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Post by doetwin on Jul 22, 2017 19:28:46 GMT -5
After Ishmael accidentally released the MM, the Baudelaires, the islanders, and Count Olaf were all poisoned at the same time. However, the MM seemed to be killing the Baudelaires a lot faster than Olaf and the islanders. By the time the Baudelaires discovered that they had to eat an apple to dilute the poison, the MM had weakened them to the point where they didn't even have enough energy just to climb out of the tree to grab an apple. Indeed, DH makes it sound like they ate the apple just in the nick of time and avoided death by a few seconds. However, the islanders had enough energy to climb into the boat, and they were still alive and standing long after the Baudelaires had cured themselves. At first I thought drinking coconut cordial their whole lives had given them more of an immunity towards the MM, but they wouldn't explain why Count Olaf was affected less than the Baudelaires. He had enough energy to crawl out of the tent(and let's not forget that his stomach was full of blood too). He, too, was alive much longer than it looked like the Baudelaires would have been had they not eaten an apple. Could it be that the children on the island survived longer because of the coconut cordial, Olaf survived longer because he was an adult, and that the adults on the island survived longer for both reasons?
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Post by MisterM on Jul 23, 2017 2:33:41 GMT -5
Midget powers
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Post by Dante on Jul 23, 2017 12:42:36 GMT -5
Well, there's no explanation given in the book, so I honestly suspect that the actual answer is poor plotting. Your solutions to the problem aren't bad; I would also propose, as a fudge, that perhaps the Baudelaires were nearer to Olaf than everyone else and got the full whack, a higher dosage of spores than everyone else. That doesn't really help with Olaf, who was also of course at ground zero, but we could then introduce the "it takes longer to affect adults" idea, and it doesn't require us to make any assumptions about the coconut cordial.
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Post by Dante on Jul 23, 2017 14:18:46 GMT -5
Ah, but only Sunny ever suffered a true Medusoid Mycelium affliction, and yet the progress of the spores' growth in her is identical to that in her siblings. If we're compensating for size or age in any respect, it must in fact be working relatively slower on her!
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Post by doetwin on Jul 23, 2017 15:24:29 GMT -5
Well, there's no explanation given in the book, so I honestly suspect that the actual answer is poor plotting. Your solutions to the problem aren't bad; I would also propose, as a fudge, that perhaps the Baudelaires were nearer to Olaf than everyone else and got the full whack, a higher dosage of spores than everyone else. That doesn't really help with Olaf, who was also of course at ground zero, but we could then introduce the "it takes longer to affect adults" idea, and it doesn't require us to make any assumptions about the coconut cordial. That does sound like the most logical explanation. |
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jul 25, 2017 4:35:49 GMT -5
I would add to these theories that it may also be something of a matter of perspective: the Baudelaires know just how terrible the Medusoid Mycelium is, and they're absolutely terrified of it. This could not only make them perceive their condition as worse than the islanders do (that is, they could panic and believe that the spores were working more quickly than they actually were), it could also make their breathing faster and shallower, which could exacerbate the mushrooms' powers: that is, the faster their breathing as they panic, the more the mushrooms thrive in their throats as the Baudelaires lose energy and get progressively weaker. We know from TGG that people suffering from the Medusoid Mycelium should save their breath as much as possible. So I think it could be a combination of panicking into believing themselves to be closer to death than they actually were, and that panic actually having a real and damaging impact on their health.
Of course, Olaf and Kit both also know how dangerous the Medusoid Mycelium is, but both, I think, had accepted their fate more readily than the Baudelaires and so were less likely to panic to the same extent.
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Post by Charlie on Jul 25, 2017 4:54:09 GMT -5
I really like that idea violet! I came here to add that, given the Baudelaires have an extreme allergy to peppermints, their immune systems are probably likely to mount an excessive response to a trigger such as the spores. Maybe an inflammation of their airways by the spores had caused them to have greater trouble breathing also
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Post by Dante on Jul 25, 2017 5:43:09 GMT -5
I like that theory for another reason: It's faintly reminiscent of hypochondria, a phenomenon which was mentioned in a very early promotional synopsis for TGG.
