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Post by Kount Kelsey on Jan 29, 2009 17:41:59 GMT -5
hey when olaf and the baudelaires are on the boat "beatrice" i dont get it.... why would it be labeled beatrice did olaf put that there to torment the baudelaires about there mothers death?  |
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Post by Dante on Jan 30, 2009 3:27:56 GMT -5
It wasn't Olaf's boat to begin with. It used to belong to the Baudelaire parents. We don't know how it came into his hands, but he put an Olaf nameplate over the Beatrice one to signify that it now belonged to him (and this was then itself covered by the Carmelita nameplate). You have to remember that the Baudelaires didn't find out that it was called Beatrice until Chapter Fourteen.
I think there is a valid question to be asked about the boat: What happened to it between it being used by the Baudelaire parents to leave the island, and Olaf giving it to Carmelita in TPP? (Although I guess you could ask similar questions about the similarly-named Carmelita submarine in TGG; where and when did he get that?) Olaf says in Chapter Nine of TPP that he purchased the boat, but I think at the time Handler hadn't decided on the boat's full backstory.
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Post by cwm on Jan 30, 2009 12:23:47 GMT -5
I'd always assumed that Handler had indeed not finalised the boat's significance at the time, and that Esme had stolen it from Beatrice at the same time she stole the 'B' snowsuit.
I suppose it depends on what the Baudelaire parents did with the boat once they had returned to the mainland: either they decided to keep it, in which case it probably was stolen by Esme, Olaf or some other villain at a later point, or they sold it because of the bad memories of the island it brought back and it simply happened to come into Olaf's hands later.
Since the TGG submarine is shaped like an eye, and Olaf apparently stole it, then it was possibly a (pre-schism?) volunteer submarine; there's no indication of when he stole it.
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Post by Dante on Jan 30, 2009 12:38:23 GMT -5
Good idea that the Beatrice was stolen at the same time as the B snowsuit; that kills two birds with one stone, and it's never impossible that the Baudelaire parents might have, say, done some sailing of their own to wintry climes. Assuming a non-market change of hands for the boat and indeed the submarine, where do the Baudelaire parents or Olaf keep these things? V.F.D. presumably had submarine docks in the old days. I guess by now they just make do with what they can find. Ironically, the villains probably have better security for their boats and submarines than the volunteers. And I agree that the TGG submarine is a former volunteer vessel, and clearly one of greater rank than the Queequeg (it's quite a lot bigger, and even has a brig for prisoners); that they have Edgar Guest suits to hand implies this. I think it's been suggested that differing tastes in literature may have been one of the contributing factors to the schism.
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Post by cwm on Jan 30, 2009 16:39:17 GMT -5
The Hotel Denouement might have had V.F.D. docks of some description at one point for a quick escape via the sea; there doesn't appear to be any particular reason (apart from narrative convience for Handler) why it's situated directly opposite the sea, when a safe place must have a safe escape route (the Mortmain Mountains HQ had the door disguised as part of the mountain...although come to think of it I think the text suggested you couldn't get back that way).
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Post by Dante on Jan 30, 2009 17:16:24 GMT -5
(the Mortmain Mountains HQ had the door disguised as part of the mountain...although come to think of it I think the text suggested you couldn't get back that way). You're right. Page 155; the door is designed to look like part of the mountain, so when it shuts, you can no longer tell what it is. And that's from the headquarters side! It doesn't really make sense that they would make it harder to leave their secret headquarters than to enter it. Maybe anyone sufficiently well-read to crack the Vernacularly Fastened Door deserves entrance, so it's more of a test. As for Hotel Denouement, in theory nobody's meant to know about the underwater catalogue (in practice, this seems a) unlikely and b) impossible, but that's neither here nor there), so I find it doubtful that any secret submarine dock would be hooked up to it. The hotel itself isn't the real last safe place, so they can afford to lose it. |
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Post by cwm on Jan 31, 2009 3:53:13 GMT -5
I was referring to the back of the hotel, leading to the open sea (which the Baudelaires and Olaf escape to at the end of TPP). Irrespective of whether or not the hotel was the real last safe place a large number of volunteers would still be staying there, so I assume somebody had the foresight to add a getaway route.
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Post by Dante on Jan 31, 2009 6:36:22 GMT -5
I was referring to the back of the hotel, leading to the open sea (which the Baudelaires and Olaf escape to at the end of TPP). As was I. A submarine dock wouldn't be much good located in a pond. But the only sensible place to have a secret volunteer dock located at the back side of the hotel would be some place leading through to the catalogue, so that it's actually secret (and underwater) and no ordinary guest or snooper can just stumble upon a hidden seabase teeming with submarines. This then runs into the problem of the catalogue's secrecy as I described above. You'd have thought Hotel Denouement, both as an actual hotel and as a location identified by many as a V.F.D. sanctuary, would have fire escapes - but no. I guess that'd be too easy. |
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Post by Kount Kelsey on Jan 31, 2009 7:19:27 GMT -5
ok but ... how doesnt a boat burn in a fire because ... if you look when carmelita uses it it iso nly in a roof top pool so it cant be to big.
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Post by Ernist on Mar 5, 2009 11:10:26 GMT -5
I think olaf boughtit he mentioned spending mony on it in TPP while yelling at carmelita
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Post by Christmas Chief on Apr 18, 2009 5:33:33 GMT -5
I still just don't understand how all those nameplates got there, I mean, did someone write them, or did they write them, and how did Olaf find his name? He didn't write it... Did he?
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Post by Dante on Apr 18, 2009 7:04:09 GMT -5
Of course he did. The boat was originally built by Bertrand, who named it after Beatrice and added a nameplate to that effect. When Olaf stole it, he added his own "nameplate" over the top of it, and Carmelita later overlaid that with her own.
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Post by Christmas Chief on May 10, 2009 11:11:58 GMT -5
Where did all the paper and pencil come from though? When they were on the boat, it said nothing was on there except the white beans.
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Post by Dante on May 10, 2009 11:43:47 GMT -5
The nameplates were added before The End; they were already applied as of TPP. How would the Carmelita nameplate have gotten on it after Olaf and the Baudelaires escaped in the boat? As I said: The first nameplate was added by Bertrand when he first built the boat on the island. The second was added by Olaf whenever he stole it. The third was added by Carmelita when she was given the boat sometime just before TPP.
Edit: I'm not sure how much I can emphasise this. The nameplates were already there in TPP. We just weren't told about them.
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Post by violet on May 10, 2009 13:52:17 GMT -5
ok but ... how doesnt a boat burn in a fire because ... if you look when carmelita uses it it iso nly in a roof top pool so it cant be to big. The fire started the the basement, it didn't reach the roof while the boat was on it. The building was collapsing, anyway. And it's mentioned in TE that it's the size of a large bed. |
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