Post by Dante on Jul 24, 2009 5:59:12 GMT -5
Not as if Handler cares; Phil's never mentioned again after TGG. Not once.
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~Chapter Nine~
The chapter illustration of the rowing children was released before the book came out, and some assumed that it would depict the state of affairs aboard the Baudelaires’ sub – which would have been rather interesting as it would’ve put them at something more like the heart of V.F.D., rather than the fringes. I see that Helquist has avoided drawing Edgar Guest on their suits, for some reason. This is one of those things I don’t get about his art, sometimes. He’s happy to draw crowd scenes, but there are plenty of actual characters he’s seemingly gone out of his way to avoid drawing.
Also, I’d say that Olaf’s submarine definitely has a horizontal configuration, regardless of Chapter Eight’s illustration. Which is somewhat fanciful, anyway – the submarine wouldn’t be moving diagonally, and the portholes and metal plating all bear the hallmarks of a much smaller craft. I’m not sure how the water would be prevented from getting in, though; some sort of submarine-capturing airlock, perhaps, or a dock. I think it’s unclear while the Queequeg is in the Carmelita how much water is around. That the Baudelaires are able to see the rowing chamber during their capture… but for that matter that the rowing chamber is circular and flat definitely suggests a vertical structure… I’m not sure Olaf’s submarine makes any sense. I mean, above and beyond the tentacle-based propulsion, which is fine for the series, but just trying to map this thing out, it’s a mess.
The submarine is covered in “eerie glowing eyes” on the interior, but since I recall it also having eye-shaped buttons, it’s unclear whether these would have been installed by Olaf or whether it was always a feature of a V.F.D. submarine. I guess V.F.D. proper would’ve kept the eyes to a reasonable quantity.
Just as Widdershins is something of a stereotypical sea captain, Olaf is taking his own captainship to extremes – there’s the laugh, of course, which made many people hate TGG, but he’s also got a sword which he poses with. I think there’s a definite sense he’s playing up his own attitude here, but it is a bit of an odd choice for Handler to replace most of Olaf’s dialogue with that ludicrous laugh.
“I made my way down the mountain and found pieces of your toboggan scattered all over some very sharp rocks! …I thought you had drowned in the Stricken Stream and were swimming with all those coughing fishes!” Question #1: How did he get down the mountain? Without a car or hiking gear, it should’ve taken him quite some time. However, since the Stricken Stream largely follows the road he took up the mountains, it seems, then at least he’d have a clear path.
“I was brokenhearted!” And he proceeds to explain that this was precisely because he missed out on the chance to get their fortune, which solves a problem someone raised earlier, I think.
“I met my associates at the Hotel Denouement, where they were cooking up a little scheme of their own, and convinced them to lend me a handful of our new recruits.” So not only did Olaf manage to get far enough down the mountain to see the wreckage of the Baudelaires’ toboggan, he managed to get all the way to the Hotel Denouement on the edge of the city. Given the many, many hours of driving he’s been through in the last few books, this again seems equally improbable.
“Thanks to their generosity, I was able to get this submarine working again!” Which implies that it wasn’t working before, which somewhat scuppers my far-fetched theory that he got it at the mountain headquarters, but if not there, where? The only other location would seem to be the Hotel D., which would also be convenient given that Olaf would have difficulty herding a large group of children far across the landscape, particularly without a car.
You know what, I’m just going to say Olaf uncovered the submarine at the mountain headquarters after taking some hours to climb down there, but was unable to get most of its functions working besides basic propulsion until he reached the Hotel D. and was able to get some recruits from the sinister duo. I just can’t see anything else working, time-wise. Given this, I think the hypothesis raised earlier, that in an early draft of TGG Olaf and his submarine wouldn’t have appeared until this chapter, seems probable as that would give him far more time to move around.
“You must be Fiona, that little fungus freak! Why, you’re all grown up! The last time I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle!” When, I ask again, would Olaf have had access to Fiona’s cradle? But then again, I guess he was only trying to do it, but that at least implies he was nearby on an incidental errand. Given what we know about the early moral ambiguity of Fernald and Widdershins, perhaps Olaf has visited the Queequeg in the past? Fiona was a baby on board. For that matter, presumably Olaf knows of her mycological interests through Fernald, who it would seem left the family after Fiona had grown out of infancy.
“Your stepfather has abandoned you, eh? Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time. Your whole family could never choose which side of the schism was theirs. Your brother used to be a goody-goody as well, trying to prevent fires instead of encouraging them, but eventually—” A few points. For one, Olaf sees Widdershins defecting to the villains as a distinct possibility, which has some historical precedent that we’ll get to later. Secondly, that it’s the whole family also speaks volumes about Fiona’s mother and her real father – her real father also left, if I recall; perhaps to join the other side of the schism? You can interpret the evidence either why regarding whether Fiona’s mother is alive or not, but I’m not sure I fancy her dropping her family to go and join the villains, although I’m sure Widdershins wouldn’t hesitate to fake her death if that story was best for Fiona.
