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Post by cwm on Aug 20, 2009 9:00:27 GMT -5
I'm just wondering what the significance of it being on a napkin is. Is the ship something printed on the napkin, or a doodle Lemony's done? If the former, possibly taken from a cafe on a boat; if the latter, just a random napkin he happened to have?
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Post by Dante on Aug 20, 2009 9:16:37 GMT -5
The ship looks printed to me, but that may not be a clue; the fact that it looked printed was the reason why it was thought to connect to The Prospero, since that vessel seems the sort which might distribute napkins with the image of a ship woven onto them. The fact that it's a napkin may also tie into some of the mentions of monogrammed napkins in Chapters Two and Ten. I think it's also something of a cliché to scribble things on napkins, much like "back-of-an-envelope calculations."
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Post by Hermes on Aug 20, 2009 11:31:15 GMT -5
Chapter 8.
One of the most significant chapters in the series. I have written too much, and still not covered everything.
'the surviving members of the family have changed their names and are working in smaller, less glamorous inns.' Who can thse be? Frank and Ernest? But Lemony later seems definitely uncertain about what hapened to them. Or cousins? But O claims he has killed every other member of the family. Of course, there is one surviving member of the family, and she is using a different name, and given the relaxed laws on Snicketland on child labour, she might be working in a small, unglamorous inn. Who can say?
The explanation of the term 'denouement' is indeed odd. The point seems to be that the denouement, or resolution of a storyline, is not the same as the end of someone's story in the sense of the end of their life. But of course The End is not, in any case, the end of the Baudelaires' life, just the end of their flight from Olaf, so the comparisons don't qute work
Dewey dislikes the smoke and mirrors, but goes along with them, presumably seeing them as necessary while villains are at large and secrets have to be kept. Only when the trial has taken place, truth been revealed and villains punished, can VFD be open once again.
So Dewey was taken to the mountain HQ as a child - as I mentioned earlier, it's a bit surprising it was in operation so long ago, but we must accept it. If at that time it was one of many safe places, not all volunteers recruited then need have been there. Presumably the woman who took him was not in fact Edith Wharton, just someone given to quoting her.
'We've thrown important items out of the windows of our destroyed headquarters...' - this certainly sounds like the sugar bowl. I wouldn't worry too much about the fact the the SB was thrown before the fire - if the headquarters was literally destroyed it wouldn't have windows - but we definitely come up against the fact that Lemony said the Baudelaires would never meet the volunteer who did this. So I suppose it must refer to some other important item (e.g the Rosetta Stone, the holey grail, etc.). Note also that this suggests a rather different interpreation of Swinburne to the one actually given in TSS - it takes 'safe at sea' more literally.
'You were taken into the custody of Count Olaf'. Yes, this doesn't make sense, does it? 'Taken' in VFD parlance means recruited. It may be that villains take, i.e. recruit children in the same way the good side does; indeed Olaf can be said to have 'taken' Carmelita, and the sinister duo to have 'taken' all the children in the net. But no attempt was ever made to recruit the Baudelaires, just to exploit them, and sometimes to kill them. Dewey seems to have missed the point. (One could do something with that - take seriously the thought that he has missed the point; one reason there is so much distrust in VFD is because you can't always tell whether someone has been kidnapped or recruited.)
'That's the wicked way of the world'. Not really an answer. The general sense seems to be that no one knew about the whole of the Baudelaires' situation, which is a bit hard to believe - though I can't blame VFD too much, as walking in and grabbing the children off their legal guardians would be problematic - and once the children were no longer with legal guardian they were in hiding. (Tangentially, I wonder how large VFD now is? I remember the captain saying he had had communications from twenty-something volunteers; is this the number of surviving active mebers, at least in the country where the Bauelaires live?)
'Volunteers and villains alike know that the last safe place is the Hotel Denouement.' If this means villains have always known, it does not fit what we learn in TSS. In any case, if villains know about it, how is it safe? (Well, it isn't, of course. But how can they even imagine it's safe?)
Hal is a volunteer 'in a manner of speaking' - i.e., I take it, he does not have the full volunteer training, but he can now be counted as a volunteer because he has volunteered. With Charles it's left rather more obscure - when V says 'What about Charles?' I would take her to be asking if he's a volunteer, but if so D doesn't answer.
'You are noble enough. That is all we can ask for in this world.' And while Lemony disagrees with the letter of this he seems to agree with the spirit. It resolves the problem set up by Fernald in the last book; he is right that no one is perfect, but wrong (at that point) that there is no choice to be made. It is also a defence of the author, and of every author who wants us to sympathise with characters even while they do bad things.
'we can ask for an extra sugar cube in our coffees in the morning'. So apparently sugar is all right in coffee.
Yes, the bit about the henchman with hooks is hard to understand, isn't it? O says that F and F have doublecrossed him, and Klaus certainly takes that to mean they have joined the good side (or at least that Fiona has - well, he's biased, but still). Garbled communications look like the best explantion. Of course, if the narrator is using garbled communications, he might be considered unreliable.....
The faults of Strauss and Jerome are not altogether fairly represented here; Strauss did offer to adopt the Baudelaires, but was prevented by their parents' will; Jerome was ready to stay as their guardian, but only if he could take them away from danger, thus abandoning the Quagmires and the search for the truth.
