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Post by Skelly Craig on Dec 23, 2014 19:11:41 GMT -5
Well, above all, I think, that passage seems to be intended as humour; a one liner showing how unrepentantly proud Olaf is of his evil villainousness. On the secondary level it it does seem like it's supposed to further imply that Olaf could very well have been responsible for the Baudelaire fire. However I don't think Handler ever took it as an assumed fact, so there was no retconning necessary (was it ever said that Olaf did not burn down the mansion?).
The heaviest implication, of course, can be found in the paratextual The Dismal Dinner, which I think can be seen as a confirmation of this theory. I simply think that Handler never explicitly revealed Olaf to be responsible because he's the most obvious suspect anyway, so he rather chose to keep an air of mystery around it.
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Post by gliquey on Dec 24, 2014 5:05:12 GMT -5
This reminded me of a passage very early on in TAA, where Snicket blames Count Olaf for "atrocious cooking" (seemingly a reference to either TBB or TWW, but in neither was it Olaf cooking), for "poison" (the closest being when he injected venom into Uncle Monty) and for kidnapping, which hasn't happened yet at the start of the book. None were necessarily untrue - he probably has poisoned someone, but my confusion was because they seemed to be references to past events in the series, but didn't quite fit.
In any case, Olaf has committed separate acts of arson before the Baudelaire fire occurred (although I can't actually think of any examples), so his statement isn't untrue. One may wonder why he doesn't list other crimes as well - that time he strangled a bishop, for example. The real reason, I think, is that from Handler's perspective, he needed four crimes: Mr. Poe had to use a rule of three, and Olaf was only allowed to add one more thing, otherwise the joke wouldn't have worked and the flow of the passage would have been impeded.
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Post by Dante on Dec 28, 2014 13:00:07 GMT -5
Regardless, though, it does read like a hint, especially when you look upon it from the perspective of only knowing the first three books rather than all that comes after. I would imagine that what little pre-planning Handler did for the series provisionally pegged Olaf as the Baudelaire arsonist and Beatrice as the Baudelaire mother - the latter mystery also being one that gets confused and shaken up over time.
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Post by gliquey on Dec 28, 2014 15:56:39 GMT -5
Regardless, though, it does read like a hint, especially when you look upon it from the perspective of only knowing the first three books rather than all that comes after. I would imagine that what little pre-planning Handler did for the series provisionally pegged Olaf as the Baudelaire arsonist and Beatrice as the Baudelaire mother - the latter mystery also being one that gets confused and shaken up over time. From a real-life perspective, sure; while I'd leave it as a joke and interpret nothing more, Handler probably did mean for Olaf to be the arsonist if he ever thought it would ever be explicitly clarified in the series. Given the conversation in TE, I hope Olaf didn't burn down the mansion. The Baudelaires have met a few antagonists. Not all of them have to be responsible for every crime in the world. There's a point somewhere (I think in TPP) where someone tells the Baudelaires they have to watch out for other villains, and they simply bring up the sinister duo. The number of villains who haven't crossed paths with the Baudelaires is much bigger than the number who have. |
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vfds321s
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Post by vfds321s on Apr 22, 2018 21:04:06 GMT -5
Regardless, though, it does read like a hint, especially when you look upon it from the perspective of only knowing the first three books rather than all that comes after. I would imagine that what little pre-planning Handler did for the series provisionally pegged Olaf as the Baudelaire arsonist and Beatrice as the Baudelaire mother - the latter mystery also being one that gets confused and shaken up over time. From a real-life perspective, sure; while I'd leave it as a joke and interpret nothing more, Handler probably did mean for Olaf to be the arsonist if he ever thought it would ever be explicitly clarified in the series. Given the conversation in TE, I hope Olaf didn't burn down the mansion. The Baudelaires have met a few antagonists. Not all of them have to be responsible for every crime in the world. There's a point somewhere (I think in TPP) where someone tells the Baudelaires they have to watch out for other villains, and they simply bring up the sinister duo. The number of villains who haven't crossed paths with the Baudelaires is much bigger than the number who have. But what would anyone but Olaf gain from burning down the mansion? And maybe Olaf didn't do it alone. As said before, it could've been a teamup with Esme, the Sinister Duo, and possibly his theatre troop. The sinister duo couldn't have started the fire or else they would've burned it the same way they did the VFD headquarters, hide it from the authorities and volunteers by burning down a single part of it each day until there's nothing left (And I'm sure there's no way the children were going to be at Briny Beach for that long.). But they could've been involved in some way. Maybe they had something to do with the fire department arriving too late or used someone else as a scapegoat to pin the crime on (Maybe Lemony?). Maybe the arsonist was the Wart Faced Man. How ironic would it have been if the guy who had such a minor appearance in the books (In TBB only) had been secretly a major player. One more thing. Where was it implied that it was Arson at all? What proof is there that this wasn't an accident? |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Apr 23, 2018 4:46:56 GMT -5
Perhaps it was the Baudelaire children, who all too conveniently went out as a trio when the house burnt down and were later set up to receive a large inheritance.
