Duality in The Beatrice Letters

[El Juanico Diez]

Beatrice Letters was precisely designed to present several possible interpretations. I believe that one of the reasons this book was not allowed to be translated into other languages ​​is that it is impossible to convey to the reader the same feeling that there are several possible interpretations. Unfortunately, the tendency of some fans to accept the most obvious interpretation as the only possible interpretation has overshadowed the beauty of the work for many people. The best known case of this is the question of whether the Baudelaires died shortly after leaving the island or not. For a long time, I argued that the only possible interpretation for what is written in TBL is that the Baudelaires survived long after leaving the island, as Beatrice claims that she remembers Sunny on a radio show. However, Dante showed me that there is another way to interpret this: the fact that Beatrice Jr may be mistaken. I have to admit that I really like this type of argument, because that is exactly what I say (now) about Beatrice's death. Assuming this possibility, we are saying that Daniel Handler planned the existence of characters who are mistaken about facts in ASOUE.

Thus, we cannot fully rely on Lemony Snicket's claim in some books about Beatrice's death for the simple fact that Lemony may be mistaken about her death. (Similarly, we cannot rely on the Baudelaires' survival on the island, because Beatrice Jr may be mistaken about this).

And as I have previously published, Daniel Handler left tips that indicate that Beatrice may have survived the fire at her home, and that he decided that Beatrice survived at some point between the publication of TAA and TPP. These tips were left in LSTUA and the Snicket File. I also believe that in TSS, Daniel Handler used a resource used by Agatha Christie in her books: disappointment about a prime suspect due to forged clues or coincidences, so that in the end Agatha would reveal to the reader that the prime suspect was really the murder . It would be a very specific type of Red Haring. I'm going to call this feature "Smoke Cloud". From my point of view, Quigley's TSS revelation is a well-planned Smoke Cloud, made to hide the revelation (which was already becoming very obvious since the publication of LSTUA) that Beatrice had survived her house fire. We found evidence that Quigley's revelation was a Smoke Cloud when we realized that Daniel Handler was keen to point out that Olaf was surprised to find that Quigley was alive after Olaf had read the Snicket File. If Daniel Handler's intention was to confirm that the fire survivor named in the Snicket File was Quigley, this scene would not make sense.

As Hermes and Dante explained, perhaps that was left as it was so that some plot change or new ideas were possible in the next books. I remember this feature being used at the end of the second season of Prision Break, where a scene is shown in which a major character is being taken inside a truck surrounded by police, and then a group of armed men assault the truck and the camera shows them shooting. But the camera angle does not show whether they shot the prisoner or the police. Evidently, it was recorded that way, so that both realities could be used in a possible future season. I will call this feature "Flexible Roadmaps". The use of "Flexible Roadmaps" allows the author to write a story without knowing exactly all the details of the sequel. The existence of an intensional Flexible Roadmap in ASOUE is the fact that the bodies of Beatrice and Bertrand have never been described as being found by anyone. Someone (Dante) can argue that describing the bodies of the parents of the main characters would be too shocking for readers who are children (and I agree). But not even a funeral? Furthermore, in LSTUA it was clear that Daniel Handler resorted to this aspect of the Flexible Roadmap by stating that the bodies of the Baudelaires' parents were not buried in two of the places where photos are displayed. The Flexible Roadmap exists due to the fact that the reality in which the bodies turned to ash and the reality that they survived co-exist at the same time.

And then we come to the end of TPP full of Flexible Roadmap spread throughout the work. A conventional author would choose some of the possibilities of his Flexible Roadmaps and present them to the reader. But I think we all agree that Daniel Handler is not a conventional author. Instead of clarifying the truth about Beatrice's survival or not, he publishes TBL and then TE. I think we all agree that at least TBL and TE were written together. It is important to understand that one of the goals of TBL is to leave some of the Flexible Roadmaps open.

I disagree with the statement that all the mysteries contained in TBL have been solved, because I see evidence that the mysteries contained in TBL were not created to be solved, but to be identified.

To refuse the existence of these unsolved mysteries is actually to overlook the hidden beauty that TBL possesses. I will try to publish some texts indicating the existence of these mysteries, and of course I know that solutions to these mysteries have been proposed over the years. But none of these solutions are really definitive, because TBL was designed to be a great anagram. Just as you can form multiple words from a set of letters, and each word will have a different meaning, TBL was designed to be understood in different ways depending on the premises adopted by the reader when reading each letter.