The JS's have been searching for the Baudelaires, apparently taking us back to the view, cast into doubt in the last book, that they are hard to find. Perhaps they are hard to find unless you have a knack of making wild guesses.
'You're not impostors. You're volunteers.' This is important. It shows, definitely, that volunteers are not only those who have been dragged away by the ankles; you can become a volunteer by volunteering. That is why the Baudelaires are volunteers; that is, in retrospect, why Quigley is a volunteer (though in both these cases they have partial training as well). I think it is addressed to us, the audience, too.
'Like my comrade always says, right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.' This is a strong clue to who his comrade is (unless it is Martin Luther King).
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Post by Dante on Aug 20, 2009 11:52:41 GMT -5
The explanation of the term 'denouement' is indeed odd. The point seems to be that the denouement, or resolution of a storyline, is not the same as the end of someone's story in the sense of the end of their life. But of course The End is not, in any case, the end of the Baudelaires' life, just the end of their flight from Olaf, so the comparisons don't qute work Oh yes, this is another reason why Handler's examples don't work - because they all end in death. It shouldn't necessarily be so, even by his own definition. It's accepted literary terminology for a falling action to occur after the rising action leading up to the denouement, making the denouement the penultimate rather than the ultimate event. Very few books conclude immediately following the most dramatic event; aftermath is nearly always shown. If it wasn't, we wouldn't know how the Baudelaires were left behind by certain guardians, for example. It'd have to be in a prologue to the following book. I don't see it as a big problem. TPP says that there used to be many safe places; the mountain headquarters is also apparently occupied in TBL; the only thing it doesn't really work with is the assertion in the U.A. that V.F.D. has had to move from headquarters to headquarters, but all the places they moved to clearly already existed and were suitable for V.F.D.'s purposes. I think it may be a case of looking at an officially-designated headquarters amid a number of sanctuary outposts. Volunteers are fond of that sort of thing, it seems. A bit larger than that, I think; my assumption was that at this present state in time, V.F.D. would run to some hundreds of members. This is an organisation that is very large and whose branches cover nearly every field of knowledge; headquarters in happier times have been hives of activity. I simply don't get any of the sense of urgency that one would feel if there were only such a small number left. We encounter too many volunteers and too many signs of volunteer activity for that to seem plausible. A fine point, and one that identifies the essential essence of what makes a volunteer. It's not simply that they belonged to rich families, that old boys' club connections brought them all together, that they were friends who visited the opera or libraries together; volunteers are volunteers because they are those who had the nobility to stand up for what is right, and to promote those values in others. |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 20, 2009 16:22:31 GMT -5
I don't see it as a big problem. TPP says that there used to be many safe places; the mountain headquarters is also apparently occupied in TBL; the only thing it doesn't really work with is the assertion in the U.A. that V.F.D. has had to move from headquarters to headquarters, but all the places they moved to clearly already existed and were suitable for V.F.D.'s purposes. I think it may be a case of looking at an officially-designated headquarters amid a number of sanctuary outposts. My main worry was that Olaf seems not to have been there, as he had to find its location from the coffee-stain clue. But that can be accounted for by its being one of many safe places. Well, I would have said it's rather striking how little VFD activity we see given the supposed wide scope of the organisation. I'm only counting active members; I'm sure there are many other people around who have the training, and would respond if called on to help; this would include Monty and Josephine, and also the many associates Lemony refers to helping him in his travels. But perhaps twenty-five, or whatever it is, could be seen as the number of sites (the horseradish factory, the Vineyard of Fragrant Drapes, the Anxious Clown, etc.) rather than the number of individual members. Chapter 9So people have heard of Dewey, but see him as mythical. (For no one to be sure he exists, by the way, he must have been in hiding from an early age.) 'You won't dare unleash the Medusoid Mycelium. Not while I have the sugar bowl'. Does this mean what's in the SB is actually a preservative against the effect of the MM? (It can't only be that, of course, for all sorts of reasons that we've gone through, but it might be soething which protects against mycelium among other things.) Or does it just mean that if O were to unleash the mycelium and kill all the volunteers, he would destroy his chances of getting the SB? The passage where the freaks lament their inadequacy is very affecting. On the one hand, O recruits freakish people by making them feel accepted. On the other, he seems to encourage in them the sense that they are freakish in order to make this necessary. This was especially noticeable with the white faced women. In this case, of course, the work had been started already, probably by Lulu. So we get the fullest account of the sugar bowl. - Clearly, there is not meant to be a definite answer to what is in it; it is just a thing of great importance. (Though I rather like the idea that I saw somewhere that it is a preservative against fire; in that case it would be important to the Baudelaires because it could have saved them, and to the Snickets because it could have frustrated their career of arson/protected them from false allegations.) - 'You know how difficult it was to find a container that would hold it safely, securely and attractively' - this rather goes against the suggestion of TUA that VFD regularly uses sugar bowls - unless the other sugar bowls were inspired by this one. - E certainly thinks - as in TEE - that it was Beatrice who stole