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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 1, 2019 4:28:51 GMT -5
I will quote myself again:
"I understand that Olaf's real goal is to destroy VFD. Stealing the inheritance rights of the children of VFD members is a way to achieve this. It is not simple greed. Olaf does not want to rob a bank and keep the money as Mrs. Bass did. If he did this, the bank would still have the obligation to hand over money to the stolen family as soon as requested. What Olaf wants is to take money out of VFD. Since VFD is a secret organization, the money of the organization is under the custody of individuals, or is converted into jewelry (like emeralds) for example. Olaf's goal of destroying VFD is well evident in these words of Olaf in TGG:
"This submarine is one of the greatest things I've ever stolen, It has everything I'll need to defeat V.F.D. once and for all. It has a sonar system, so I can rid the seas of V.F.D. submarines.
It has an enormous flyswatter, so I can rid the skies of V.F.D. plans. It has a lifetime supply of matches, so I can rid the world of V.F.D. headquarters. "
It was with this purpose in mind that Olaf gathered his troupe: they were fighting fire against fire, in the sense that they believed that VFD had become an organization that needed to be destroyed.
What Olaf is doing is a kind of guerrilla tactic. As his troupe is smaller than VFD, Olaf went on to attack the organization's financial supplies. Olaf also attacked the organization's animals, then the organization's media (destroying telegram cable posts). Olaf also allied himself with former enemies of the organization.
We realize that Olaf is not in a hurry to receive Baudelaires' money, as he chose to kill Violet and Klaus, and to let Sunny live at the end of TCC. From Olaf's point of view, what is more important is to prevent VFD from gaining access to Baudelaires' money. This is more important than having access to money."
The Baudelaire family was used as one of VFD's means of saving money. Lots of money. In fact, the Snicket family, for example, had money because it had a mansion, and furthermore The Little Snicket Lad suggests that Lemony was born into a wealthy family. As an adult, Lemony didn't know that. Apparently the richness of VFD before the Great Schism was formed over generations through "donations." Donations is a word that means inheritance theft here. After the Great Schism, the fire-extinguishing side refused violence of all kinds. He evidently refused to steal inheritance rights. But it was easy to make that decision because the accumulated money from VFD was kept by people on the fire extinguishing side.
In addition to money and jewelry, real estate also has a lot of value. That's why Aunt Josefine is afraid of realtors, and why Kit talked about how realtors were used over the years after the Schism. And that's why Aunt Josefine knows that it is safer to live in a house that has no commercial value, even if there is a constant chance that the house will fall, than to go to a house with commercial value. The Incendiary side wants to impoverish the fire-extinguishing side, and will do so through real estate fires. Especially secret real estate, such as secret bases, as these secret bases are not covered by insurance.
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Post by Dante on Sept 1, 2019 5:27:57 GMT -5
The sinister duo are as interested in acquiring more child servants as they are in acquiring fortunes; and as I've suggested in a couple of your threads now, the possibility that the present wave of violence is a new phenomenon kicked off by Olaf suggests that a certain number of kidnappings and assassinations are occurring simply to get them out of the way before V.F.D. has time to organise a response. Olaf personally was likely motivated by revenge on the Baudelaire family, with the possibility of getting the fortune as a bonus, and one which he didn't consider in detail until after he'd taken custody of the children. It's even possible that gaining custody of the Baudelaire children was in itself an event he hadn't anticipated.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 1, 2019 9:50:56 GMT -5
All the kids are underage. So no one will get the Baudelaire or Quagmire or Spats or the Snow Scouts fortunes, until everyone turns 18. That's a really long time to wait, since all the kids are only about 12-14 years old. Also, isn't it strange that all the families with fortunes have children more or less the same age? Patience is a virtue which apparently villains do not have. I agree with Dante, revenge. They can't let go of what happened in the past. |
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Post by Hermes on Sept 1, 2019 11:16:51 GMT -5
All the kids are underage. So no one will get the Baudelaire or Quagmire or Spats or the Snow Scouts fortunes, until everyone turns 18. That's a really long time to wait, since all the kids are only about 12-14 years old. Also, isn't it strange that all the families with fortunes have children more or less the same age? Well, we don't know that they all are - there a presumably other families with fortunes which just don't come up in the story, not having children of a relevant age; indeed the Snickets would be one such (Lulu refers to a Snicket fortune, so we know there was one). Besides, the Snow Scouts may cover a fairly wide spread of ages; Carmelita is often seen as quite a but younger than the Baudelaires (except Sunny, of course), and there's no saying how old the Kornbluth and Winnipeg children are. As to the major point; first, we don't know for sure what the cause of the fires was. Then, supposing it was indeed O who started the Baudelaire fire, I'd agree with Dante that he was thinking in the first place of revenge; and while he is certainly also motivated by greed, the sinister duo seem not to be, only by destructiveness. When O says 'Of course we're doing this [kidnapping the Snow Scouts and burning their houses down] to get their parents' fortunes' - they reply 'oh, yes' as if they had not thought of that aspect earlier. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 1, 2019 15:51:05 GMT -5