[Dante]

Mar 23, 2020 11:00:07 GMT -5 El Juanico Diez said:

I believe that one of the reasons this book was not allowed to be translated into other languages ​​is that it is impossible to convey to the reader the same feeling that there are several possible interpretations.

I would be interested to see a citation for this one, Jean Lucio; as far as I know, TBL hasn't been forbidden from being translated, it simply... hasn't been. Probably because, as a physical object, it's complicated and probably therefore costly to mass-produce, and in markets where ASoUE is less popular, it's difficult to envisage it getting a return on the investment of translating and publishing it.

We found evidence that Quigley's revelation was a Smoke Cloud when we realized that Daniel Handler was keen to point out that Olaf was surprised to find that Quigley was alive after Olaf had read the Snicket File. If Daniel Handler's intention was to confirm that the fire survivor named in the Snicket File was Quigley, this scene would not make sense.

Well... I don't like Quigley as the solution to the survivor plotline either and I don't think he is sufficiently well indicated by the evidence beforehand. But simply Olaf being surprised about his survival despite having read the Snicket File I don't think is that difficult to account for. Page 13 only alludes to the possibility of a survivor of the fire, presumably a fire discussed in the previous pages; and as this is a concluding note and presented as new information, anyone who had only read the preceding twelve pages about the fire itself (probably one of several) would not necessarily anticipate the existence of a survivor.

As Hermes and Dante explained, perhaps that was left as it was so that some plot change or new ideas were possible in the next books. I remember this feature being used at the end of the second season of Prision Break, where a scene is shown in which a major character is being taken inside a truck surrounded by police, and then a group of armed men assault the truck and the camera shows them shooting. But the camera angle does not show whether they shot the prisoner or the police. Evidently, it was recorded that way, so that both realities could be used in a possible future season. I will call this feature "Flexible Roadmaps". The use of "Flexible Roadmaps" allows the author to write a story without knowing exactly all the details of the sequel. The existence of an intensional Flexible Roadmap in ASOUE is the fact that the bodies of Beatrice and Bertrand have never been described as being found by anyone. Someone (Dante) can argue that describing the bodies of the parents of the main characters would be too shocking for readers who are children (and I agree). But not even a funeral? Furthermore, in LSTUA it was clear that Daniel Handler resorted to this aspect of the Flexible Roadmap by stating that the bodies of the Baudelaires' parents were not buried in two of the places where photos are displayed. The Flexible Roadmap exists due to the fact that the reality in which the bodies turned to ash and the reality that they survived co-exist at the same time.

Marvellous, Jean Lucio. This is a position I can agree with. Even if you believe that Handler never changed his plans, or ultimately returned to his original ideas, it doesn't prevent him from setting down the groundwork for alternative possibilities.

And then we come to the end of TPP full of Flexible Roadmap spread throughout the work. A conventional author would choose some of the possibilities of his Flexible Roadmaps and present them to the reader. But I think we all agree that Daniel Handler is not a conventional author. Instead of clarifying the truth about Beatrice's survival or not, he publishes TBL and then TE. I think we all agree that at least TBL and TE were written together. It is important to understand that one of the goals of TBL is to leave some of the Flexible Roadmaps open.

This is sound book history. TBL and The End were published almost within a month of one another and are intimately linked. If anything, I suspect TBL was probably written second, but in such proximity that the distinction is immaterial. The two books supplement each other, and as readers of TBL we were very explicitly encouraged by the marketing itself to regard it as holding clues to The End.

I disagree with the statement that all the mysteries contained in TBL have been solved, because I see evidence that the mysteries contained in TBL were not created to be solved, but to be identified.

To refuse the existence of these unsolved mysteries is actually to overlook the hidden beauty that TBL possesses. I will try to publish some texts indicating the existence of these mysteries, and of course I know that solutions to these mysteries have been proposed over the years. But none of these solutions are really definitive, because TBL was designed to be a great anagram. Just as you can form multiple words from a set of letters, and each word will have a different meaning, TBL was designed to be understood in different ways depending on the premises adopted by the reader when reading each letter.

Well, when you put it like that, even I can agree. It's an open-ended text that is intended to be mysterious, though I would argue that it is also intended to make considerably more sense in retrospect after a reader has subsequently read The End. But much is still left plainly open.

[El Juanico Diez]

The use of the verb "meet" in TBL:

A very important way to cause intentional duality in a text is to take advantage of the multiple meanings that a word can have. Something I learned in practice with Daniel Handler, is that he loves poetry. Poetry is an art that takes advantage of the multiple meanings of words to generate different effects.