it; she doesn't seem to be aware of Lemony's role. - I think you can reconcile it belonging to E with its general importance to VFD if, for instance, one of her parents discovered it. Dewey's 'not any more' is rather hard to justify - all he can say in support of it is 'there are worse things than theft' - but if, perhaps, her parent meant it to be used for the common good, she might be thought to lose her right to it if she refuses to use it for that end. What on earth are extremely flammable chemicals doing in the laundry room? I would concur with what Dante said about an earlier passage - it's as if they wanted people to torch the hotel. So why does D reveal the laundry room is a decoy? Or perhaps he doesn't - after all, O doesn't seem to believe him; he is still anxious, both now and in the morning, to get into it. So it's a kind of double bluff; that's what he might say if the SB were there. He actually is ready to die rather than say the exact phrases - even though knowing them would not in the end help O - I take it because he needs to mantain the deception until the real resting place of the SB has been discovered and it has been taken away. 'Wicked people never have time for reading'. Not quite true - there's at least one well-read villain in the series, Dr Orwell. But one gets the point. 'That's why it's called injustice!' This line, I think, is the nearest thing we get to a payoff from the 'which can lead to much injustice' clue. The clue can relate both to Justice Strauss, and to Jerome, who has become an expert on injustice. 'When I was your age I spent years as a horse thief...' - which shows that Strauss is quite a lot older than Esme (and makes it even harder, I think, to believe that E was at school with Fernald's mother.) 'What else can I do?' This is quite pathetic - O clearly feels he is forced to be villainous by circumstances, though the details are not clear. This is one of the striking 'human Olaf' moments we get in the last few books. 'In an instant you can change a few words in a poem by Robert Frost...' - I think this may be quite a clever retcon. In TSS, there was a reference to a poem by RF called 'The Road Less Travelled'. The real title, as Dante pointed out at the time, is 'The Road Not Taken'. This is clearly a mistake, as lots of other people make it too. But it can be read as a clue, given by VFDeclamation, sending the message that something is 'not taken'. Agreed; the killing of Dewey is not a mark of moral ambiguity on the Baudelaires' part. They cannot be held responsible for it. (I think the sectumsempra scene in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is much more effective in this respect.) I guess, as people have said, D points at the sky because he thinks Kit is there; but why does he go to the pond, rather than just dying in the lobby? I think it is amazing that the character of Dewey - who appears in three chapters (well, four, though in one anonymously), who knows the Baudelaires for about an hour and a half, and whose relationship (with a woman whose own part in the story is actually quite small) is conveyed only in hints, has managed to have such an impact. For a long time I thought Beatrice must be the Baudelaires' mother because no one else could have enough importance to the story to make for a satisfying conclusion. Well, I was right, of course, but given what Handler does with Dewey and Kit, I think he could have introduced Beatrice as a new character in the last book and still made us care about her. |
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Post by Dante on Aug 21, 2009 4:31:37 GMT -5
My main worry was that Olaf seems not to have been there, as he had to find its location from the coffee-stain clue. But that can be accounted for by its being one of many safe places. Ah, I see. I hadn't thought about it that way. That might still be a problem. But we'll wait for TBL. Oh, I should note something about that at the end of this post. We don't see much on-screen, but I think there's a distinct impression that there's a lot happening behind the scenes; the way so many normal people and places, like Café Salmonella and the Anxious Clown and their waiters, are revealed to have been tangled up in V.F.D. in the past I think leaves open the possibility that the same thing is going on. There's a bit in The End in which a relatively recent incident in the Baudelaires' lives, a visit to the Financial District with their parents, is revealed to have been in some fashion a V.F.D. assignation. I don't see the signs that such activity has ceased. However, I see the distinction, now you make it, between "active" and what you might term "passive" volunteers - those who are doing specific V.F.D. duties as a job, retrieving vital clues and communcating in code, and those who are just fulfilling ordinary roles but in a manner consistent with their V.F.D. training, like, uh... well, best examples would probably be the Baudelaire parents and the U.A.'s librarian, although we see that they were still up to volunteer business. They just weren't full-time secret agents. Yes, I agree. Even if - well, I was going to say that one way Dewey could've been heard of but be mythical would be if he had supposedly died when he was young, but in fact had not. The same point obviously applies. However, it seems hard to say who exactly Dewey is supposed to be mythical to. Everyone? Villains? Other volunteers, too? The Baudelaire parents knew him, for example. And the more people know him, the more people think him to be a secret. Perhaps the name could've been thought of as a kind of... well, you know when directors are embarrassed about the films they've made, they have themselves credited as Alan Smithee? Or how malfunctioning machinery is meant to be sabotaged by gremlins? I see Dewey as not being just a mythical figure, but more of a mythical function - if a piece of vital information is suddenly delivered to an unknown location above the heads of ordinary volunteers, the joke is that it's being sent to "Dewey Denouement," the joke being that that person too is also lost. Hard to explain quite what I'm envisioning, but as a mythical figure I see his invocation being ambiguously mythical and literal. I think the former explanation - preservative against the Medusoid Mycelium (among other things) - isn't sufficient to explain this. It suggests that the sugar bowl is something dangerous or powerful in its own right. If Olaf unleashes