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Post by Foxy on Mar 6, 2019 8:11:29 GMT -5
I had a more challenging time finding unrealistic happenings in this books. Maybe the books get more realistic throughout the series? Or maybe I believe too many things to be possibly which really are not.
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Post by Dante on Mar 6, 2019 15:57:53 GMT -5
"Count Olaf having two women vying for his affections" is brutal, and I'm very tempted to go with that. On an entirely different note, Madame Lulu's seemingly enormous archival library being entirely hidden beneath what cannot be a very large table is something I find very hard to credit, and in fact it's a frequent habit of Snicket's (or Handler's) to convey a rather confused idea of how different spaces relate to one another.
But I'm going to have to go with "other": The Mortmain Mountains is in three different compass directions over the course of the book. On pages 6 and 7, the sun sets behind the Mortmain Mountains, so they're to the west; on page 198, the Mortmain Mountains are to the north; and on page 274, to get into the Mortmain Mountains via the Stricken Stream, the characters have to drive east.
(The tagliatelle grande is only proposed for use as a fan belt in the Netflix series, I think.)
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Post by Foxy on Mar 7, 2019 8:07:26 GMT -5
I never realized those details about the Mortmain Mountains before.
And yes, the tagliatelle grande is used as the fan belt just for the Netflix series. In the book, they are going to use the fan belt from Olivia's fortune telling machine. Although maybe it is unbelievable as a whip, anyhow.
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Post by Carrie E. Abelabudite on Mar 7, 2019 22:44:01 GMT -5
I was going to say nobody figuring out that Olaf is a wanted criminal despite him making no effort to hide his identity, but then Dante's post made me think of the archival library. While the description of the physical space is odd, even more unbelievable the way Olivia gets her information. Olivia running around the Hinterlands, grabbing whatever scraps of paper happen to be blowing in the wind in the hopes that they will contain the information she needs, must be the most unrealistic thing in the book, especially considering how accurate and relevant most of the content of the library is.
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Post by Mr. Dent on Mar 9, 2019 10:03:37 GMT -5
What's a "contortionist," anyway? So, Colette can "bend" her "body" into "a variety of strange and impressive positions"? Much too whimsical for my liking, much too fantastical. I thought these books were meant to be factual accounts?
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Post by Reba on Mar 10, 2019 16:46:56 GMT -5
"kevin's personality"? how about the fact that an ambidextrous person is considered a freak?
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Post by Foxy on Mar 10, 2019 20:03:06 GMT -5
"kevin's personality"? how about the fact that an ambidextrous person is considered a freak? That's what I'm trying to say. He thinks of himself as a freak even though there is nothing really wrong with him, and he's constantly belittling himself for zero reason. It comes off to me that he's bragging about being so freakish, even though he's not freakish. |
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Post by Reba on Mar 10, 2019 20:37:07 GMT -5
he's just a victim of an absurd society which considers him freakish. i never considered that it may only be his own absurdity in insisting that he is a freak. i guess the latter is much more believable than the former. (i.e. much less funny)
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Post by Dante on Mar 11, 2019 3:16:25 GMT -5
I definitely regard it as being unclear whether society decided that Kevin was a freak and he agreed, or if Kevin decided that he was a freak and society agreed. Which one is more unbelievable is debatable; I guess you might regard the "Kevin's personality" and "all the visitors at the personality being just as "freakkish" as the carnival freaks" (i.e. not at all) options as being in opposition with one another.
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Post by Foxy on Mar 11, 2019 9:31:56 GMT -5
Hmm... I never thought of this issue so deeply. All the people who visit the carnival have small things about their appearances that someone unkind might make fun of, and the carnival "freaks" really are no more "freakish" than the people visiting the carnival. And I always thought Kevin was just being absurd, but I can see the other side of thinking as well.
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Post by R. on Jan 1, 2021 3:26:29 GMT -5
What's a "contortionist," anyway? So, Colette can "bend" her "body" into "a variety of strange and impressive positions"? Much too whimsical for my liking, much too fantastical. I thought these books were meant to be factual accounts? Believe it or not, contortionists actually do exist, I’ve seen one. |
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Post by El Juanico Diez on Jan 1, 2021 4:11:17 GMT -5
People in general don't understand the joke about freaks, is that none of them are freaks. Those people were simply classified as an aberration and accepted that. Basically this is a criticism of the society that classifies people as ugly or beautiful, normal or abnormal based on completely subjective criteria. The real aberrations should be the public that amuses itself with the ridicule of other human beings and with the violence. I really like TCC because it is a book that makes me think about many things, and because these messages are not explicit. Why did those people decide to support Count Olaf? I don't think they are bad people by nature. They took on the role of being freaks because they were convinced of it after a long time of repetition and reinforcement.
I wonder if some people are not like that in real life. If you tell a child that he or she is stupid, or that he or she has no way, or that he or she will never get anywhere in life, there is a great chance that he or she will believe that, and take on the role of villain in his or her life. I think this attitude is a freak factory. On the other hand, if you tell a child that he is special simply because he was born in a certain country or because he was born in a certain family, or because he was born with a certain color, or because his family is of a certain religion, you are also forming freaks.
I personally believe that no one should be encouraged to be proud or ashamed of something for which he had no choice. You don't choose where or how you are born. I mean, if you ask me if I am proud to be black or Brazilian, my answer will always be no. I didn't choose to be Brazilian, nor did I choose to be black. But I'm also not ashamed of that. I am ashamed not to speak English because I know that this problem is due to a simple lack of commitment on my part. On the other hand, I am proud of every book I read, every text I wrote, I am proud of the religion I chose, because I know it took effort on my part to make these decisions on my own and they all brought benefits for me and others. Well ... T.C.C. makes me think about all of this.
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