nopoweronearth
Bewildered Beginner
I'm Part of Many Fandoms and I'm Musical Obsessed. You've been warned.
Posts: 9
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Post by nopoweronearth on Jan 5, 2013 12:44:05 GMT -5
Not sure if this is in any way accurate as I haven't finished the book yet ... but my friend and I thought that this was interesting.
On page 215 of The End Ishmel mentions a girl who he taught who would throw away suspicious tea. Theodora knew something about the tea Lemony was going to drink near the start.
Possible connection? (probably not but oh well!)
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Jan 5, 2013 12:49:33 GMT -5
Clever observation And hi, probably first 2013 member!
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jan 5, 2013 12:49:50 GMT -5
Very good connection you've spotted here. It could be possible yes! Someone like Dante will give a great awnser to this, probably with links and stuff.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Jan 5, 2013 12:50:49 GMT -5
We've speculated before that the two incidents might indeed be related. For instance, I proposed that this might have been the origins of how Ishmael came to prefer "tea that was bitter as wormwood," since bitter tea wouldn't contain the sickly sweet properties of laudanum. Perhaps one of the false parents is also a teacher, or perhaps laudanum/tea-poisoning is the method of choice for rendering their enemies (or maybe just their victims; we don't technically know the parents are evil) unconscious.
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Post by Charlie on Jan 5, 2013 12:51:21 GMT -5
Perhaps! Maybe it is a class taught at VFD training, or maybe it is a skill Theodora possesses solely. Who knows, but it is a nice thought. My only problem with this is the likely age difference between Ish and Theodora. Theodora is, say, 20 at the youngest in WCTBATH, and Ish is, say, 50 at the oldest in TE. Lets add on about, twenty years to Theodora's age (ample time for Beatrice to be able to get pregnant, bear Violet, and for Violet to be fifteen) and that makes a ten year age difference between them. Nup.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jan 5, 2013 12:52:40 GMT -5
SO byt that timeline, lemony would be 33 during the course of ASOUE?
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Post by Charlie on Jan 5, 2013 12:56:04 GMT -5
33 ish (ya geddit, haw haw haw)... but that's pretty much just the minimum for Beatrice to be able to get pregnant with Violet at 18, then have Violet grow to fifteen by the time of the island. If you wanted to make Lemony, say, 38, you could just as feasibly say that Beatrice was 23 when she was pregnant with Violet
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Jan 5, 2013 12:58:19 GMT -5
33 ish (ya geddit, haw haw haw)... but that's pretty much just the minimum for Beatrice to be able to get pregnant with Violet at 18, then have Violet grow to fifteen by the time of the island. If you wanted to make Lemony, say, 38, you could just as feasibly say that Beatrice was 23 when she was pregnant with Violet Who says that Beatrice can't be a little older than Lemony?
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jan 5, 2013 12:58:37 GMT -5
Time for a timeline!
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Post by Christmas Chief on Jan 5, 2013 12:58:50 GMT -5
I don't think ages are especially problematic for this theory. TE has a recurrent theme, most evident in Chapter Ten, that history repeats itself. Or more accurately, it demonstrates how the organization has evolved while the people in it are more or less subject to the same series of unfortunate events. The point is that Theodora and Ishmael needn't have met, or even known of each other's existence; if V.F.D. has a tradition of poisoning tea, then it's not unlikely Theodora would have been aware of the methods used and the proper action to stop them.
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Post by Hermes on Jan 5, 2013 13:04:06 GMT -5
, and Ish is, say, 50 at the oldest in TE. No, Ishmael is described as very old - I don't have TE to hand, but if someone has they may be able to find the quotation. There's a long-standing speculation that Ishmael's pupil was Josephine's mother-in-law (they both have one eyebrow and one ear), which puts Ishmael's youth a very long way back.
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Post by Charlie on Jan 5, 2013 13:07:27 GMT -5
, and Ish is, say, 50 at the oldest in TE. No, Ishmael is described as very old Oh crap... really. I'm sorry Hermes, it's been a while
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Post by Dante on Jan 5, 2013 14:59:26 GMT -5
I'd be cautious about overvaluing this. There may be a connection here, but I'd say it looks far less meaningful than many of you seem to be presuming.