In this case, I believe that some words were used by Lemony to create this intentional duality. The use of the verb "to meet" is a recurring example of this method in TBL.

(Please correct me if necessary, as English is not my native language, and it is actually a language I am still learning, and it is a great presumption to write about it here, but you already know me and know that I am not I care to give my opinion on things, even if I'm wrong.)

The merriam-webster.com dictionary gives some definitions for the word meet. I will highlight some that I consider important for TBL:

- to come into the presence of: find
- to come together with especially at a particular time or place. .: "I'll meet you at the station."
- to become acquainted with.: "I want you to meet my sister."
- to come face-to-face.

In LS to BB # 1, there is the word "meet" in the phrase "If you would care to spend afternoon recess together, meet me outside the East Gate."

Based on this information, you can infer the following duality:
1 - Lemony had never talked to Beatrice in his life before he went with Beatrice for that first date.

or

2 - Lemony could have talked to Beatrice before, even if just before, and in this case "meet" means that Lemony was proposing to be face to face at the Cafe.

Ok, "but this duality is not that interesting", you might think. But this duality is important because of the context in which the duality was inserted. At the end of this letter, Lemony says, "I will be the eleven-year-old boy wering a green necktie and a pin with the insignia of our organization."

And at the beginning of this letter we found the following statement: "I am sorry I embarrassed you in front o your firends. I only wanted to talk to you. You have always looked like an interesting person, and I enjoyed very much your oral report. .. "

If you believe that Lemony had never even spoken to Beatrice personally before that first date, you will interpret that Lemony had to describe his appearance and age because Beatrice never had a chance to look closely at him and differentiate him from the other students. On the other hand, if you believe that Beatrice and Lemony had already spoken to each other (as the beginning of the letter seems [and only seems] to indicate), you will believe that Lemony had to describe his appearance in this letter because Lemony would probably be disguised . The possibility (and only possibility) that Lemony would be in disguise seems to be reinforced by the use of a "pin". In the poem my Silence Knot Beatrice wrote "A hatpin serves as part of my disguise". In this case, the fact that Lemony reinforces that he would be the 11 year old boy may even indicate that he would be disguised as an 11 year old boy, and not that that was necessarily his age when he wrote this letter.

All this duality exists thanks to the multiple meanings of the word "meet".

Now for the BB to LS # 6 letter.
In this letter, B. wrote: "If you don't meet me, rip it in half when you are done with your root beer float ... But if you to meet me, I'm the ten-year-old girl at the corner table. "

We realized that Daniel Handler again used the word meet. This time, duality has as much to do with your interpretation of what happened to Beatrice I, as with meaning of words.

1 - If you believe that Beatrice I died in the fire of her house or soon after, you will evidently interpret that the only way to understand this letter is that Beatrice Jr wanted to meet her biological uncle for the first time, and she would be 10 years old.

2 - But if you believe that Beatrice I survived the fire in her house for many years, you can believe that the person who wrote this letter is Beatrice I, who simply disguised herself as a 10-year-old girl. In this case, the verb meet here would mean face to face. In this case, Beatrice Jr's age when she went looking for her uncle (as indicated in other letters) would not have been revealed in Daniel Handler's work.

The same applies to BB to LS # 5. Beatrice wrote: "I cannot imagine why someone as noble as yourself ... will not meet someone who wants so very much to talk to you."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The possibility of influence of destiny on ASOUE and TBL

This possibility is raised by Lemony in TPP, which preceded the publication of TBL. Note this excerpt:

TPP chpater 1: "destiny" is a word that tends to cause arguments among the people who use it. Some people think destiny is something you cannot escape, such as death ... Other people think destiny is a time in one's life, such as the moment one becomes an adult ... And still other people think that destiny is an invisible force, like gravity, or a fear of paper cuts, that guides everyone throughout their lives, whether they are embarking on a mysterious errand, doing a treacherous deed, or deciding that a book they have begun reading is too dreadful to finish. In the opera La Forza del Destino, various characters argue, fall in love, get married in secret, run away to monasteries, go to war, announce that they will get revenge, engage in duels, and drop a gun on the floor, where it goes off accidentally and kills someone in an incident eerily similar to one that happens in chapter nine of this very book, and all the while they are trying to figure out if any of these troubles are the result of destiny. They wonder and wonder at all the perils in their lives, and when the final curtain is brought down even the audience cannot be sure what all these unfortunate events may mean. just as I wondered, on that fateful evening long ago, as I hurried out of the opera house before a certain woman could spot me-if it was the force of destiny that was guiding their story, or something even more mysterious, even more dangerous , and even more unfortunate. "