the Mycelium, and Dewey then uses the sugar bowl, all that happens is things return to the status quo. There's no drastic shift - nothing that could terrify Olaf against using the Medusoid Mycelium. If it was just a preservative, I can still see Olaf trying his luck. I see it as a sort of counter-weapon, although I can't imagine of what kind... which is why my position on the sugar bowl as it appears in TPP has shifted to state that it's a symbol or concept, or rather that what it contains is a powerful symbol or concept, much like the Great Unknown. Only portable. I think that this passage merely refers to the sugar bowl, as container, before it was used as the receptacle for the object inside the sugar bowl. The implication in TSS is that Lemony stole it in order to hide crucial evidence inside it, and whatever you might say about what TSS says about what's inside the sugar bowl, then what it says about the journey of the container itself has not been contradicted. I'm satisfied that Esmé merely owned the container which was stolen and used to hold the object in question - which we really need some sort of code-name for to prevent this kind of ambiguity. That Esmé holds such a strong grudge is the only thing going against this interpretation, but I feel all the other facts are in line. We know that the object itself was the object of a long and dangerous struggle; this says nothing about when its container was introduced, and indeed we know nothing about when Lemony stole the sugar bowl (although taking certain old clues in tandem it may even have been the first occasion on which Beatrice met Esmé, which would have been a very long time ago). I think Esmé would still feel aggrieved. That something which used to belong to her was then used for such a vital purpose and became such a crucial object in itself I think would leave her very bitter. It could just be the idea that her own property has become more important than her - that'd be a blow to her pride. I assumed that they were cleaning products of some kind. It's highly likely that they would contain some kind of alcohol, and that would be extremely prone to flame. So I don't really hav ea problem with that. I think Dewey's stuck between a rock and a hard place. He doesn't want to give away the sugar bowl, but he doesn't want to die, either. Quite apart from his own self-preservation instinct, that would be deeply traumatic to Kit, and would rob her child of a father. Yeah, alright. That's very good. What do you think to my suggestion that the scene may have been stronger in an earlier draft? Although if that is the case, it raises the problem of why it would have been changed. Perhaps to make the Baudelaires more passive - more unable to do anything, rather than unable to change anything. Paramount secrecy, I think; that, and dedication to his life's work. I don't think anyone wants their mangled corpse on public display, especially such a private person. Being close to the catalogue is probably how he would want to be interred, proximity to Kit being impossible at the time. He only really makes a full appearance in two chapters; he barely appears in Chapter Seven either, and in that we still can't identify him. I think he probably has such an impact because he's linked so well to the rest of the setting; we can easily "read him in"to other characters' relationships and situations. Plenty of fanfiction potential, too. There's a degree to which this is the same for Kit. She's in two chapters of TPP, not in much of The End either really, but there's been a lot of build-up and a lot we can fill in, for her role in the U.A. and the fact that she's a Snicket. As for Beatrice, I think that - hm. Some people thought that Beatrice would appear in the last book and die then. I think a Beatrice who is dead throughout the series is probably more effective as a character we know - the Baudelaire mother, as it turned out - and Beatrice as a new character would only be effective if she turned up alive. Because if she was a new character who was dead all along then she may as well have been the Baudelaire mother in any case, for all the difference it makes. Even like that, it's sometimes hard to see what "Beatrice" and "Mrs. Baudelaire" actually have in common. Edit: Ah yes. I will be away for a week from tomorrow. I dare say, though, that TPP discussion can still fill out much of that time, so it won't be as bad as the wait for some of the other new reread entries to be posted. The TBL reread, part 12.5, should start soon after I come back. Any questions or objections? Not that I suspect there'll be any. |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 21, 2009 11:00:51 GMT -5
The machine ate my comments. However, I may disappear soon, so here's a summary. We don't see much on-screen, but I think there's a distinct impression that there's a lot happening behind the scenes; the way so many normal people and places, like Café Salmonella and the Anxious Clown and their waiters, are revealed to have been tangled up in V.F.D. in the past I think leaves open the possibility that the same thing is going on. There's a bit in The End in which a relatively recent incident in the Baudelaires' lives, a visit to the Financial District with their parents, is revealed to have been in some fashion a V.F.D. assignation. I don't see the signs that such activity has ceased. There's no doubt a decline is going on - Widdershins is the clearest witness, I guess - and will continue (young B refers to 'those last few volunteers'). It's hard to know just where we are in the process. I think this is overinterpretation. As far as I remember, TSS doesn't mention L stealing the sugar bowl. I don't think he is saying that he has hidden evidence in it; he isn't actually with it at the time, but is about to go and retrieve it. He is saying either that he has now realised that the evidence is hidden in it, or, as I would prefer, that it is the evidence and he has now realised where it is hidden. (This could be made compatible with your theory, I think, but it's compatible with other theories too.) Not sure. The Baudelaires keep blaming themselves unnecessarily, so I don't think this is so out of place. She'd certainly have to be alive. Of course, before the truth was revealed, it was possible that the swimming woman and the woman in Lemony's trunk were her, so she would have had some lead-up. Posting this now before it gets eaten again - returning later, I hope, with ch, 10. |
