Do you think VFD is nearing it's end?

[indyrams]

I'm re-reading the whole series to get more details I may have forgotten.
But with so many significant people, being murdered, killed, or missing.
With many of it's secrets out.
Do you think eventually it will just... die out?
Of course, I don't really know how big VFD is.
I just assume it was locally or at least a few cities wide.
If that were the case, do you think it eventually will just be something of the past and left there?
A lot of it's members seem to be going on about their own lives not really having something to do with the organization.
For Example, Sir, Charles, Monty, Aunt Josephine.
But it seems like the Baudelaire Orphans being thrown into the middle of it seems like it's going to become the beginning of the end for VFD.

Maybe I have some facts wrong?
Like I said, I am re-reading the books.

[Christmas Chief]

As long as there are wicked people, so shall there be noble, and I think on that premise V.F.D. could never truly cease to exist. We're left in TPP with the image of the last safe place gone up in smoke, and Kit prefaces the organization's demise earlier with her news on the organization's status as a whole. However, the Baudelaires were also castaway from the catastrophe that may have ensued after the last safe place had been destroyed, and in a way, I think, they symbolize rebirth; rebirth of the organization, but also a sort of reintroduction of good into the world, despite what we were left to think after the story's denouement.

The members who appear not to have to do with the organization depends on the individual. The Baudelaire parents never gave any indication they were involved in a greater scheme for nobility, and I think the same would be true for Josephine and Monty. However, Sir doesn't appear to have anything to do with V.F.D.; beyond the green wood he possibly would have supplied to the wealthier families, Sir is portrayed as a pure businessman.

[Hermes]

I think VFD is indeed in decline. Doesn't Captain Widdershins comment on this? And in TBL there is a reference to 'those last few volunteers'. The references to 'the last safe place', when apparently once there were many, also support this. I think that what we see of VFD in ASOUE is only a shadow of the VFD of Lemony's youth, to which we get some clues in TUA, and which we see in more depth in ATWQ; that was a more structured and active body; and that itself seems to represent a decline from the pre-schism VFD which Kit tells us about.

I agree that Sir needn't ever have been in VFD. Whether Charles was is a bit of a mystery; it's notable that Dewey doesn't give a straight answer to this. (He explains how Hal, Jerome and Justice Strauss have recently been recruited; but when the Baudelaires ask 'What about Charles?' he just says 'Charles cares about you', etc.) I'd agree, though, that Monty and Josephine (and also Hector, who we now know was a member) are non-active; I don't think their lack of engagement can just be explained through secrecy. The Baudelaire parents had no special reason to tell their children about it, but when M and J meet them they are caught up in adventures with a villain, to which VFD would surely be relevant.

[indyrams]

VFD was also a metaphor per say right?
The ones who start fires and ones who put them out.
Pretty much sums up as, one side does evil doings and the other side works to prevent or stop those evil doings?
Correct?

[Christmas Chief]

After TGG, things aren't so straightforward; essentially, though, this is indeed an effective summary of the division.

[Dante]

Dec 12, 2012 17:22:24 GMT -5 indyrams said:

VFD was also a metaphor per say right?
The ones who start fires and ones who put them out.
Pretty much sums up as, one side does evil doings and the other side works to prevent or stop those evil doings?
Correct?

A metaphor on what level? Certainly I think by TPP V.F.D. is an allegory for wider social concerns - the seemingly increasing difficult of pursuing knowledge and doing the right thing in a world which is confusing, corrupt, and impolite patterns well onto the feeling in this world in the context of its writing of intellectualism being under threat, especially given the time it was written, with Bush just having won a second presidential term in Handler's home country. The height of V.F.D.'s power - before the schism - is a metaphor for the golden age of childhood, where we are protected by parents and everything seems new and shining to us, where we are assured that everything makes sense, although like all golden ages this is also something that we're only really told about in retrospect and nobody really experienced; think of the stereotype of the older person who says things were much better in their day, and so on. The sense that's being evoked is that, as we pass through adolescence, we increasingly view the world around us as a fallen world where doing the right thing is impossible and we're persecuted and under threat (hence the popularity of dystopian fiction for teenagers, although again, that has a lot to do with the immediate social context, with governments becoming more authoritarian and young people feeling powerless and manipulated).

With each generation the schism gets worse. V.F.D. is always falling, everything we hold dear is always falling away from us, the world is always becoming a darker place. And yet we would not be able to perceive that if we didn't have, or once have, the light of our own good deeds or friendship. V.F.D. will never triumph and it will never be defeated. The world is in flux, moving, changing, and will never stop until we grow up and become phantoms to our children in turn.

[Charlie]

My god Dante, and everyone else here is just so goddamn scholarly. I don't think it's on a decline. I think it's on an up part of a cycle, and then it'll have a little down bit.

[Tryina Denouement]

Dec 14, 2012 19:14:28 GMT -5 Charlie said:

My god Dante, and everyone else here is just so goddamn scholarly. I don't think it's on a decline. I think it's on an up part of a cycle, and then it'll have a little down bit.

Oh yeah. I try to be scholarly but I can't.....

But I always think that somebody would rebuild V.F.D.