|
Post by Very Funky Disco on May 2, 2008 22:38:22 GMT -5
My theory is that the Snicket Universe is probably no worse than the real world - and there are definitely a lot of bad things that take place in the real world. I would guess that less than .0001% of the worlds population are involved in or have any awareness of the VFD. I think it's just that being rich and having parents involved in the VFD is what makes the Baudelaires a target of all the bad things that they encounter.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on May 3, 2008 2:32:41 GMT -5
I'm not so sure. Everywhere the Baudelaires go is pretty twisted, V.F.D.-influenced or not, and the fact that there's essentially a secret and violent civil war ongoing beneath the surface of society between two groups with quite broad ideologies surely doesn't help. You don't have to be involved in or aware of V.F.D. to be influenced by it or by its enemies; in fact, you could probably raise the question of whether it's more dangerous to be in V.F.D. or to be entirely ignorant of it. On the other hand, I suspect that certain aspects of the series, and I think this particularly of TPP, are more than a shade allegorical.
As you note, the Snicket Universe being terrible and the Snicket Universe being no worse than the real world are not mutually exclusive statements. I think the two are terrible in different ways, though.
|
|
|
Post by Ernist on Feb 10, 2011 11:12:10 GMT -5
I think its about the same as ours to be honist
|
|
|
Post by Seymour Glass on Feb 11, 2011 13:57:23 GMT -5
I think its about the same as ours to be honist I agree.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Feb 11, 2011 17:04:14 GMT -5
Would you care to expand on your ideas, Ernist and freebird? What makes the two similar?
|
|
|
Post by Seymour Glass on Feb 11, 2011 22:01:39 GMT -5
Both worlds have a series of unfortunate events happening, obviously.
|
|
|
Post by Very Funky Disco on Feb 26, 2011 22:52:58 GMT -5
I think the Baudelaires are just what one might called "weirdness magnets". Some people in the real world, as sad as it might seem, have experienced worse than what the Baudelaires have endured - and there are some corrupt governments that exist in our world. Before the Baudelaire mansion burnt down, I think their lives were reasonably normal. Well, as normal as possible for rich people.
I think the VFD mostly affected rich, super intelligent, and/or super talented people - while the middle class people were mostly unaffected. I think, for the average every-dude, the world of ASOUE is not such a terrible place to be - depending on where in the world you lived, of course. I don't think anyone in our world would want to live in North Korea, for instance.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Feb 27, 2011 3:54:42 GMT -5
It seems to me that the lies and ignorance expressed by news sources like The Daily Punctilio would affect everyone, not just volunteers. The fallout between the two warring elements of V.F.D. would certainly be felt by normal people, I'm sure, because the war is largely waged on normal ground; think of the burning of the Hinterlands or the destruction of the Hotel Denouement, or even the threat of a weapon like the Medusoid Mycelium being unleashed indiscriminately. Political, journalistic, and judicial corruption is probably holding everyone back socially, too.
|
|
|
Post by littlelaurence on Mar 3, 2011 15:25:32 GMT -5
Innocent people like Mr. Poe and Jerome Squalor wouldn't exist if it was that terrible. I think that it is just a caricature of reality.
|
|
|
Post by Lady Whatever on Mar 6, 2011 11:21:38 GMT -5
This reminds me of something my momma would always say to me when I complained something wasn't fair in life: "The world isn't a just place, dear, it's just a place." And that's the Baudelaire universe in a nutshell. It's no Utopia, but terrible things happen to orphans and bankers alike in this world as well.
|
|
|
Post by Liam R. Findlay on Jul 31, 2014 18:03:26 GMT -5
Innocent people like Mr. Poe and Jerome Squalor wouldn't exist if it was that terrible. I think that it is just a caricature of reality. I agree with the idea that Snicket's world is like a model based upon ours, for the sake of creating drama/a story and for the sake of getting a kind of message of treachery being in our world across... Snicket's world is dangerous but in an old-school villains/good guys kind of way, surrounded by dark humour and funny characters/scenarios. Murder exists but the murderer is likely to be a ridiculous individual, there may be an entertaining mystery attached or perhaps the death was caused by something unusual and humorous like swallowing thumb tacks. It tells us that the world is bad but through a model that makes it comfortably digestible. Whereas our own world can involve serious disasters and wars and terror attacks and other such horrors without any comic relief or wit. Consequently, I think that both worlds are as bad as each other, only the pain in ours is real and not protected by an author's creativity and humour. Snicket tells us how bad the world is through a dangerous but imperatively ' safe-felling' model and then we're let into our own world, where the safety net no longer exists. It's almost as if the Snicket world is a classroom education on real-life treachery.
|
|
|
Post by Emerald Snicket on Nov 1, 2015 19:40:14 GMT -5
It's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I think that it's just our world with everything going on as normal, but then a secret, maybe darker side to it (VFD) which, unfortunately, the Baudelaires are exposed to almost 100% of the time after the Baudelaire fire. But, aside from these unfortunate orphans, I would say that the Snicket universe is quite similar to ours.
|
|
|
Post by J-Bird on Nov 2, 2015 21:37:19 GMT -5
This whole VFD-influenced thing gets me thinking. Is the Illuminati VFD's equivalent? Or perhaps some other, more noble society lurking right beneath our sight, hoping to shape the world for the better? We can always hope.
|
|
|
Post by Dante on Nov 3, 2015 3:28:00 GMT -5
I think there's certainly influence from various secret societies which have claimed to be for the advancement of knowledge and learning, though I don't think any real secret societies form a direct precedent in terms of all the subterfuge and hidden civil warfare V.F.D. is mixed up in.
|
|
|
Post by J-Bird on Nov 4, 2015 22:02:11 GMT -5
I've always loved the word subterfuge. Isn't a schism of some kind always found within any organization? Perhaps Not to a burn-down-everything level, I suppose
|
|