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Post by Dante on Aug 21, 2009 12:11:07 GMT -5
There's no doubt a decline is going on - Widdershins is the clearest witness, I guess - and will continue (young B refers to 'those last few volunteers'). It's hard to know just where we are in the process. Hmm. A very small number still feels very much "off" to me. The references in the U.A. to how one would know if one is about to undergo recruitment, for example - the very general phrase, the very general sounds to hear outside - combined with the sequence at the end of TPP where we are informed that it's entirely possible for us to have met the characters of the series (not that many of them were volunteers, but some would have been) give me the impression that we're meant to see V.F.D. as still extant, at the edges of society, still capable of observing and supporting nobility. In addition, there's not really any point where Lemony ever says that V.F.D. itself is on the brink of extinction; at the end of The End he raises the possibility that the Baudelaires are members, indicating that there's still something big enough to be worth being a member of. Embedded Edit: However, I'll assess TBL's claims in their full context when we reread that. Being set ten years after the conclusion of The End, there is plenty of potential for things to have changed. The book itself is quietly bleak even while it is quietly optimistic. Excuse me. You misunderstand. THH establishes that Lemony stole the sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor (by means of him unambiguously admitting it). TSS's letter to Kit provides his motive. He declares that Kit was correct in observing that a tea set is a handy place to hide something important and small. Our attention in the same book is drawn to a tea set possessed by the villains (including Esmé Squalor), which is conspicuously lacking a sugar bowl. (We are also informed of a tea party Beatrice first met Esmé at which Lemony wishes she had never attended, and Esmé herself claims that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her.) How the sugar bowl came to pass out of Lemony's hands is readily apparent; if he stole it to hide evidence in it, he immediately did so and then put the sugar bowl in a safe place, accompanying himself obviously not being a safe place, or he would not need to hide his evidence. (By contrast, the Mortmain Mountains headquarters, somewhere to sea, and later the Hotel Denouement, are considered to be safe places.) Now he seeks to reclaim that evidence and capitalise on it. In TPP, he arguably does so. In TBL - we will come to that. But I would say that the books gradually reveal to us a fairly uncomplicated narrative. It's merely the exact nature of the sugar bowl's contents which are problematic, and that's just because of TPP. (Embedded Edit: Well, and The End. Klaus knowing the sugar bowl was involved in the schism, indeed!) Except it's not the Baudelaires blaming themselves - not just. It's Handler blaming them. Here is a quote from Chapter Eight of The End, emphasis mine: "And Dewey, I’m sad to remind you, was not with the Baudelaires, but lying dead at the bottom of a pond, still clutching the harpoon that the three siblings had fired into his heart." Yes, some people did think that, and the Book Blast I posted above can be taken as implying that, although ultimately it's not the case. It would've been a possible solution. |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 21, 2009 12:58:38 GMT -5
Excuse me. You misunderstand. THH establishes that Lemony stole the sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor (by means of him unambiguously admitting it). TSS's letter to Kit provides his motive. He declares that Kit was correct in observing that a tea set is a handy place to hide something important and small. Our attention in the same book is drawn to a tea set possessed by the villains (including Esmé Squalor), which is conspicuously lacking a sugar bowl. (We are also informed of a tea party Beatrice first met Esmé at which Lemony wishes she had never attended, and Esmé herself claims that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her.) How the sugar bowl came to pass out of Lemony's hands is readily apparent; if he stole it to hide evidence in it, he immediately did so and then put the sugar bowl in a safe place, accompanying himself obviously not being a safe place, or he would not need to hide his evidence. (By contrast, the Mortmain Mountains headquarters, somewhere to sea, and later the Hotel Denouement, are considered to be safe places.) Now he seeks to reclaim that evidence and capitalise on it. In TPP, he arguably does so. Lemony says 'I have at last discovered the whereabouts of the evidence... you were right to say that a tea set was a good place to hide something.' I read this as meaning that he had just discovered that someone else had hidden the evidence in a tea set. If he is saying that he, having discovered the evidence, has hidden it in a tea set, and has then deposited it in a safe place, where he is not at the moment, but is travelling towards it - well, it just doesn't read that way to me; it sounds as if the discovery of evidence is something new. It's therefore not the same event as the theft of the sugar bowl, which, I would have thought, happened more than fifteen years ago, since Lemony and Beatrice were there together, and in any case must have happened before TEE where Esme refers to it. The way I read it is this: a long time ago L and B stole the sugar bowl from E, whether because it already contained something valuable, or to put something valuable in it. It either was already, or became in some way, crucial evidence against Olaf. It was then lost, possibly at the masked ball. Finally L worked out where it was - it had been hidden in a tea set, on the 'Hide a leaf in a forest' principle - and set out to retrieve it. I'm not sure K has to be read as meaning that, but we'll come to it in due course. Chapter 10. So, what is Bruce doing in the hotel (and who is with him)? Last thing we heard of him he was caught in the net with the children - though this is easy to forget. Has he, like them, been recruited? If not, you might think he would have informed the authorities. Perhaps he has just been told to wait until the trial, when everything will be sorted out. 