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Post by A comet crashing into Earth on Apr 23, 2018 4:57:41 GMT -5
Perhaps it was the Baudelaire children, who all to conveniently went out as a trio when the house burnt down and were later set up to receive a large inheritance. Actually, Violet and Klaus are not murderers. They're accomplices. There's only one person uncool enough to burn people to death, and that's Sunny Baudelaire. |
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vfds321s
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Post by vfds321s on Apr 23, 2018 7:19:31 GMT -5
Nics TVV reference. But no.
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Post by gliquey on Apr 23, 2018 7:56:14 GMT -5
But what would anyone but Olaf gain from burning down the mansion? And maybe Olaf didn't do it alone. As said before, it could've been a teamup with Esme, the Sinister Duo, and possibly his theatre troop. The sinister duo couldn't have started the fire or else they would've burned it the same way they did the VFD headquarters, hide it from the authorities and volunteers by burning down a single part of it each day until there's nothing left (And I'm sure there's no way the children were going to be at Briny Beach for that long.). But they could've been involved in some way. Maybe they had something to do with the fire department arriving too late or used someone else as a scapegoat to pin the crime on (Maybe Lemony?). Maybe the arsonist was the Wart Faced Man. How ironic would it have been if the guy who had such a minor appearance in the books (In TBB only) had been secretly a major player. One more thing. Where was it implied that it was Arson at all? What proof is there that this wasn't an accident? For motive, I think any member of the 'fight fire with fire' side of the schism would have wanted to kill the Baudelaire parents, who were well-known V.F.D. members. As you say, it could have been an accident, but I think this is unlikely given the extent of the fire and large number of people who Bertrand and Beatrice were enemies of. As for the sinister duo, I don't think that's the only way they commit fires; that was very specifically for a huge headquarters where they had lots of time, not a house (albeit a mansion) which five people were currently living in. Indeed I think they could well have been the arsonists. The reason I would prefer it to be someone other than Olaf, and maybe even not Esme, is because this links well to what Olaf is saying: the children know nothing of their parents. Even we, the readers, know very little of their lives. They could quite easily have made enemies with another V.F.D. member for reasons we never hear about - like another incident similar to the poison darts. This also relates to the "chef's salad" idea, that even the "good" volunteers ended up doing very bad things. |
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vfds321s
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Post by vfds321s on Apr 23, 2018 8:18:56 GMT -5
As I said, maybe Olaf was only one of the major players. He doesn't have to be the arsonist in order to have been involved. He could've gave the arsonist their adresss, thus selling the parents out in revenge. Or Olaf may have been been told in advance in order to take advantage of the situation and plan beforehand to become the orphans guardian and seize the fortune, all while spitting in their parents graves.
Your right that we don't know for sure who caused it. But we should all agree that being sent to Count Olaf shortly after their deaths was no coincidence.
