Sorry for my lack of comments - I had computer trouble yesterday. And today, but I've exhausted my options and can't do anything about it, so I'm back.
I think it is striking that it's
Sunny who asks 'Quigley or Duncan?' The first time I read it I thought it was Violet. But no. Clearly S had been observing V's love life with interest.
Heh, this reminds me of a fanfic I read in which Sunny seemed to be constantly observing, with clear patterns of approval/disapproval, her siblings' romantic entanglements. I made terrible fun of it, but was sorry when it stopped updating midway through.
When Kit says in TPP,
"Because of the schism, I haven’t seen either of my brothers for years", it sounds an awful lot like she thinks Lemony is still alive. Because if he's dead, it wouldn't exactly be remarkable that she hasn't seen that one of her brothers for some time.
Yes, I agree. That's why Olaf is at his best in this book. He's in many ways far more sinister and monstrous than he has been for a long time, but he's also presented as a human character, too, and it's often quite exciting for fans when certain villains are shown to have humanity. Again, wouldn't work with Voldemort, but Snape...
Doesn't one of the author bios suggest that Lemony has a graveyard behind his house? I think that Beatrice's grave is a good candidate, as would be those of other noble volunteers passed on now and then. It appears that Beatrice's grave isn't all that much older than Jacques's, so Lemony would probably be visiting them about equally.
~Chapter Thirteen~
Even the apples look shipwrecked in this chapter illustration.
As has been noted, the remaining lifespan of the poisoned islanders almost certainly defies other presentations of the action of the Medusoid Mycelium. The Baudelaires themselves were on their last legs just a minute ago, so it must’ve been nearly an hour, and it should take far longer than that to travel from the island to the horseradish factory. Maybe the cordial really is having an effect on the Medusoid Mycelium – thematically that would make sense (see below), but it would only ever be a delaying effect.
The tea party in the penthouse suite – one would assume that this refers to the tea party when Beatrice and Esmé first met, and to the 667 Dark Avenue penthouse, but once again that would seem to defy the established order of events in the series. So some of it is probably a coincidence, and most of it probably shouldn’t be thought about too hard.
If definitions of endings are as arbitrary as Lemony suggests, how exactly did he go about deciding that the island chapter was the last that he needed to tell? It’s probably because Olaf dies. The story had a few chapters before his introduction, and will have a chapter after his departure, but in essence aSoUE isn’t really the story of the Baudelaires, but the story of what happened between the Baudelaires and Olaf.
What the islanders say has a lot to do with childhood and adulthood, or innocence and experience. Professor Fletcher complains about the island becoming “dangerous and complicated”; for a professor, it’s ironic that he doesn’t want to think very hard. He wants not to have to, or for someone else to do it for him. Alonso complains that the Baudelaires “spoiled the island forever,” and indeed once you stop being a child, or learn a certain shocking fact, you can never go back to the time before, and no matter how far you run it is inevitable, just as it was always inevitable the first time, that you should be confronted by that change again. “You’ve poisoned us enough,” and it’s not just literal poison but metaphorical poison – the poison of change, of knowledge of good and evil, a taint that destroys childhood, the venom from a snake’s tooth.
“And the root of the trouble, Baudelaires, is you.” Indisputable. Nothing in any of the books would ever have happened were it not for the Baudelaires’ interference – even if it’s unreasonable to blame Olaf on them, say. It’s like how the presence of famous detectives always inspires a murder.
“You’re endangering the whole world… That’s not parenting!” … “I guess it depends on how you look at it.” Since Ishmael doesn’t dispute the Baudelaires’ interpretation of events here, this reads to me like a tacit confession, but one that comes without an apology, nonetheless. Once again, though, I feel like there’s more going on here, symbolically. But the only thing I can come up with is an over-reading concerning the role of religion in relation to scientific and philosophical investigation.
“What do your parents know… about surviving?” So Ishmael thinks that the death of the Baudelaire parents represents the obvious failure of their course in life, and that his method is the only one that ensures survival. But perhaps there’s more to life than surviving.
Also, the narrative implies here that Ishmael has himself eaten one of the apples – indeed, must have had one handy all along, as he didn’t return to the arboretum after the Medusoid Mycelium was released. So it seems like Ishmael survives, barring terrible storms at sea, but of course the possibility exists for all the other islanders to survive or die, just as the possibility exists for anyone who was in the Hotel Denouement to either survive or die. You can’t ever say for sure what happened to any of these characters.
“Whoever brought the apples to the islanders, of course, would need to swim very stealthily to the outrigger, and it would help if they were quite small and slender, so they might escape the watchful eye of the outrigger’s facilitator.” So, in order to bring the possibility of survival in the outside world to these sheltered people, the snake has to be very sneaky about it. A very familiar story.
“That’s why your mother never tasted one of her own bitter apples.” Which, I suggest, is the origin of the custom by which anyone who wishes to leave the island takes a bite from one of its apples and then spits it out. Why Beatrice would’ve needed to take a bite from any apple at all before leaving is unclear to me, but she would have to spit it out for the sake of her child. It’s an unclear picture, of course, and technically inconsistent with the quotation above, but I can’t see how else that aspect of the custom would arise.
