Count Olaf/ Al Funcoot

[RockSunner]

twistedbrain said:

The Baudelaires aren't even an example. They are not destined for "a life of crime".

That's arguable. Arson is a crime. If they want to stay free they'll have to keep themselves out of the hands of the law from now on. Whether they have to commit more crimes or not, they are already living a "life of crime" in the eyes of their society.

[Dante]

"There are people who say that criminal behaviour is the destiny of children from a broken home."

And from what we've seen so far, that appears to be true. Olaf is a criminal. The Baudelaires are criminals. Carmelita, although we don't know whether or not her home has been burnt down (although she's certainly abandoned her family), is a criminal. Ernest Denouement is a villain, and therefore probably a criminal. Fernald is a criminal. Sir had a "very terrible" childhood, and he illegally pays his workers in coupons and forces children to work in his dangerous lumbermill. There are quite a few people we don't know about, but on the whole, it does indeed appear that criminal behaviour is the destiny of children from a broken home.

[twistedbrain]

rocksunner said:

twistedbrain said:

The Baudelaires aren't even an example. They are not destined for "a life of crime".

That's arguable. Arson is a crime. If they want to stay free they'll have to keep themselves out of the hands of the law from now on. Whether they have to commit more crimes or not, they are already living a "life of crime" in the eyes of their society.

They pretty much had no choice. If they didn't, Kit and the others would have flown into danger. However, you do have a point. I just don't think they were destined to be criminals from the moment the parents died.

[Dante]

Just because you have no choice, doesn't mean it's not a crime. Indeed, if one has no choice but to commit a crime, then I personally would see that as reinforcing the idea that it is their destiny to commit such villainous acts.

[Summer Wind]

Nonetheless, the Baudelaires have commited crimes of villiany, but the reason why is that they had no choice and that's why it's arguable that the Baudelaires are destined for a life of crime. Really, in my opinion, they were just tangled in the huge mess of V.F.D. So, really they are destined for a life of a volunteer. Though a volunteer may commit a crime or two (Remember what Fenald said, People are like Chef's salads, they are a mix of both villiany and nobleness). Plus, look at the Baudelaire parents, they were involved with Olaf's parent's murder, and they're considered noble volunteers.

[counto]

I think the general moral, if there is a moral is that not all people are wicked or noble. Some are both.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Nov 7, 2005 15:34:38 GMT -5 vksbaudelaire said:

Why did Count Olaf want to disguise the play under a different name( Al Funcoot)? Maybe Al Funcoot is his real name and he used an anagram to mix it around. But if he did that, why did he disguise his real name? Is he wanted in other countries? There may already be a thread like this, but I did a search and found nothing.

I think that although VFD did not exist so clearly from Daniel Handler when he wrote TBB, this is evidence that somehow the plot of secret organizations already exists in his protoform. After all, the very name Lemony Snicket was used when Daniel Handler tried to enter a secret organization. Further evidence of this is Klaus' question in chapter 2, involving the fact that they had never heard of the relative named Count Olaf. This is suggestive that there was a protoplot involving enmity between the Baudelaire family and Olaf. That said, the use of false names based on anagrams must have crossed Daniel Handler's mind as a use of that device in a possible secret organization. This proved to be true later, when in TBL we learned that there are classes on using anagrams in VFD. In other words, Olaf was not using anagrams on a whim, but because he was induced from childhood to behave like that. Although he tries to destroy VFD, VFD has not left his body (either literally or figuratively).

[Dante]

The use of the Al Funcoot pseudonym I think was simply to help disguise Olaf's intentions in the staging of his play; if the Baudelaires knew that he had written The Marvelous Marriage, they would have been far more suspicious of the play itself and of what Olaf might have been intending to achieve in the construction of any particular scene. Klaus comes to a similar conclusion in THH, page 153. I agree that there is a protoplot relating to enmity between Olaf and the Baudelaire parents, though; I think Handler plainly had a rough skeleton of a backstory outlined when he wrote TBB.

The tattoo of the eye does seem mysterious from day one; although it could simply be one more expression of a fixation exhibited on Olaf's part and which was intended to be used as a motif related to Olaf's persistent, sometimes seemingly omniscient persecution of the Baudelaires - and, of course, as an identifying characteristic which could be concealed in various ways in the succeeding books.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

I think the eye is a reference to Masonic symbols, like the all-seeing eye.