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Post by Dante on Apr 23, 2018 9:22:53 GMT -5
But what would anyone but Olaf gain from burning down the mansion? Crossing two prominent volunteers off the list who might one day have done great things to combat the fire-starting side of the schism. Any villain has a motive. There is no evidence. Perhaps it was the Baudelaire children, who all too conveniently went out as a trio when the house burnt down and were later set up to receive a large inheritance. Lemony Snicket, as we now know, is a murderer; and there is evidence to suggest that his late love, Beatrice, was also a murderer. In other words... when he wrote a series defending the reputation of Beatrice's orphaned children, this was the treacherous deceit of a criminal disguising the cruel and evil crimes of his former lover's children out of misguided sentiment. Of course the Baudelaires were murderers; and as for Count Olaf, far from pursuing them for their fortune, he was in fact a noble man and he was onto them. They framed him as a criminal to get out of his hair but he escaped and followed them to reveal the truth to each of their new guardians - prompting more murders and more accidents to escape those who would bring them to justice... until finally, Count Olaf himself fell victim to their malice in the Village of Fowl Devotees. In order to preserve the fiction of Olaf's guilt, Lemony Snicket substituted his own never-seen brother Jacques, oh-so-conveniently sharing certain of Count Olaf's distinguishing features, as the murder victim, while the rightly accused Baudelaires went on a killing spree through the Hinterlands and back to the city - before their crimes were finally brought to a close in a shipwreck far out at sea. Lemony Snicket's version of events is the only one we see, but there is no evidence that it is the truth... |
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vfds321s
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Post by vfds321s on Apr 23, 2018 9:27:24 GMT -5
But what would anyone but Olaf gain from burning down the mansion? Crossing two prominent volunteers off the list who might one day have done great things to combat the fire-starting side of the schism. Any villain has a motive. There is no evidence. Perhaps it was the Baudelaire children, who all too conveniently went out as a trio when the house burnt down and were later set up to receive a large inheritance. Lemony Snicket, as we now know, is a murderer; and there is evidence to suggest that his late love, Beatrice, was also a murderer. In other words... when he wrote a series defending the reputation of Beatrice's orphaned children, this was the treacherous deceit of a criminal disguising the cruel and evil crimes of his former lover's children out of misguided sentiment. Of course the Baudelaires were murderers; and as for Count Olaf, far from pursuing them for their fortune, he was in fact a noble man and he was onto them. They framed him as a criminal to get out of his hair but he escaped and followed them to reveal the truth to each of their new guardians - prompting more murders and more accidents to escape those who would bring them to justice... until finally, Count Olaf himself fell victim to their malice in the Village of Fowl Devotees. In order to preserve the fiction of Olaf's guilt, Lemony Snicket substituted his own never-seen brother Jacques, oh-so-conveniently sharing certain of Count Olaf's distinguishing features, as the murder victim, while the rightly accused Baudelaires went on a killing spree through the Hinterlands and back to the city - before their crimes were finally brought to a close in a shipwreck far out at sea. Lemony Snicket's version of events is the only one we see, but there is no evidence that it is the truth... Uhhh... |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Apr 23, 2018 10:00:24 GMT -5
Having an unreliable author is one of the delightful things about the series; especially a series that emphasises that events and people are not always as they appear. The possibilities are diverse and the impossibilities are made to feel more possible in that the information we're given isn't guaranteed to be exactly what happened. Their world could be closer to ours than we assume, only it's been presented to us in an outlandish (and perhaps misleading) way.
Not to mention that, as Dante has illustrated, our theories as to what really happened have few bounds because the evidence is unreliable in itself.
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vfds321s
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Post by vfds321s on Sept 11, 2019 20:24:19 GMT -5
As for the sinister duo, I don't think that's the only way they commit fires; that was very specifically for a huge headquarters where they had lots of time, not a house (albeit a mansion) which five people were currently living in. Indeed I think they could well have been the arsonists. Well another reason I don't think it's the sinister duo is because they are not the type to just waste time burning down single houses (or mansions) at random. They burned down the VFD headquarters because it was of big importance for the organization and is the 2nd to last safe place, thus burning it down is more likely to accomplish their goals than if they just decided "hey, let's light a fire to a building that has a few volunteers instead of going for something that can destroy a whole bunch of volunteers. |
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