“My brother used to call it ‘The Great Unknown.’ …I was terrified… but everyone else wanted to take their chances with the great unknown.” So the Question Mark has existed for a long time. I also think it’s significant that, as Kit says “I was terrified,” she is “clasping her belly as the baby kicked violently.” It wasn’t so much for her own sake that she was afraid. However, someone who’s immersed herself so much in the known world, in investigating and preserving secrets, just like Kit, may indeed be highly unnerved by such a great secret as that represented by the Great Unknown. Widdershins is happier with this, and so were Fernald and Fiona, content to keep secrets and not to press for the truth… perhaps, anyway; attempts to explain this can’t be perfect. Hector and the Quagmires were already lost – had been for a long time. But in a sense that’s so for all these characters. Kit was in the previous book, but every other character here, barring Ink, had been absent for at least one volume. Also, if you like, Kit didn’t really escape the Great Unknown. Maybe she won a temporary reprieve, for the sake of her child, but otherwise…
“All I heard… was one of the Quagmires calling Violet’s name.” “Quigley… or Duncan?” Oh come on, it’s a bit late for that! Ah well, it’s the nod that the Violet/Duncan fans needed, even if Violet’s own take on the dilemma is far less ambivalent.
“I hope you will forgive my failures, and when I see Dewey again I hope he will forgive me, too.” Of course, Kit will indeed be seeing Dewey soon, as the pair of them pass into the great unknown.
“They cried for the world, and most of all, of course, the Baudelaire orphans cried for their parents, who they knew, finally, they would never see again. Even though Kit Snicket had not brought news of their parents, her story of the Great Unknown made them see at last that the people who had written all those chapters in
A Series of Unfortunate Events were gone forever into the great unknown…” What Kit brings the Baudelaires is the ability to accept death, and to live without their parents – without hope of again being received into sheltering arms. In other words, they’ve truly grown up. I wonder if “the people” here refers not just to the Baudelaire parents, because that would suggest Ishmael, too, has vanished… well, he has, really. Everyone soon vanishes from the narrative, just as the Baudelaires and Olaf, whose actions are what really wrote all those chapters in
A Series of Unfortunate Events, will soon vanish from our lives forever.
“I’ve lost too many people—my parents, my true love, and my brothers.”
“Before it belonged to our mother… it belonged to you.” Not strictly true – the ring briefly belonged to the Baudelaires’ mother when Lemony gave it to her, which preceded Kit’s possession of it.
“…onto the shores of the island, where eventually everything arrives…” Ah, I think now I was wrong in reading the island as a kind of afterlife. I think it might instead be a mental state. I’m not entirely sure what, though. Great deal of information… people in an ambiguous state between childhood and adulthood…
When Count Olaf reappears, the reader has probably forgotten all about him with everything else that has happened. He’s just so irrelevant in this book – that is, I’m not criticising how it’s written, I’m saying that’s an aspect of Olaf’s journey. He’s finally reached a place where he cannot exist comfortably; where he doesn’t belong.
“How do you like them apples?” As I thought, Olaf is fully able to appreciate the irony of the situation on the island, even including his own impending death.
“Count Olaf raised the seashell to his lips, and the Baudelaires could see that he was trembling.” Nonetheless, he is afraid. He needs the comfort of the cordial to be able to accept that, after all this, there might not be another escape route for him. That, as Sunny says, his scheming means nothing in this place. That, as I said, he’s irrelevant. But there is one thing he can do.
The Baudelaires’ realisation in the next paragraph – that if they had pushed Olaf overboard, then the island might still have been damned but that Kit would not have been saved – is quite remarkable. It’s an acceptance of the falsehood of something they might have believed to be true in previous books – the idea that Olaf is responsible for everything bad, and for nothing good.
“I’ve done lots of good things in my life… I once took in three orphans, and I’ve been considered for several prestigious theatrical awards.” I guess it depends on how you look at it.
“You’re the one who made us orphans in the first place.” I think the readers would have objected if nobody had ever voiced this long-held suspicion, and indeed just as the readers suspect it, the Baudelaire must suspect it, not just for narrative reasons but for the fragments of the story they heard at the Hotel Denouement.
“Is that what you think?” “We know it.” “You don’t know anything.” It’s true. Think back to the conversation in Chapter Seven, when Olaf told the Baudelaires that there were more stories than their own in the world. They don’t know all those stories. There are secrets they cannot even imagine. They barely know anything that’s transpired, and they certainly don’t have the knowledge to say what Olaf may or may not have done. That’s the important fact here: Olaf doesn’t confirm or deny their suspicions. The Baudelaires may be right. But they can never know, just as we will never know.