'I didn't realise this was a sad occasion'. The speaker is clearly a volunteer. Their next remark - 'We should observe everything carefully, and intrude only if absolutely necessary' probably expresses a common view among volunteers nowadays - and not a stupid one, given the difficulty of seeing what is going on and who is on which side - but one that may help to explain VFD's ineffectiveness. Note that the Baudelaires never really make up their mind whether to run or stay; they are interrupted, first by the taxi driver, and then by Mr Poe. In the end they do decide to run, but by then, of course, things have changed. The taxi driver - yes, I agree that it is Lemony. So here the Baudelaires stand face to face with their biographer. Who the woman in the trunk is is a mystery, though I suspect we were meant to suspect that it was Beatrice. The description recalls the taxi driver from TWW, but in Thirteen Shocking Secrets we are reminded of the taxi driver from TRR - they may be the same person, of course. 'waterskiing towards Captain Widdershins and then waterskiing away from him again' - later she is with him, but I suppose she may have gone ahead of him to find Fernald and Fiona, for instance. Much remains unclear - where is Phil? who is he swimming woman, and where did she go? - but these are just unknowns, part of the general unknownness of life; one can think of coherent possible answers to them. 'Where there is no way of knowing, you can only imagine'. One of the central statements of the theme of mystery. Also there is a reference here - and not the only one - to another story that would take thirteen books to tell; admittedly only a hypothetical story, but presumably it would follow the real events of L's own life. And we come down to earth with a thump. Regarding Sir's LS pyjamas, we should note that Charles's pyjamas match them, so presumably also say LS - which I think means it does indeed stand for Lucky Smells. Ned H. Rirger seems esepcailly active in this chapter.. 'They flunked all sorts of tests'. This is absolutely false, of course. it's intersting that Hal, despite the way they cheated him to get in to the library of records, is prepared to defend them. There are many absurdities surrounding the trial. When Strauss says 'I think I can be fair where Count Olaf is concerned', that's beside the point; justice must be manifestly seen to be done; if the judge has an interest, she may think she can rise above it, she may even be right, but she's still not a suitable judge. She also should not be fraternising with key witnesses - either the Baudelaires or Jerome. As for bringing the trial forward - well, showing up early may be a sign of a noble person, but that doesn't mean everyone will be there - indeed, Kit and associates clearly won't be, and I'm presuming that there are other volunteers who won't as well. (This affects what one thinks of the Baudelaires'actions at the end.) And villains shoukld surely have the chance to get there as well - both for the sake of fairness and so that they can actually be punished if found guilty. 'I'm happy to wait for the verdict of the High Court. Ha!' A foreshadowing. |
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Post by Dante on Aug 21, 2009 15:10:58 GMT -5
Finally L worked out where it was - it had been hidden in a tea set, on the 'Hide a leaf in a forest' principle - and set out to retrieve it. Ah. I see that this, in fact, is the sole point on which we disagree, for which I am glad. I took the reference as having been the inspiration for Lemony's use of a sugar bowl to hide some evidence or other; you're taking it as having inspired someone else to hide the sugar bowl itself in a tea set. I'll concede that Lemony does introduce Kit's advice in a context which implies new light being shed on the idea, but I think it can be read as a re-affirmation of that advice. Because the or a sugar bowl is not seen accompanying a tea set, whereas TSS contains a tea set sans sugar bowl. Bruce isn't very competent, but he seems self-centred enough to take offence when captured in a giant net and told that he has been triumphed over for a second time. Even if the villains did tempt him with the prospect of wealth and pay for a cushy room for him, I can't explain his relaxed tone or his companion. Maybe one of the villains was a very old acquaintance he was once close with... but alas, this requires fanfiction to fix. Of course, whether or not the Thirteen Shocking Secrets document is canon is debateable - and would be unnecessary if it didn't introduce connections not made in the series itself (and that character chart, gods) - but I think it's fair to hazard guesses in this fashion. I at one point thought the woman in the trunk might be R., for the simple fact that it would "kill two characters with one stone," as it were - explain away one mysterious character and bring in another long-awaited one. But it doesn't seem to square with R.'s role in general. I really like the fact that there's not a flippant moment in the Baudelaires' sole meeting with Lemony (er, apart from TWW, which was very flippant). For very important moments, I'm glad when they're heavy and charged and not full of light jokes. Those have their place (i.e. everywhere else), but fans really like the dark moments, in any series. Not that this is really dark, but it is unfathomable. I suddenly had a wild idea involving Phil being stalked by the shark that savaged his leg, in a sort of Captain-Hook-and-the-crocodile relationship, but then I realised that that wasn't really very coherent at all. I guess there's just no place for optimism after TGG. And regarding the LS, TBL sort of does it in reverse, as proponents of the strange Lemony = Sir theory point out. Whether it's pure coincidence or whether Handler's encouraging it for some strange reason is itself mysterious. I guess Hal came to understand that there are worse things than wanting to sneak a peek at a forbidden piece of paperwork, namely setting many other pieces of paperwork on fire. I suspect it's really because he's more volunteer than villain - and that itself is probably because it would be hard for Hal to reappear as a neutral character or even as a villain. There's something more plausible about him turning up wearing a turban and running an Indian restaurant than him just turning up again, I guess. Yes, I quite agree that Justice Strauss is way off the mark here. It's not Count Olaf who she needs to be fair to - or rather, it is, but the