“The previous owner used it to hold traitors captive” – suggestion, this is a definite V.F.D. submarine but the traitors would’ve been those mutinying during the schism. Maybe it wasn’t always a brig? It could’ve started out as a storeroom.
“Once you get to the brig, you’ll reveal where the sugar bowl is—once my henchman gets his hands on you. Or should I say hooks?” While Fiona doesn’t know that Fernald lost his hands, it’s odd that Olaf seems to think Fernald would be happy to torture her. But then again, it’s the Baudelaires who supposedly know where the sugar bowl is; Fiona isn’t an issue.
“It has an enormous flyswatter, so I can rid the skies of V.F.D. planes.” Olaf using this flyswatter to attack the SSHAMH was once seen as being highly probable. One can argue that something like this does happen, based on a single line in TPP. But again, we’ll get to that another time.
So are there multiple such rooms housing rowing children? Since there are only two benches, which would imply only two tentacles. For that matter, it seems like they’d need something a bit more complicated than oars to do things like snatch up the Queequeg for the purposes of capturing it. However, Esmé is supposedly standing in the middle of the room, which suggests to me a more circular arrangement. TGG’s a great book, but I’m not sure if it’s possible to draw a consistent map of Olaf’s submarine. Although obviously Handler had something in mind – but it can be difficult to reconstruct such things. Descriptions of complex physical objects are where writing often fails.
“We have to get back to the Hotel Denouement before Thursday, and it’s Monday already!” W-w-what?! But Olaf was able to get back to it in less than a day with no problem! He’s been able to get from Hotel D. to here in the space of a day at most using this same submarine!
“The baby certainly has grown… But she’s just as ugly as she ever was.” Or maybe the characters in this book really are just stupid, I don’t know.
“The Olaf is a cakesniffing name!” Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Yeah, TGG’s one of my favourite books, but the new Olaf-Esmé-Carmelita dynamic is far from my favourite.
Carmelita’s ridiculous outfits are pretty funny, though; they’re a logical conclusion to the advantages she’d have as a spoiled brat.
“I don’t want your old clothes, you cakesniffer! …A tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian doesn’t wear hand-me-downs!” Just, uh, Olaf’s sweaty recycled disguises.
“There was nothing in [the brig] but a small stool, at which a man sat, shuffling a deck of cards with quite a bit of difficulty.” Tying together the playing-card references. There are sometimes sequences like this in aSoUE, where a chapter rolls and rolls towards some sort of twist or revelation with new clues being picked up faster and faster, but the chapter’s going so fast that you can’t really stop to put them together. “How can a family reunion be a terrible situation?”
By the by, I think the hook-handed man getting a backstory, and this backstory, is one of the best ideas in the series. Actually, come to think of it, what I like about TGG is less TGG and more its backstory…
~Chapter Ten~
The best chapter in the series. And with a correspondingly excellent chapter illustration. It’s a shame this illustration wasn’t released beforehand, as I’d really like to know what people would’ve made of it. (A note on the illustration, actually: The sleeves of Fiona’s diving suit match those of the U.K. cover – not those of the diving suits on the U.S. cover. But Helquist’s costumes owe more to coolness than continuity anyway; if the illustrations had been so, he’d have drawn Fiona wearing a stuffy diving suit out of the submarine, and a cool one inside. See also Olaf’s tremendous costume on the cover of The Gloom Looms.)
I think parts of this chapter are perfect, but I’ll try to refrain and just comment on the continuity.
Fernald lost his hands after leaving Fiona – or at roughly the same time, e.g. the same event which caused the loss of his hands was that which his involvement in prevented him from returning to the Queequeg.
“I should have known you were a goody-goody!” This, however, implies that Fiona was still quite young when Fernald left – young enough to not really be choosing sides in V.F.D. yet.
Widdershins’s overbearing attitude is, according to Fernald, the reason he “ran away and joined Olaf’s acting troupe” – which suggests that for Fernald it was sort of the equivalent of running away to join the circus. However, we’ll later learn that this isn’t the whole story. I think Fernald’s lying to himself here, if he’s lying to Fiona – far from not caring where Widdershins is, I think he does care.
“lay their cards on the table” – a fitting way of dealing with a card-carrying villain.
While Fiona had to research Medusoid Mycelium in her mycological book, Fernald already knows about it – probably because of his work with Anwhistle Aquatics.
“Every time we fail to get the Baudelaire fortune, Count Olaf yells at everyone!” Which is a lousy reason for trying to get the Baudelaire fortune, but on the other hand, Fernald has nowhere else to go; he wants to keep the boss happy.
