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Post by Dante on Aug 30, 2013 1:36:50 GMT -5
Ah well, that brings up all sorts of questions about how to read the books. If we go along with the fiction that these books, which are in our hands, were actually written by Lemony Snicket, the volunteer and lover of Beatrice, then his writing of them must be in the past when we read them. And yet he is not only writing new material but even making the occasional public appearance, so he can't be dead. If we suspend that way of thinking, then certainly there is something attractive about the idea that the last letter comes at the end of Lemony's life, after ATWQ, and after his reading of Coraline and so on. It's a suspension I would make exclusively for the final letter of TBL, largely because TBL is in a different position to the rest of the series; that is, it is unfiltered primary material. There is no intervening narrator presenting the material to us; it is the actual documents created in various time periods and drawn directly from them. So I regard the rules as applying a little differently to TBL than to ASoUE and ATWQ and so on, which are being retold by Lemony Snicket at a time different to that of the described events actually occurring. Isn't Chapter Fourteen technically an epilouge? It is, but it's called a Chapter Fourteen and not an epilogue. The distinction is, I admit, a subtle one, but perhaps more easily to be observed if I say that I never saw anyone predict the inclusion of a fourteenth chapter literally to be so-called.
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Post by Hermes on Aug 30, 2013 11:39:54 GMT -5
I guess that ATWQ finally confounds any attempt we might make at constructing a timeline which actually allows the dates of publication to be fitted in - it must take place something like 25-30 years before ASOUE, and yet it includes references to books that were published quite recently. The Baudelaires considering pushing Olaf overboard is a fantastic moment. the Baudelaires have considered something like this before - poison the puttenesca in the first book. Oh, that's interesting. I think we're meant to see the Baudelaires being gradually corrupted, more and more ready to fight fire with fire - bear in mind that in TVV they definitely don't want Olaf to be burnt at the stake. Yet in the early books, before this theme had emerged, there are examples of them already showing signs of moral ambiguity - I think stealing the boat in TWW is another. I think so.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 6, 2013 1:32:49 GMT -5
More notes soon
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 9, 2013 4:42:47 GMT -5
Chapter Two
The pciture for the second chapter is missing from Uk copies, and instead we have a picture of Snicket holding some papers at an odd angle. I hadn’t seen the correct chapter two illustration until anka showed me, and it’s a really nice image
The Baudelaires decide to head west… they really need a compass now don’t they!
Now, many people believed that olaf was dead in the cover of the end, when in fact it is just the incident here. This is, of course, fully intentional on handlers part. However… in my young mind, I believed that olaf was dead on the cover, ad that the cover is set after chapter 13!
Broken banister… is this what Quigley was last see holding on to? And now violet is holding on to it. J
Olaf says he would harpoon kit on siht. Rally olaf? Wow you are quite the catch arent you..
I belive Friday is wearing the sunglasses the Baudelaires ‘lost’ in the storm. I say ‘lost’, because They clearly didn’t have them on at the end of TPP, particularly when on the rooftop sunbathing salon where the sun is very bright in their eyes
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Post by Dante on Sept 9, 2013 5:57:04 GMT -5
The pciture for the second chapter is missing from Uk copies, and instead we have a picture of Snicket holding some papers at an odd angle. I hadn’t seen the correct chapter two illustration until anka showed me, and it’s a really nice image The picture used, for the curious, is I recall the author bio photograph that also appears at the end of Chapter Fourteen. It's not the only illustration the Egmont edition is missing, but it's the most obvious, which is presumably why Egmont decided to fill it in themselves - why they didn't just ask HarperCollins "Excuse me, why is there a picture missing here?" is beyond me. The reason the pictures are missing is because they received incomplete files from HC. Heaven knows how this got past anyone with common sense at HC, Egmont, and all the way to publication without being questioned. That would be an excellent theory but for the fact that, at the end of Chapter Thirteen, both the Baudelaires and Olaf are wearing different clothing. It's actually a real shame that that opportunity was missed. If I was Handler, after seeing the cover I'd have been tempted to tweak the later chapters to make sure this was a possible reading; that the illustration appears to cover Chapter Two would just be a fake-out. Oh well. There are these sorts of tiny, tiny allusions to really obscure ideas from earlier books scattered throughout The End, so you should definitely be keeping your eyes out for them.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 13, 2013 12:27:18 GMT -5
Chapter Three
Brae makes us think immediately of TBL, this could lead some people to thin that this is where Beatrice talked to the shepherd in TBL, but that is not, of course, true.
--Chapter Four--
'Everyone is taken in here.' - Except for Olaf… I wonder if Ishmael has turned anyone else away before? I’m actually surprised eh didn’t turn the Baudelaires away knowing what trouble they could bring.