I'm very strange and I have an innate tendency to disagree with the majority, maybe someone has already noticed ... But I don't think Bestrice and Bertrand killed Olaf's parents anymore. Rethinking everything that happened ... Kit recounts the events involving the poisoned darts smiling. I would never agree that Kit is sadistic. She could kill someone, maybe ... But she would never be proud of it. And besides ... Olaf was orphaned when his parents died. The word orphan is used to refer to children who lose their parents, not adults who lose their parents. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/orphan: a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents |
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tonyvfd
Catastrophic Captain
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Post by tonyvfd on Sept 2, 2019 9:54:07 GMT -5
Olaf and Dewey are called orphans, so perhaps age is not a relevant factor. About kit, her smile could be
nervous laughter recalling how the death of Olaf's parents was the cause of a wave of violence. I mean there's really no point of kit recalling the opera flashback if they (the Baudelaire and her for whatever reason) didn't kill them.
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Post by Dante on Sept 2, 2019 12:20:12 GMT -5
It has always been strange that Kit is so blasé in her allusion to the opera house incident, but it is well worth remembering that Dewey looks shamefaced when reminded of the events of that night, and specifically of events relating to the Baudelaire parents and the box of poison darts, and cannot be brought to speak of them in front of the Baudelaires. I think we may reasonably propose that Kit was trying not to give away that anything had been at all wrong with the Baudelaire parents's activities on that night.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 2, 2019 13:11:05 GMT -5
Well, I won't argue strongly about it, but I will just explain what I understand about the word "orphan". I understand that if someone's parents are murdered when that person is a child, that person has been orphaned. In this case, the killer orphaned the person. And because it is a historical fact in one's life, the fact that one was orphaned does not change throughout one's life.
However, if one's parents are killed when that person is an adult, being orphaned for the rest of his life, and even as an adult, he will still be correctly called an "orphan." But if one's parents are murdered when that person is an adult, no one correctly says that person has been orphaned.
Dewey was orphaned as a child. And if you take into consideration that Olaf was taken by VFD before the Great Schism, since he has a tattoo, it is very likely that his parents were killed around the same time as Dewey's parents.
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tonyvfd
Catastrophic Captain
Posts: 80
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Post by tonyvfd on Sept 2, 2019 15:03:38 GMT -5
But the books implied that that night at the Opera was not that distant if Violet and Klauss remembered.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 2, 2019 19:24:11 GMT -5
But there is no proof that on that opera night Olaf's father or parents were actually killed. What we do know is that poisoned darts were killed used to kill Olaf's parents or father. They weren't necessarily killed that night, did they? Daniel Handler has the custom of duplicating events to confuse you.
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Post by Dante on Sept 3, 2019 10:31:57 GMT -5
I wouldn't read too much into the use of "orphan", which is very clearly deployed unusually in the text in order to draw a sympathetic connection between the Baudelaires, Dewey, and Olaf. All references to the opera house incident are actually crafted in such a way as to make it unclear when it happened; it's even possible to read it that the Baudelaire children weren't born yet and their parents simply related the anecdote years later. (What a boring anecdote, though.)
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 3, 2019 11:51:43 GMT -5
A moment Dante ... The conversation about Opera Night began with Klaus talking about when his parents took a cab to the opera house. Kit did remember that night, and Klaus claims that his mother brought an Opera Poster. I think it is clear that Opera Night actually happened after the birth of at least Klaus and Violet, since Sunny could have recognized only the poster pasted on his house. Although ... Ah, I understand what you mean ... Klaus just said that his parents took a cab one night when the car didn't work. Klaus may have this information for hearing his parents tell him about the information. Also, just like Sunny, they may have seen the poster stuck at home. The conversation may have just started with Beatrice and Bertrand talking about the origin of the poster. Awesome, Dante! I had never thought of that ... And it bothers me a lot.
But anyway ... This is no proof that the Baudelaire parents killed Olaf's parents or father. Don't get me wrong ... I love theories that show Beatrice killing people ... But I'm afraid of falling into red herring.
And I think it's important to establish that the death of Olaf's parents by the Baudelaires is just a theory. There is no hard evidence that this actually happened.
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