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Post by gliquey on Aug 14, 2014 5:19:01 GMT -5
They're not really major enough to be classified as goofs, but I have found some anomalies in TGG:
Page 259 - "It was a name Violet almost dared not say out loud, even though she felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days, ever since the icy waters of the Stricken Stream had carried away a young man who meant very much to her." (emphasis added)
At this point, it has been one full day since they got separated from Quigley at the end of TSS. It was morning then and afternoon when they receive the telegram. So it's been just over 48 hours. "For days", to me, suggesting a bit longer than that. Is Handler losing track of time, or am I just trying to find flaws where there aren't any?
Page 310 - "...and to show the article to so many volunteers, including the Baudelaire parents, the Snicket siblings, and the woman I happened to love."
Now, the article itself is interesting. He says "Snicket siblings" rather than just "Jacques and Kit", which implies to me that he showed it to all three siblings - which wouldn't make sense if the article was about Lemony's death. But it's not explicitly stated that the article was about the death of Lemony (or even that the article was untrue), so that's fine.
I presume "the woman I happened to love" refers to Beatrice. But he also says "the Baudelaire parents", in plural, so referring to Bertrand and Beatrice. That effectively means he's mentioned the same person in the list twice: the equivalent of me saying "Count Olaf's theater troupe, Carmelita and the hook-handed man", because Fernald is already included in the first group. So either we've got a mistake/redundancy, "the woman I happened to love" does not refer to Beatrice Baudelaire or (somewhat more radically) Beatrice is not actually one of "the Baudelaire parents".
Page 316 - "The children noticed that he looked quite a bit older than the last time they had seen him, and wondered how much older they looked themselves."
They've not seen Mr. Poe since the start of book 7, so it's been almost 5 books since he's appeared in person. But if we assume that the Baudelaires traveled by train to V.F.D. on the same day that they had the meeting with Mr. Poe about it, or even just that Mr. Poe took them to the train station or saw them on that day, it's been less than a fortnight since they last saw him.
It's not a goof because he only looked quite a bit older - this could be because the children misremembered or distorted what they thought he looked like over their travels, because he's really tired or looks older because of stress etc. But it sounds like Handler's trying to make us think, "wow, a lot has changed since 7 took place, all those months ago". The children shouldn't actually "[wonder] how much older they looked themselves" because they haven't aged significantly and I doubt the uniforms (with "Santa Claus" on them) would suddenly make them look much older. They should notice even less of a difference with Mr. Poe - even if he's aging noticeably within weeks, they've still gone longer time periods without seeing him, such as the half-semester-ish they stayed at Prufock Prep.
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Aug 14, 2014 12:10:55 GMT -5
This is debatable and I really admire your timeline of the notable fortnight, but perhaps one could argue that there could be entire days that we aren't told about. Perhaps we are told about the Baudelaires going to sleep one day, a few uneventful days pass where they don't do much and then we're told about them waking days later, although we get the impression that it has only been one night. I have no specific night-to-day examples where this could fit in and I don't really believe it myself but I'm just throwing it out there as a possible explanation for why Snicket describes it as such a long time from 7 to 12, if such a space in time can be found where this might have happened.