“You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal… You’re just like your parents.” And that is probably just what the Baudelaires needed to hear. The story they heard in TPP about their parents, or rather the hints of it, will have unsettled them, and what they learnt on the island means they doubted their parents more than ever. But hearing Olaf – one who
is in a position to know – say that the Baudelaire parents are just like the Baudelaire orphans – is enough. They can go on knowing that whatever dilemmas they face and moral quandaries they’ve encountered, whatever difficulties, they’re no less than their parents, and their parents are no less than them. They can live up to each other. Olaf thinks it requires more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal to triumph in this world – it requires a lack of moral fibre. But he hasn’t triumphed. He’s lost too much to go on.
Also, Olaf throws away his seashell of cordial midway through this speech, after one last gulp. That is to say, he can’t delude himself any more. He has to accept what’s coming.
“I’ve been hurt before.” An expression of manliness – or is he referring to figurative, which is to say, emotional pain here? He’s also lost his parents (and his true love, and so on). He’s been hurt before. But enough of him survived.
“You’re a wicked man… Do you think one kind act will make me forgive you for your failings?” “I haven’t apologised.” This is important, too. We saw it in TPP. “I’m the only important thing.” Olaf is who he is, and he’s unashamed of that. He knows full well that he can’t take back anything he’s done, and that anything he does now won’t outweigh his failings. But he does it anyway.
So what is the meaning of the poetry Kit quotes here? She quotes the whole poem, which has the same title as its first line, and is by Francis William Bourdillon.
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.The eyes in the first stanza are points of light, and at that, so are those in the second. The night has so many eyes, but only the one in the day creates true light, true life. The mind has a thousand eyes, too, and the heart but one, but when the heart’s eye dies there is no other light in life.
Olaf only quotes a single stanza, which is probably for the best, as the other stanzas contain profanity which I suspect would not go down well in a book ostensibly aimed at the 9-12 age group. We’re all grown-ups here, though, and we can withstand a little profanity for the sake of literary criticism. (Edit: The forum censors can't, though. No great loss.)
This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin:
They ---- you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
~But they were ----ed up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
~Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.The underlined stanza is what Olaf quotes, but the rest is relevant – to the Baudelaires, and presumably to Olaf and Kit. They’ve inherited the faults of their parents, and some extra troubles their parents never had – although they’ve also inherited their parents’ strengths. Their parents, too, are the result of their own parents, and in the pseudo-archaic setting of aSoUE all these parents tend to be clad in old-style hats and coats, and while half the time those parents are soppy-stern with their children, the other half of the time they’re at the throats of people their children could never imagine existing. Misfortune is handed down from generation to generation, deepening as it goes, worsening like a schism. The only way to escape it isn’t to run away to a faraway island – it’s to go into the great unknown. Larkin and Olaf say the best way to make the world less miserable in this fashion is not to have any kids yourself, and indeed Olaf doesn’t have any children, but Olaf lives in a world where he can only see the faults and misery of others. The Baudelaires and Kit can see something else.
And the mention of pregnant male seahorses is a call-back to a reference at the end of Chapter Five.
And the paragraph on pregnancy and the birth of children is strongly tied to the themes of the whole book, and merits close reading, but I don’t think I can contribute more to it than what the text itself says.
The Baudelaires, take note, do indeed change the island forever – not by poisoning it, except perhaps with knowledge, but by planting guardian trees all over it, so that it can be safe, at least, from a certain deadly fungus, if not from anything else.
“While reading and writing, the siblings found many answers for which they had been looking, although each answer, of course, only brought forth another mystery, as there were many details of the Baudelaires’ lives that seemed like a strange, unreadable shape of some great unknown.” Which takes us full-circle back to the original reading of the Question Mark in TGG (before all this death business).
Other readers have been touched by the fact that the Baudelaires not only made graves for Count Olaf as well as for Kit, but sometimes visit it, too.
“Like Violet, like Klaus, and like Sunny, I visit certain graves, and often spend my mornings standing on a brae, staring out at the same sea.” Refers to Lemony’s life, including his time as a brae-man in TBL – neither the same graves nor the same brae, but similar. All these lives share a few similar events, even if their history and their future are different.
“It is not the whole story, of course, but it is enough. Under the circumstances, it is the best for which you can hope.” Although, of course, we can hope for another chapter…
…And the last three full-page illustrations are also missing from the British editions of
The End, although thankfully they have been put online by my associate Antenora:
Egmont: Missing Pictures?Interesting that the final image of
The End is of Lemony rowing somewhere – an attempt to reach the island, perhaps? Although it’s mainly to contrast with the following illustration as per the upcoming dedication, all of which will be discussed on Monday.
Notice that the author and illustrator biographies are swapped around – Helquist comes on top and gets a photograph rather than an illustration, and vice-versa for Handler. Snicket’s bio reminds us that there are 170 chapters and that he is not yet finished – I suspect this was to help ensure that people don’t miss out the extra chapter.
And the final Kind Editor letter. I think it’s kind of a shame it wasn’t printed on the same kind of notepaper as used in the TBB-TWW Kind Editor letters.
Bonus thread coming tomorrow.
