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Post by Dante on Sept 11, 2019 3:55:43 GMT -5
It's fairly reasonably supported that the Baudelaire fortune was stolen by Mrs. Bass and likely destroyed in the Hotel Denouement fire, so claiming it wouldn't have been on the cards anyway. (Consider Mrs. Bass's "loot", 'a large, bulky pile of large, bulky bags, each with the worsd PROPERTY OF MULCTUARY MONEY MANAGEMENT stamped on them in stern black ink' (TPP pp. 129-130); "Mr. Poe, who arrived just hours ago to investigate a bank robbery" (p. 210); Mr. Poe's utterance of "I can't leave [...] I'm still in charge of the Baudelaires' affairs, and their parents fort--" (p. 334).) The Baudelaires themselves come to this conclusion: "None of us may ever see a penny of that money." (The End, p. 312) And they were never particularly interested in their fortune, anyway; they only wanted a safe and comfortable home.
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Post by Hermes on Sept 11, 2019 8:26:19 GMT -5
Certainly the idea that Mrs Bass has stolen the Baudelaire fortune implies a very old-fashioned model of banking, on which it is the coins, or whatever, in your vault that belong to you, and if someone steals them it is you, and not any other client of the bank, who has lost something. (It would make more sense for the Quagmires, for whom the principal element in their fortune is sapphires, not money.) However, given how odd the world of ASOUE is in many respects, I don't think we can rule out that this is indeed how banking works.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 11, 2019 12:26:52 GMT -5
It's fairly reasonably supported that the Baudelaire fortune was stolen by Mrs. Bass and likely destroyed in the Hotel Denouement fire, so claiming it wouldn't have been on the cards anyway. (Consider Mrs. Bass's "loot", 'a large, bulky pile of large, bulky bags, each with the worsd PROPERTY OF MULCTUARY MONEY MANAGEMENT stamped on them in stern black ink' (TPP pp. 129-130); "Mr. Poe, who arrived just hours ago to investigate a bank robbery" (p. 210); Mr. Poe's utterance of "I can't leave [...] I'm still in charge of the Baudelaires' affairs, and their parents fort--" (p. 334).) The Baudelaires themselves come to this conclusion: "None of us may ever see a penny of that money." ( The End, p. 312) And they were never particularly interested in their fortune, anyway; they only wanted a safe and comfortable home. I think that's all pretty circumstantial evidence... I don't think the kids really cared about the money, which makes it ironic that Count Olaf chases them for something they don't even necessarily care about. |
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 11, 2019 13:34:03 GMT -5
I believe the idea has always been to steal Baudelaire inheritance. Not just steal money. Stealing money from the bank should be relatively easy, since Mrs. bass has done it. What Olaf wants is not to steal the money, but to steal the inheritance. Therefore it is understood that money has insurance.
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Post by Foxy on Sept 12, 2019 7:35:32 GMT -5
By inheritance, do you mean he wants to steal their house? How is inheritance different from their fortune? Also, just remembered, there is no house because it burned down. So their plot of land?
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tonyvfd
Catastrophic Captain
Posts: 80
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Post by tonyvfd on Sept 12, 2019 11:21:07 GMT -5
I got the impression that Violet meant that nobody will see a penny because all are wanted criminals,and cannot simply walk into a bank without being arrested.
I'm not victim blaming, but if the kids didn't care about money wouldn't have been a good idea to simply yield Olaf the rights to the inheritance? Or would he still want to kill them?
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Post by Dante on Sept 12, 2019 14:53:29 GMT -5
I would suspect that that would be the sort of decision they wouldn't be able to take until Violet came of age; for the same reason that the fortune is presently under Mr. Poe's management. Minors aren't considered legally capable of having such financial responsibility. With that said, I would also suggest that not caring about money isn't the same as wanting Olaf to get away with everything. The Baudelaires have always resisted him in whatever way they could find.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 12, 2019 17:14:26 GMT -5
Evidence that the banking system in Averse (what an incredible word) works similar to our universe is that Mr. Poe claims that the money saved is accruing interest. This is evidence that it is not the coins themselves that are stored. The value of fortune is that it is stored in the bank. If someone steals money from the bank, the bank must repay the value of the money to those who deposited the money in the bank, along with the interest corresponding to the time the money was stored. Ah, I will try to explain further ... The fact that the value of the original deposited money has accrued interest indicates that while the value of the fortune is deposited with the bank, the bank itself uses the value to make money. For example, the bank may use part of the amount deposited to lend money to others at high interest rates. To be entitled to do so with other people's money, the bank pays interest to those who have deposited money, and gives them assurance that they will have the value back as soon as they need it or after a predetermined time. If it were money stored in uninsured safes, the bank would not have the right to lend the money to other people, so it would not pay interest to those who deposited money there.
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Post by Dante on Sept 13, 2019 14:08:05 GMT -5
That is all very reasonable, Jean Lucio, but none of it particularly matters if the author doesn't care. The fact is that Mrs. Bass stole bags of money from the bank, that Mr. Poe is investigating a bank robbery, and that he links his presence in the Hotel Denouement to the Baudelaire fortune. The author placed those details for a reason.
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Post by Optimism is my Phil-osophy on Sept 13, 2019 22:51:59 GMT -5
Yes, and for me the reason is very clear: to show the irony of the situation. Count Olaf makes many plans to get rich, while an old teacher decided to get rich simply by robbing the bank. This is very funny, of course. In addition, it was necessary to draw a temporal parallel on Lemony's claim that Prufrock Prep closed after Mrs. Bass was arrested for bank robbery. Daniel Handler wanted to provide readers with temporal evidence about the chronology of his universe. But none of this serves as evidence that the Baudelaires no longer have access to their wealth. In fact it only highlights Olaf's motivations for destroying VFD, not just getting rich.
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