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Post by gliquey on Aug 14, 2014 12:59:04 GMT -5
This is debatable and I really admire your timeline of the notable fortnight, but perhaps one could argue that there could be entire days that we aren't told about. Perhaps we are told about the Baudelaires going to sleep one day, a few uneventful days pass where they don't do much and then we're told about them waking days later, although we get the impression that it has only been one night. I have no specific night-to-day examples where this could fit in and I don't really believe it myself but I'm just throwing it out there as a possible explanation for why Snicket describes it as such a long time from 7 to 12, if such a space in time can be found where this might have happened. From the first mention of an actual day of the week: Sunday, in TSS if I remember correctly, this is completely impossible. We have references of Monday and Tuesday in TGG (e.g. in the volunteer factual dispatch) and there might possibly be references to Wednesday in TPP - there's certainly lots of talk about the trial being early, a phrase which here means "before Thursday". But, working from the start: in TVV, the Quagmires send out a couplet per day, starting with the day of their arrival (the message was sent before they arrived; Hector gave it to them on the night of their arrival). As well, you can link the story without - there's talk of burning Jacques "tomorrow morning", for instance. In THH, Snicket refers to their "nighttime walk" as having lasted for "hours", not days, so it's pretty ironclad that it follows on directly, with no gaps. From a skim of the start of TCC, it's not explicitly clear. But it's very, very strongly implied. It's sunset, for instance. Olaf says that "we don't have time to stop anywhere" and the bald man says that "we haven't had anything to eat since lunch" - assuming that they haven't stopped anywhere, the bald man is referring to lunch they had in the hospital, and it's quite unlikely that they've gone a full day without food (and that the bald man wouldn't say "...anything to eat since yesterday" instead). Olaf also says "if you needed to use the bathroom, you should have gone before we left" and a white-faced woman replies "but the hospital was on fire": this means that Olaf is talking about them leaving the hospital (removing any possibility of shoving a fanfiction between THH and TCC if you want to remain perfectly canon), and that no-one has gone to the toilet since then (again, they wouldn't go a full day without toilet breaks). TSS is the first book to take place without any gap at all - Violet and Klaus have to rescue themselves from the caravan within a couple of minutes, so there are no unaccounted days there. If you really, really wanted, you might be able to shove a stop between THH and TCC (and the white-faced woman would be talking about the hospital because there was no toilet wherever it was they stopped), but a full day doesn't seem plausible at all and even that just changes the total from 14 to 15 (technically a few hours less). It's certainly an idea I've had - how long they spend in the grotto, for instance, is not something the Baudelaires knew themselves, but we can work out how long it was based on days of the week, unless you want to suggest they spent exactly a week and a day in the grotto and that the meeting on Thursday was actually a week after the Thursday originally implied. If you do want to go along the path that the meeting on Thursday was not actually the Thursday directly following the Sunday in TSS, you might want to twist a couple of things: (1) The V.F.D. library is virtually destroyed - Klaus doesn't even know for certain it's "Verbal Fridge Dialogue" and not "Verbal Fr___ Dialogue" (although finding an "fr" synonym for "fridge" or another word which would lead you to the fridge would be near impossible). So, plausibly, there might be a part of the code he's missed: for instance, the date or month. There were other items in the fridge, and while it seems Snicket has dibs on the pickle, maybe they could have given more information. You could even reuse the mustard or the lighter two types of jam for something else. So, it's possible that the full Verbal Fridge Dialogue message could have been as specific as "Thursday the 23rd November, 1815" (or, tangentially, mentioned a time or the Hotel Denouement). (2) Snicket is not a perfect narrator. He doesn't know everything. His knowledge of such tiny iotas of detail, a phrase which here means "the exact words everyone said at every point of every book, including the words Sunny said and often their meanings", would lead you to think that it's pretty certain he's got the major details fixed and could never overlook such a massive thing as an extra week, but it's still possible. There are some passages where it would seem that his only possible source of information would be the Baudelaires themselves, and they don't know everything either. So it's not fully cut off, but it's pretty certain. You really, really have to stretch a lot to give them an extra day, let alone a week or long enough for Mr. Poe to noticeably age. |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Aug 14, 2014 13:14:27 GMT -5
Well done on such a thorough analysis! It does indeed seem like there isn't much space for much extra time. Could we consider the time between when they escape the village and when they meet the Volunteers Fighting Disease, or is that specific too? Something I have done in my mind, while reading and not understanding a 'slip', has been to consider Snicket, as you mention in your post, as a researcher. I trust his thoroughness and dedication but the books are merely a documentation of his research on events to which he was presumably absent and we don't know how confident he was about some of the things he writes, especially dialogue, which is amazingly well-recorded. The context of his mysterious life may also be a factor; perhaps he is tied to secrets or threats that force him to write certain inaccuracies. Again, there is no evidence for any of this, but I'm just suggesting potential excuses  |
