of the Baudelaire father: There was a riverboat in the 1800's called the Bertrand. It sunk, and was later rediscovered in an oxbow that used to be part of the Missouri River. It was carrying mercury, which was why people were looking for it. Anyway, there is a museum about the doomed ship outside of Missouri Valley, Iowa. So, the doomed riverboat the Bertrand.
|
|
doom
Bewildered Beginner
Posts: 9
|
Post by doom on Nov 15, 2005 6:49:58 GMT -5
This seems like the best place to mention that Quiddich.com has updated for TPP. The Library Hotel looks very interesting.
|
|
|
|
Post by Summer Wind on Dec 23, 2005 15:50:24 GMT -5
|
|
|
|
Post by s on Dec 28, 2005 16:39:21 GMT -5
Could Snicket have had Leo's death in Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies in mind when he told of the demise previous Chief of Police in TVV? |
|