precise context was, I think, whether she could be fair on the Baudelaires, and the manner in which one would be fair to them and the manner in which one would have to be fair to Count Olaf are quite different; she'd have to avoid looking too kindly on the one and looking too harshly on the other. As a consequence, "I think I can be fair where Count Olaf is concerned" actually came across to me as slightly threatening, but Justice Strauss doesn't seem to really have a malicious bone in her body (except maybe when she was stealing horses), so I suppose it's unintentional. Well, since the villains actually outnumber the volunteers on the High Court, I guess whether or not Justice Strauss really could have passed an impartial judgement is less of an issue, although I suppose it could be a strikingly subtle parallel. The sinister duo surely put in the shade any small failings Justice Strauss might have as a judge. I suppose if everyone were to be judged fairly, many volunteers would also be found guilty of numerous crimes... the trial of the century wouldn't please anyone, ultimately, so I suppose injustice winning out also has its similarities to the prospect if justice won out... |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 21, 2009 15:45:34 GMT -5
Finally L worked out where it was - it had been hidden in a tea set, on the 'Hide a leaf in a forest' principle - and set out to retrieve it. Ah. I see that this, in fact, is the sole point on which we disagree, for which I am glad. I took the reference as having been the inspiration for Lemony's use of a sugar bowl to hide some evidence or other; you're taking it as having inspired someone else to hide the sugar bowl itself in a tea set. I'll concede that Lemony does introduce Kit's advice in a context which implies new light being shed on the idea, but I think it can be read as a re-affirmation of that advice. Because the or a sugar bowl is not seen accompanying a tea set, whereas TSS contains a tea set sans sugar bowl. The problem arises from the fact that L seems to be realising something new - and I think it's actually a bit stronger than what I said before: 'Your suggestion.... has turned out to be correct'. So my theory was meant to reconcile that with the fact that L stole the sugar bowl long before, and indeed that sugar bowls seem to be a regular item of VFD equipment. But I suppose you could also just see him as being a bit disingenuous; he doesn't want to specify what evidence he's talking about, so he reminds Kit of an incident in the past that will allow her to make the connection. It does contain information, not previously given, that turns out to be correct - most notably 'LS's niece is an orphan'. And the character chart may be canon without being true - it might represent the detective efforts of someone within the story. Good thought. Sort of, but since it's normal for formal letters to begin 'Dear Sir' I don't see this as very convincing. I meant to add something to the bit about the trial at the end: I guess Handler was in a cleft stick because on the one hand he wanted the trial to happen, but on the other he also wanted the hotel to be burnt down as a signal to volunteers to stay away. Really, this doesn't make sense, because the trial shouldn't have begun till all the volutneers were there. But narrative necessity took control. |
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Post by Dante on Aug 22, 2009 2:50:45 GMT -5
The problem arises from the fact that L seems to be realising something new - and I think it's actually a bit stronger than what I said before: 'Your suggestion.... has turned out to be correct'. So my theory was meant to reconcile that with the fact that L stole the sugar bowl long before, and indeed that sugar bowls seem to be a regular item of VFD equipment. But I suppose you could also just see him as being a bit disingenuous; he doesn't want to specify what evidence he's talking about, so he reminds Kit of an incident in the past that will allow her to make the connection. Lemony is also somewhat evasive about the precise date he's heading for the Hotel Denouement, and has to hint that one to Kit too. However, I certainly accept your interpretation as a valid one. I regard mine as the least problematic, but by no means unproblematic. That information is likely attributable to the fact that the document was created by HarperCollins, who would know by that point what happens in TBL and The End, if they hadn't already read it. However, your idea that it might represent the detective efforts of someone within the story is a good idea - Lemony's editor, for example, is also a character in the story, so as a promotional document by HarperCollins this may be represented within canon as an investigative summary by Lemony's publishers. I don't think we actually know who wrote the document - in real life, that is - but I could hazard a few guesses, and they'd all know what they're talking about. Nor I, but nonetheless, it has been suggested, and for people who make that suggestion it ties in extraordinarily well with the L.S. initials on Sir's pyjamas. I of course don't think the theory is true, but given the way Lemony drew attention to the L.S. initials on Sir's pyjamas I'm not entirely sure it's complete coincidence. It could be a genuine red herring - that is, one intended, rather than another zany inaccurate theory cooked up by fans. Hmm, although it's just occurred to me that those L.S. initials could be to draw our attention back to the idea of initials on monogrammed napkins, one of which was referred to shortly beforehand. I think I suggested above that he gave himself too many days for the Baudelaires to get to the Hotel Denouement from TSS. This would fit with the way some days are spent doing barely anything at all. However, the trial happening early also gives a good reason for Kit et al not returning yet, whereas otherwise I imagine some contrived excuse would be necessary. Well, not exactly contrived. "Attacked by ferocious eagles" is unlikely in every-day life, but was already in progress in the series. See you all in a week! Don't wreck the forum with your crazy parties while I'm gone! |
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Post by Hermes on Aug 22, 2009 11:01:27 GMT -5
Chapter 11.
The reference to an important bathyscaphe may link up with something in The End: possibly Ishmael was in the bathyscaphe, and that is how he ended up on the island.