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jul 25, 2017 15:53:30 GMT -5
Thanks! That's a good point about their allergies -- maybe they are simply hyper-responsive to alien substances entering their bodies.
Yes -- I almost used the word hypochondria, but then I thought perhaps, as the Medusoid Mycelium is known to be extremely dangerous/fatal, it would be unfair to label the Baudelaires as hypochondriacs! But I agree that my theory does overlap with hypochondria to some extent, and it's interesting that this was mentioned in early promotion for TGG. I wonder if that was a mistake by the promoters or a discarded idea that was at one point explicitly in the book.
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Post by Dante on Jul 26, 2017 2:23:35 GMT -5
It's going off-topic a bit, but here's the early promotional synopsis in question, which, if you do an Internet search for bits of it, shows up (sometimes with very slight variations) on quite a number of very obscure bookselling sites which clearly never updated their description:
Considering the vagueness of the first three items of the synopsis, and the fact that the complete volume features neither hypochondria nor, really, "an alarming message from a lost friend," I generally regard this as relating to an early draft or to Handler's plans for the book as it was being written. I've seen other examples of publishers putting up early teaser synopses for a book, presumably based on the author's initial ideas, which have ended up being completely different from the final product.
But that's a matter for another thread. For the purposes of this one, I agree that there might have been some psychological reinforcement of the Baudelaires' condition by their mere desperation and distress - whereas the islanders had no idea what was happening to them. And after all, it's only "you may die within the hour." There might be ways of drawing it out.
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Post by gliquey on Jul 26, 2017 16:44:22 GMT -5
The Baudelaires' psychological reaction to the Mycelium is certainly the most interesting explanation, though I think the children's proximity to Olaf and age would also explain it sufficiently. It's also worth noting that the islanders - especially Ishmael - are in denial, and therefore are probably trying to suppress their symptoms. Many of the islanders are shown to be affected by mentions of wheezing and coughing, but their conditions could be worse than they appear if they are trying to hide it (to delude themselves into believing they can make it to Lousy Lane in time), so I would question whether the Baudelaires are actually affected substantially more than the islanders. Considering the vagueness of the first three items of the synopsis, and the fact that the complete volume features neither hypochondria nor, really, "an alarming message from a lost friend," I generally regard this as relating to an early draft or to Handler's plans for the book as it was being written. I've seen other examples of publishers putting up early teaser synopses for a book, presumably based on the author's initial ideas, which have ended up being completely different from the final product. Well yes, hypochondria doesn't really occur in TGG, but I think "an alarming message from a lost friend" could be a slightly overdramatic reference to Quigley's Volunteer Factual Dispatch, or maybe an indication that Handler was originally planning for that telegram to be of higher importance. |
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Jul 27, 2017 12:51:34 GMT -5
I think there are numerous explanations which work well; incidentally, I think your point, gliquey, about the islanders being in denial/trying to suppress their symptoms actually works rather well in conjunction with my idea: the islanders' denial would probably give them (for a short time) a modicum of extra energy, as they are more positive about their condition, whereas the Baudelaires' panic had probably worsened their condition, because panicking does cause a quickness of breath and we know that people who have been infected by the mushrooms should conserve their breath. So they are essentially two sides of the same coin. |
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Post by doetwin on Jul 28, 2017 10:47:56 GMT -5
Ah, but only Sunny ever suffered a true Medusoid Mycelium affliction, and yet the progress of the spores' growth in her is identical to that in her siblings. Actually, I just remembered that Violet and Klaus were also affected by the MM in TGG. They took Sunny out of her helmet in order to give her the Wasabi, and in doing so, they suspected that they might have gotten a few spores themselves, which is why they also ate the Wasabi. |
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