The duality in TBL exists to what extent you believe that Fate (or "divine" interference) is a force present in the life of Lemony, Beatrice I and Beatrice Jr. At first I strongly dismissed this idea. But from the moment I thought about the purposeful duality in TBL, I realized that this is a valid idea. To understand the concept of "divine" interference in a literary work, I will quote an episode of Looney Tunes that I watched a long time ago called Duck Amuck. Wikipedia describes this episode as follows: "It stars Daffy Duck, who is tormented by a seemingly sadistic, unseen animator, who constantly changes Daffy's locations, clothing, voice, physical appearance and even shape, much to Daffy's aggravation and rage. Pandemonium reigns throughout the cartoon as Daffy attempts to steer the action back to some kind of normality, only for the animator to either ignore him or, more frequently, to over-literally interpret his increasingly frantic demands. In the end, the tormenting animator is revealed to be Bugs Bunny. " Well, this episode illustrates a simple truth: the author of the work is like a god for the characters, he has the power to do whatever he wants with them, even if it breaks all the laws of logic and coherence that exist in our universe. The influence of Destiny that Lemony claims to feel, may actually be the real influence that exists in the fact that Daniel Handler (from our universe) has full power over what would happen to each of his characters, as well as what they would think or write.

So it is possible that in TBL Daniel Handler wanted to further explore this concept. Now, thinking about it, look at the dualities that arise when thinking about the poem My Silence Knot and the fact that some words used by Lemony in letters to Beatrice I were almost repeated in letters from Beatrice to Lemony.

My Silence Knot poem: In this poem, written by Beatrice I, there are things that seem prophetic. For example: "A piece of mail fails to arrive one day." In addition, "My silence knot is tied up in my hair, as if to keep my love out of my eyes". At the time the poem was published in Lemony's universe, Beatrice and Lemony were still dating and planning to get married.

If you believe in the force of fate influencing events in Lemony and Beatrice I's life, you may believe that Lemony and Beatrice's future was already written, and that somehow "god" made Beatrice write about it many years before of her death. After that, in the 200-page letter she remembered the poem she had written, and realized that there was a prediction for the future and a code there. And so she asked Lemony about what was written, according to letter LS to BB # 5. This possibility seems to be reinforced by a very evident factor in TBL: the anagrams of the book formed by the detachable letters. These anagrams come from letters and photos of objects collected by Lemony. It was not Lemony who organized these letters to form words and phrases throughout his life. If we think as if we were a character in Lemony's universe, we would have to recognize that either these letters were chosen by chance and by coincidence they form anagrams related to the life of Lemony and the Baudelaires or that there was in fact a mysterious force that was influencing life of them, trying to send an enigmatic message to them. We know that this "force" is called Daniel Handler in our universe and that it is real.

But if you don't believe in the force of fate influencing the events of the ASOUE universe so intensely, you will believe that Beatrice wrote those words using her ability to deduce, that she was talking in a few sentences about some past event, and that she may still have tried to send a secret message to Lemony for middle of that poem.

The phrase "the curtain falls just as the knot unties, The silence broken by the one who dies", can be understood that Beatrice planned to fake her own death after the end of a play. In this case, the play played by Beatrice would be her own marriage to Bertrand. This would explain the sentence at the beginning of the poem: "A pem about a play about a story of two people who ... written by the person in the story (in the play in the poem) who ..." Despite the final words of each line being impossible to see, it is very likely that they were "die" and "dies", due to the end of the poem. And in this case, when Beatrice practically asked Lemony to remember this poem and the fact that the poem had a secret message while asking if he would continue to love her no matter what happened or how much time passed, you will believe that Beatrice planned to fake her own death and stay with Lemony after the curtain fell, that is, after the wedding ended.

If you believe in divine interference in ASOUE, you will believe that Beatrice Jr used the expression My Silence Knot and that she became a Baticeer as well as Beatrice I because "god" wanted it that way. Of course, it is possible that the Baudelaires talked about this poem with Beatrice Jr.
But you will agree with me that if Beatrice I talked to them about it, then they decided to talk to Beatrice Jr about it and she decided to write to her uncle using exactly the name of that play as a type of code would be a strong divine influence. Similarly, you believe that most of Beatrice Jr's letters to Lemony have expressions very similar to Lemony's letters to Beatrice I because of divine interference. (In fact, there are so many similarities, that some may even believe that Beatrice Jr is some kind of reincarnation of Beatrice I).