What Ishmael relates about dubious tea is essentially a spin on material from TPP - already a reference to tea and what might be in it, where the original reference used tea purely symbolically. Asking for tea with sugar in it in TPP stood as a sign that you were searching for the sugar bowl; Kit implies that it's common practice among her crowd not to take tea with sugar, but her disagreement doesn't seem to be a safety precaution but a philosophical disagreement, about what tea "should" be - as bitter as wormwood - rather than a precaution about what it is or might be.
Ishmael's anecdote about the girl with one eyebrow wasn't explicitly or even implicitly linked to V.F.D. at all and refers to an isolated incident of suspected tea-poisoning. It's implied that the poison in the tea wasn't laudanum; the girl in question "began to be very suspicious" about the tea, implying that this happened over a period of time. The way the plant she poured the tea into gradually withered also suggests that the concoction was a slow-acting poison rather than a sleeping draft - in any case, the girl lived with the woman who poured her the tea, and if that woman wanted to kidnap her she could do it any time in her private household, whereas Lemony was being drugged outside in a public place. And whether or not this incident convinced Ishmael to take his tea bitter in case anything had been or could be added to it doesn't link it to V.F.D. by anything other than coincidence; Ishmael had been on the island for longer than Violet had been alive and it's hard to say that he could have been involved to any degree with the shenanigans and conspiracies surrounding the sugar bowl (which is barely mentioned in The End and not in any way related to the events that occur within it). Oh, and on the subject of Ishmael's age, he's described only as an "old man" with a "thick and wild" beard, but all that we know about him otherwise is that he's old enough to have been active about the schism. So there's a lower limit on his age but no upper limit. Certainly I would have placed him well above fifty based on the description, though.
So suddenly the reference, if it exists, is very broad. Tea that doesn't contain anything but acts as a statement of intent - fast-acting soporific tea in a public place dumped out of a car window - slow-acting poisoned tea in a private place dumped into a houseplant. The link is a broad one and connects only the idea of the contents of tea being significant and perhaps best avoided. But okay, TPP doesn't really matter here, so let's just consider WCTBATH and The End - two instances of poisoned tea being dumped. We can reasonably assume that the girl Ishmael taught wasn't obeying any kind of V.F.D. standard practice as she's clearly acting individually and there's no implication of an approach set by anyone above her, and in any case there's no reason to connect her case to V.F.D. at all. Lemony also clearly hadn't been taught to be suspicious of tea despite having graduated. So it looks like poisoned tea has nothing to do with V.F.D. whatsoever. The fact is that tea is a common drink and has a kind of loaded value in Snicket's world (which I've taken to calling the Averse - because both ASoUE and ATWQ's initials begin with A, and also because it's a pun), so you'd expect to see a lot of it. There's also the fact that poisoning a drink is a really obvious thing to do to an enemy, and also a really basic thing to do. Look throughout literature for examples of poisoned drinks, and poisoned tea in particular. There'll be stacks.
So essentially I think what we have here is conceivably a coincidence, but if it is a reference, it's a small one. There's nothing in it that we can read outwards into a grand design or set practice. It's a fun little in-joke, at best, one of the little parallels that exist throughout works of the Averse, which are there to satisfy the curiosity of careful readers and also to herald the fruitless cyclicality of conflict in the setting. So, essentially, you're right to notice the connection, but I don't think it's anything to write five paragraphs about.
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nopoweronearth
Bewildered Beginner
I'm Part of Many Fandoms and I'm Musical Obsessed. You've been warned.
Posts: 9
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Post by nopoweronearth on Jan 5, 2013 15:53:27 GMT -5
I didn't mean that Theodora WAS the student but maybe it's the same sort of tea or something like that (it's getting late and my head hurts so I'm not being very clear with what I'm saying sorry)
I was just thinking about Esme's tea set and ''the sugar bowl'' when I started the book and I was flicking through ''The End'' because I was wondering if I'd find any answers to the questions I had when I read the new book and I just read page 225 ...
And I have a lot of free time.
But I agree with the ''poisoning tea'' thing. There seems to be a fair bit relating to tea-sets and drinks in this book ... (I'm on the coffee bit)
Reason for Editing: Moderator Edit: Merging double-post.
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Post by Isadora Is a Door on Jan 5, 2013 16:01:46 GMT -5
Someone like Dante will give a great awnser to this, probably with links and stuff. Oh, and a word to the wise nopoweronearth, try not to double-post. For some reason people dont like it.
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