“Call me Ish” - I should really mention this alter, but I cant find much o say here, so I kith as well say ti now. Only one person in the whole book ever calls Ishmael ish.. And that’s Olaf. Ish is, I suppose, a disguise like one of olafs. Ishmael pretends to be someone else, with the clay feet. I think Olaf enjoys that, and accepts it by calling him ish instead of Ishmael.
Could the playing cards be feranlds?
Chapter Five
I think its interesting to think… would the Baudelaires have stayed on the island had kit and then olaf not arrived?
So it seems that sunny was born in the summer, if she was few weeks old in autumn.
It also seems that the Baudelaire parents (or more specifically Beatrice) are on a mission of some sort while the children are playing outside
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Post by Dante on Sept 13, 2013 16:07:25 GMT -5
'Everyone is taken in here.' Seven years, and I finally get the pun. Because, of course, there is a second meaning to the words "taken in".
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Post by moseymoo on Sept 15, 2013 13:04:43 GMT -5
Hello all; I read The End recently, but not so much so that I am qualified to comment upon the minutiae of detail that you are going into. However, The End is my favourite Snicket novel because it remains steadfastly true to the series; Handler gets all of the VFD plot arc out of the way in TPP (hence why the novel is both literally and metaphorically situated within the "Denouement"), this leaves The End to conclude the story of the Baudalaires, not everyone else. My friends often complain that Snicket never told us what was in the sugarbowl, or whether Quigley survived, but I think that it is for that precise reason that The End is a work of genius: it is Snicket's way of saying, emphatically and definitively, that this is THE BAUDALAIRES' story. By placing them in such an isolated location, at a distance from the events of the previous novels, Handler shows that the VFD and the sugarbowl were, in the end, of no impact to the Baudalaires' lives -- those issues were those of other people, that the Baudalaires had managed to get mixed up in, but they weren't their own issues. The Island can be read on several allegorical levels: the first is that it is a sort of limbo (think the King's Cross scene from Harry Potter); it is a place for the Baudalaires to align their moral compasses and decide what direction to take their lives. The second is that the Island is a place for Handler to rewrite the fall from Eden; this is one of my favourite literary allusions in the novels, so, if you'll pardon my verbosity, I shall spend a little time elaborating on why. Firstly, the extended reference to the fall from Eden is probably one of the only references that the ostensibly targeted audience (of young-ish children) is going to recognise; which is why it is automatically of an enormous significance. Secondly, that Handler has the audacity to challenge the Genesis story really pleases me. The entire series advocates being "well-read" as a trait almost exclusively found in the good; the apple, which is, and remains in The End, on of the most universally regarded metonyms for the acquisition of knowledge is not treated with repugnance, as in the original Genesis story, save by Ishmael, the God with clay feet, who wishes to enforce ignorance on his subjects; instead it is welcomed, it quite literally saves the Baudelaires' lives, as the acquisition of knowledge has done so many times before in the series. As the God with Clay Feet loads his disciples onto the ship and makes them sail away, pretending that he can save them, Handler rather sardonically attacks the very core of Christianity: he challenges the very assumption that life would have been better in Eden; would it be better to not know how to save oneself, to be dependent upon another's assurances? In the case of ASOUE, no. I would finally like to briefly say a word on the emphasis on narrative circularity: this has all happened before; this is not even the first book called "A Series of Unfortunate Events"; just as with the generation that preceeded them, the Baudalaires have been placed on this Island, and they too must decide what direction to take. It is for this reason that I believe Snicket finishes his Series of Unfortunate Events here (I am not fond of the theory that the Baudalaires die on their boat trip back to the mainland, despite the fact that the Baudalaire quote suggests that; it is mainly that I am too sentimentally attached to the Baudalaires to believe it could be so): it is at the moment when Beatrice stands at the boast ready to depart that the Baudalaires begin the cycle of their lives that began with Beatrice senior standing in that exact same spot, pregnant with Violet. I'm sure many of my points have been made already, and I've been awfully long winded, but I hope that you'll excuse my rant: The End is just brilliant in my opinion, so I just had to add my thoughts to this discussion; this is my first post on an established thread, so I hardly have a heritage on this site (I only created an account today -- I am a complete newbie), but I couldn't pass this thread by without commenting.