“Sometimes I am [ashamed]… Life in Olaf’s troupe sounded like it was going to be glamorous and fun, but we’ve ended up doing more murder, arson, blackmail, and assorted violence than I would have preferred.” I think this ties in with the white-faced women’s account in TSS. Perhaps Olaf’s troupe was, at one point, seen as something of a roguish vigilante group – the height of cool, and capable of dealing with problems not by sitting around reading books but by taking action. But it ended up – whether it was always this way or just wound its way there – being nothing more than a criminal gang.
“There is no wrong side of the schism.” Because of human subjectivity, either side is seen as right to those who are on it. However, Fernald seems to forget that Volatile Fungus Deportation wasn’t universally-popular, and for that matter it wouldn’t have occurred at all if the other side of the schism wasn’t active.
But for that matter I think – did we previously identify a potential philosophical dispute rather than something McGuffin-based as a likely cause for the schism? I think that’s my present line of thinking, anyway. As such, it strikes me that the “villainous” side might well have started out not being so bad, although it’d be a beacon for villainous people, and their actions would eventually have grown to be directly criminal in themselves. What if the choice was as simple as being between “the world is quiet here” and “fight fire with fire”? I’ve probably adopted this.
Jacques’s article is full of errors, which is strange for an article written by Jacques. Did it get mangled in the Punctilio’s editing process? Or, as I’ve suggested before, was Jacques’s own villainous action to make libellous criminal accusations against members of the other side of the schism – such as accusing Olaf and the bald man of murdering Dr. Orwell, which they did not?
“a recent schism” – TGG seems to be using the U.A.’s schism dating rather than having moved on to TPP’s.
There’s too much information here to decipher the truth. Fernald may have started the fire, but it was the worst day of his life regardless. Perhaps he – and, we later learn, Widdershins – took the decision to torch Anwhistle Aquatics because the Medusoid Mycelium escaped, and they deemed that safer than just abandoning the building? Had Fernald already joined Count Olaf at this time, or did Widdershins recommend that he do so to go into hiding? I shouldn’t be surprised if Fernald lost his hands as a result of the fire, though.
“…someone like Jacques Snicket can do something villainous, and someone like Count Olaf can do something noble. Even your parents—” You can argue all day about whether the references to Jacques and Olaf are theoretical or not. I think it’s more interesting if they aren’t theoretical – that they’re being quoted as examples because they are accurate examples. I’ve already suggested something villainous that Jacques has done, and there are plenty of noble things Olaf could’ve done in his lifetime; he wasn’t always a villain, even if he was a slightly unpleasant person from his childhood. The Baudelaire parents, though, are definitely being cited in real terms – I think it likely that Fernald knows the story of the poison darts. I don’t imagine Olaf exactly sitting on that one when it justifies his worldview and some of his worst crimes.
“Did you kill Gregor Anwhistle?” … “The last time you saw me… I had two hands, instead of hooks. Our stepfather probably didn’t tell you what happened to me…” This juxtaposition would seem to connect Gregor Anwhistle’s death with the loss of Fernald’s hands, which would fit if Gregor died in the fire, and if Fernald helped set it.
“People aren’t either wicked or noble.” A hugely important message for the second half of the series.
While Fernald’s examples aren’t perfect – the Baudelaires didn’t want to start any fires, and they joined the only submarine and captain they could find – then they do suggest that this is how a descent into villainy starts. They aren’t quite a direct comparison.
Fun fact: Edgar Guest’s full name was Edgar Albert Guest. “Edgar” and “Albert” are the names of Mr. Poe’s children, rather than “Edgar” and “Allan” as one might expect.
“Before I joined up with Count Olaf, I was studying poetry with my stepfather. We used to read to one another in the Main Hall of the Queequeg.” So we see, things weren’t so bad between Widdershins and Fernald after all, although one can scarcely picture Widdershins being too great a fan of poetry either, not now. Perhaps it’s something he laid aside when Fernald defected.
“…it is quite another to look at a cohort of a despicable villain, who has tried again and again to cause so much harm, and try to see where the good parts are buried, when all you can remember is the pain and suffering he has caused.” Couldn’t refrain from saying how good I think this part is.
“…just as I, between paragraphs, am picking through this salad in front of me, hoping that my waiter is more noble than wicked, and that my sister, Kit, might be saved by the small, herbed piece of toast I hope to retrieve from my bowl.” I always considered this to be another irrelevant Snicket anecdote like so many others, and was surprised that some thought it was important and were disappointed when the “plot” was “dropped.” I guess this is what it feels like to be you, Hermes. Some people also thought the bowl was a reference to the sugar bowl, and that it therefore contained antidote croutons. …
“I’ll return you to the Queequeg… if you take me with you.” Fernald is only willing to risk Olaf’s wrath if he, well, doesn’t have to risk it. If he can have another home again.