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Post by gliquey on Aug 14, 2014 15:08:35 GMT -5
Well done on such a thorough analysis! It does indeed seem like there isn't much space for much extra time. Could we consider the time between when they escape the village and when they meet the Volunteers Fighting Disease, or is that specific too? Extra time within the books isn't something I've thought much about. When they arrive at the Last Chance General Store, they send a telegram at night and wait. The Daily Punctilio edition calling them murderers is being delivered in the morning, and I doubt they'd wait longer than 24 hours for a reply to the telegram anyway, so you can't really get an extra day in there. On the volunteers van, it's not clear how long the journey last but it seems that a journey of over a day is utterly implausible - from what Hal says to the Baudelaires about a hot dinner, it's implied that the volunteers return home after their day's work every day, if that wasn't already stunningly apparent. You could possibly say that the Baudelaires spend more than one day working in the Library of Records before the day when they go back and try to find the file on them, but they aren't people who normally wait about. Given Snicket's repeated descriptions of them as far more courageous than he, it certainly wouldn't seem like they'd delay the task of finding the file out of nerves or anxiety. Elsewhere mid-book, I'm not sure where you could find time. 9 has "markings" for each day similar to 7, with Olaf asking one question each morning. I suppose it's possible that he had more than two questions for Lulu (and that "where are the Baudelaires?" would take a lower priority because he would only need to know when he was planning to leave and find them), but there's no indication anywhere - it's not denied, but it's not even hinted at. In 10, you could maybe shove an extra day in, but there's not much for Violet, Klaus or Quigley to be doing in the ruined V.F.D. HQ remains. Really, claiming extra time when it's not even hinted at would be like claiming Captain Widdershins was a cat because the term "human" is never used to describe him. |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Aug 15, 2014 4:16:56 GMT -5
Good points. I specifically meant the travel from the village to the location of the beginning of The Hostile Hospital, although having just looked, it says that they walked for hours, rather than days. Your timeline also covers this- I could have checked that in the first place |
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sundust
Reptile Researcher
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Post by sundust on Jun 30, 2015 11:00:55 GMT -5
Page 259 - "It was a name Violet almost dared not say out loud, even though she felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days, ever since the icy waters of the Stricken Stream had carried away a young man who meant very much to her." (emphasis added)At this point, it has been one full day since they got separated from Quigley at the end of TSS. It was morning then and afternoon when they receive the telegram. So it's been just over 48 hours. "For days", to me, suggesting a bit longer than that. Is Handler losing track of time, or am I just trying to find flaws where there aren't any? I do not see any flaw with this, it said "even though she felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days" So it seemed like days to her although it may not be |
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Post by gliquey on Jun 30, 2015 14:46:59 GMT -5
I do not see any flaw with this, it said "even though she felt as if she had been whispering it to herself for days" So it seemed like days to her although it may not be Ah, okay. That's an interesting interpretation. I suppose I thought it meant "for days, she felt as if she had been whispering it to herself", where the "she felt" is referring to the whispering instead of the time period. |
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Post by Hermes on Jul 1, 2015 11:40:55 GMT -5
I agree with your reading, gliquey, because 'for days, ever since...' definitely seems to mean that it was days since Quigley disappeared. This fits in with the Mr Poe thing, and is a feature which returns several times in the later books, where Lemony keeps overestimating the time which has passed; in TPP, I think, we are told that 'in the last few months' Sunny has done various things, like start walking and learn to cook, which actually happened in the last two weeks. I agree that Lemony is an unreliable narrator; DH has actually said this, and in TBL Beatrice says that L's account of things sometimes differs massively from the Baudelaires' own. Of course, we cannot tell which is right, the precise references which require a short timeline, or the vaguer ones which suggest a longer one. It may be that Pevalwen's theory of uneventful days is true as regards what 'really' happened, but L has edited them out because they slow down the narrative, while still letting them affect the vaguer passages about how much time has passed.
I think the Beatrice thing is much more important, because that is almost certainly deliberate misdirection. It was widely seen at the time as conclusive proof that B was not the Baudelaires' mother, although just about the same time The Bad Beginning: the Rare Edition was published, which contains strong suggestions that she was. The best way of making it coherent, I think, is to say it refers to Bertrand's parents, or possibly (if 'Baudelaire' was her maiden name, as some think) to Beatrice's parents. Note 'I will love you despite the wrath of certain parents' in TBL.
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