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Post by Dante on Sept 15, 2013 14:22:20 GMT -5
Whether the points have been made already or not, there will always be a time to reiterate them. Your post, moseymoo, is a fantastic reminder of just what a brave novel The End is, hugely ambitious. It's a bit of a shame that appreciation of this is clouded by the "But what about X Y and Z?" questions, but at the same time, it wouldn't be what it is without those lingering questions (and most of the really important ones I think were wrapped up anyway - the schism and the sugar bowl go unaddressed, but we know everything about V.F.D. and Lemony Snicket and Beatrice, and the cause of the Baudelaire fire is directly addressed). So, moseymoo: Don't be afraid of being brave and ambitious yourself! You don't need a pedigree to post.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 15, 2013 16:09:33 GMT -5
Hi Moseymoo. I guess most of us here would agree with you about The End, though of course that may be a self-selection effect, those who hated it having left the fandom by now. But yes, this 'but what about...' way of thinking does seem to miss the point. Some people say that no questions are answered, but that just isn't true: the three major questions that were puzzling us in the middle of the series (Who is Beatrice? What is VFD? Who is the survivor of the fire?) are all answered, and in the course of this various other mysteries, like Olaf's tattoo and the secret passage, are also explained. The sugar bowl, certainly, remains mysterious (though even here there's room for debate), but there were hints as early as TGG that it would. The Great Unknown was clearly created to be mysterious. And I really don't understand the Quagmire thing; we are told what happened to them. It's true that, not knowing what the GU is, we don't know for sure if they are alive or dead, but it's not as if their story lacked a conclusion.
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Post by moseymoo on Sept 15, 2013 16:59:09 GMT -5
Thank you both for your replies! I enjoy speculating about the contents of the sugar bowl etc as much as the next person, and I have no doubt that Handler deliberately left such questions unanswered to propagate such speculation (which I shall leave for another thread); but I really appreciate the fact that he returns to the basis of the Series in The End: the lives of the Baudelaire orphans. In a world that becomes more complex as the Baudalaires grow older, removing them from these complexities is what makes The End stand out from the series; yes, we learn about Beatrice, and Olaf's love for Kit, but at no point does an ancillary plot arc (say, of the VFD) force the Baudalaires to make a Hobson's choice -- their decisions have become their own again, and they are left to conclude their story in the way they see fit. I adore the other books, and relish their ambiguities, but there is something uniquely satisfying about the abstraction Handler enforces in The End.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 18, 2013 16:06:16 GMT -5
That's a very interesting thought. VFD does turn up in the story in a few ways, of course, but it's always in the background, so as you say it doesn't obtrude on the orphans' choices. At the end we are told that 'some say they rejoined VFD' - which implies they are outside it during the action of this story. EDIT: You might also be interested in this thread on The End from the old reread.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Sept 19, 2013 4:33:10 GMT -5
Chapter Six
This book breaks the golden rule of the series - if you were a disguised, no mater how ridiculous, you will always remain unidentified.
Can seaweed really be convincing wig?
Where did olaf get the dress from?
"I should be welcomed to Olaf-Land and given gifts"? - Oh yeah reat work there kit
Olaf describes Kit as “fairly innocent” - was kit involved in the posion darts affair? This could be what olaf is refferin to.
I like violets chock at friday never havin read a book.
I hope ishamel wotn have the sheep dra the books acroso to the areboretum - does firdya mean the sheep rot he people? I love this parralell
reading, skipping rocks, and the whisk - links friday to the Baudelaires.
How did firday keep ink in her pocket when tis as thick as a sewer pipe?
The return of the Incredibly Deadly Viper was something handler had planned for a lon timw, I think - well, at least since TUA. What sunk the prospero?
Interestin olaf says kit is his friend. Early hints?
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Sept 19, 2013 15:14:24 GMT -5
Olaf describes Kit as “fairly innocent” - was kit involved in the posion darts affair? This could be what olaf is refferin to. She gave the Baudelaires' parents the poison darts. (She says that a few chapters later, so you will probably notice yourself.)
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Post by Dante on Sept 21, 2013 2:05:23 GMT -5
Can seaweed really be convincing wig? Handler repeatedly stated before The End was released that it was the first literary instance of seaweed being used as a wig, so without any precedent, I guess Olaf thought it was worth the gamble. Arguably, it's foreshadowing. Esmé was last seen wearing the dress in TSS, and we next see her aboard the Carmelita. If we presume she left it there, it would have ended up with the submarine in the hands of Fiona and Fernald. We don't actually know what happened to the Carmelita, since it's implied that Fiona and Fernald were aboard the Queequeg in the final battle, but it's a fair bet to me that the Carmelita was wrecked there with everything else. The dress would have been just one more piece of detritus drifting on the ocean. I can't imagine what Handler was thinking here. Right after Friday reveals she had the Incredibly Deadly Viper hidden in her robe he describes it once again as being thick as a sewer pipe. Couldn't she have had it hidden in a picnic hamper or something? An off-screen incident of some sort, presumably, but since we knew that the Incredibly Deadly Viper was coming back, some speculation regarding The End involved the Baudelaires actually being aboard the Prospero at some point. It was not to be, however.
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