It's interesting that there is a record of the trial in the underwater library, showing that the library was maintained after Dewey's death (which means, by the way, that there still is a safe place). I still think that the passage about a dreadful curry points to Hal surviving the fire, so he may be looking after the library It's possible, as others have suggested, that the reference is to Lemony's own account, and that he placed it there; on the other hand, he must hae got his information from somewhere, and the number of his possible informants is limited, since with most people he doesn't know whether they survived.
It's perhaps worth mentioning that the interpreation of 'Justice is blind' as 'People attending trials should be blindfolded' isn't actually literal at all, so the sideswipe at Justice Scalia may not be altogether justified.
It's interesting that Sunny is given a cup of tea. I think some people felt that when Jacques and Kit in 'The Little Snicket Lad' are said to be drinking cups of tea, this proves they are quite a lot older than Lemony; but clearly in Snicketland people start drinking tea early.
Can anyone explain the statement that the Baudelaires had known the meaning of the word 'contempt' since a night when they went to the movies with Uncle Monty? I don't remember it coming up in that context.
The evidence list is fascinating. A few things:
- Not everyone present is mentioned - people we know are in the hotel, but aren't listed here, include Bruce, waiters from the Cafe Salmonella and the Anxious Clown, members of the Council of Elders, and Volunteers Fighting Disease. Of course, they may have submitted evidence, but the Baudelaires not recognised their voices. (Presumably the Talmudic commentries were submitted by the volunteer disguised as a rabbi.)
- some of the evidence submitted links up with people who aren't there; couplets, maps, mycological encyclopedias - perhaps also magazine article (Duncan)?
- other things clearly link up with other events - opera synopses with La Forza del Destino, for instance - while love letters provide a link to TBL.
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Post by cwm on Aug 23, 2009 13:37:19 GMT -5
Do you know, I don't think the meaning of 'contempt' comes up in TRR. Allow me to check the Zombies in the Snow script in TUA. Why don't you go and get a delicious sandwich whilst I do so? I'll insert a handy pause denoted by capital letters in the meantime.
[PAUSE AS CWM CHECKS THE ZOMBIES IN THE SNOW SCRIPT IN TUA, ALLOWING HERMES TO GET A DELICIOUS SANDWICH AS HE DOES SO]
Nope, nothing about contempt there. Something Handler misremembered, or indicative of something off-screen?
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Post by Hermes on Aug 24, 2009 10:51:26 GMT -5
Thanks for checking that out, cwm. It's very odd. Monty did take the children to see other movies besides Zombies in the Snow, so can it be a reference to one of them? But that sounds like the kind of really subtle thing that Handler. as we now know, doesn't normally do.
Chapter 12.
Another reference to backgammon; and another story that would take thirteen books to tell; Lemony is beginning to underline the point that he can't tell us everything. I supect this story relates to the original schism, when L was an infant, so can't be directly linked to the bit about his hiding under the backgammon table - though there's obviously a thematic link.
'You'll fail.' 'Your mother told me the same thing. Ha! But one day, when I was seven years old...' This line is full of significance. First, it tells us O knew Beatrice when he was seven, contrary to what we all thought up to this point about his age; also, if you combine this with what this book says about the date of the schism, it implies that he cannot have started it, as we supposed (indeed, as we were clearly told in TUA - this now has to be retconned as referring to a sub-schism). Then, what did Beatrice say he would fail to do? I rather like to think it relates to his kissing Kit. (Some have combined this with the poyzon darts passage to infer that his parents died when he was seven, in which case he would have to be a lot younger than the Baudelaire parents - but I think that's a confusion; TBL fairly clearly makes him about the same age.)
'They passed along all that information to me, so I could catch up with the orphans.' As Dante has pointed out, this does not really fit either with Lulu's role, or with the fact that O doesn't seem to have met the judges recently until TSS. Or does he just mean that they gave him that information when they met in TSS? But after that he wasn't really trying to catch up with the orphans anyway. He may be exaggerating to make Strauss feel bad, I suppose.
Ah, the poyzon darts. A few things here:
- I agree with Dante about the meaning of 'orphan'; Dewey is called an orphan in this book, and in the next couple of books we meet more adult orphans, R and Ishmael. So it doesn't have to have happened when O was a child. It seems to have happened after the birth of Violet and Klaus. I think this also means it can't have been the cause of O's taking up a life of villainy; he was already a villain when L and B were still engaged.
- Killing one parent would 'leave him an orphan' if the other were already dead.
- It would be nice to think that the killing was accidental. This would fit in with La Forza del Destino, and with TPP itself.It would also fit in with Green Mansions, which features an accidental killing with poison darts, though only in that the wrong person gets hit. Given what Snicketverse morality is like, the Baudelaires would still be blamed for it.
'It's likely that [Richard Wright's] work is quoted in a comprehensive history of injustice.' I say, that's incredibly convenient, isn't it? (Of course, it's possible that Dewey had read Jerome's book, and chose it for that reason; still, this doesn't explain Klaus predicting with such confidence that it will be there.)
'That's the five-hundred- and-eight-first page.' An echo of movie-Olaf here, I think ('It is the Swedish expression for beef that has been roasted'.)
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