But, if you don't believe that, and you believe that Beatrice I survived for many years after the fire in her house, you will believe that some of Beatrice's letters to Lemony are actually from Beatrice I to Lemony. in this case she used the name "My Silence Knot" and expressions similar to those that Lemony had used to identify herself in the letter and try to touch his heart.

[El Juanico Diez]

Literal and conceptual anagram

This is the great theme of Beatrice's letters and it is clear that this derives from the multiple meanings of the word "letter".
The two main meanings are:
1 - a symbol usually written or printed representing a speech sound and constituting a unit of an alphabet

2 - a direct or personal written or printed message addressed to a person or organization

Daniel Handler's idea was to create a work in which these two meanings of the word letters could be used to form anagrams, literal and conceptual anagrams. We see that this was his idea when we read BB to LS # 2:

"The wooden box on your desk marked" letters "is full of letters. But all the letters are jumbled together, and I cannot determinie what the letters would spell if I put them in the proper order. The only letter missing is the one I sent you. Either it never arrived or you took it with you. "

I think these are one of the coolest parts of TBL. Beatrice Jr logically uses and takes advantage of the multiple meaning of the word "spell" in line with the multiple meaning of the word "letter". This is beautiful. Note these two definitions of "spell" that I would like to highlight:

1 - to make up (a word).: What word do these letters spell?
2 -: to add up to: mean; to communicate or convey (as an idea) to the mind. .: "Crop failure was likely to spell stark famine." .: "That summertime combination of hot temperatures and equally hot tempers can spell trouble."

In other words, Beatrice could be saying that she was unable to spell out the different possible literal anagrams formed by a set of letters (A - Z) in a box, or she could be saying that there were several messages written in a box, which could mean several different things depending on the order and premises you decide to adopt. And the fact that Daniel Handler chose these words for Beatrice Jr to write, only highlights his intention to create multiple meanings for TBL.

Now, note Lemony's letter to the Editor. Lemony wrote:
"... The Beatrice letters could explain the beatrice letters and even the letters of Beatrice, no matter which letters they are, and no matter what order the letters are in. I immediately began work on the file."
When quoting the order of letters, Daniel Handler makes a clear allusion here to anagrams. After that, Lemony wrote:
"For many years I thought if I collected all thesse letters and their accompanying ephemera - a phrase witch here means" documents and items which I feared had vanished, and may soon vanish again "- I could put all of them in the proper order, as if solving anagram by putting all of the letters in the right order.But letters are not letters, so the arrangement of letters is not as simple as the arrangement of letters, and even if it were, the arrangement of these letters could spell more than one thing, just as there is more than one Beatrice, and so the mystey could become two mysteries, and each of these mysteries could become two mysteries, until the wole world is engulfed in mysteries, as it is now. "

(It is interesting that after this passage I found a message from Daniel Handler for me. He said to me:
"No matter what documents you investigate, and what objects you retrieve, you NEVER ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT ARE MOST IMORTANT TO YOU." )

This consideration shows that the beauty of TBL is to try to form literal and conceptual anagrams, and not to discover which of the meanings is right.

[Dante]

Respectable analysis, Jean Lucio.

[El Juanico Diez]

Mar 31, 2020 4:23:35 GMT -5 Dante said:

Respectable analysis, Jean Lucio.

You making such a short comment containing only praise is strange ... Are you okay? I'm just kidding. Thanks for the compliment ... I hope I have helped to increase people's esteem for TBL, which at the moment became my favorite book in the ASOUE universe again.

[El Juanico Diez]

Beatrice's bedtime duality

In some letters, Beatrice asks Lemony to contact her preferably during the day, as she needs to sleep early. How to understand this? Again, it all depends on your beliefs.

If you believe that all of Beatrice's letters are from Kit's daughter, you must believe that the girl respected bedtime even though she was alone in the world. You can believe that they survived the island and left instructions for her on bedtime, or that they left written instructions before they died, or that she was raised by other people for a while, who imposed her bedtime and she continues to obey, or even that she self-imposed a time to sleep.

But if you believe that some of the letters come from the Baudelaires' mother, you can believe that she was already an old lady when she wrote to Lemony, in which case she has a habit of sleeping early just like most older people. It is significant that only letters from Beatrice containing the anagram "My Silence Knot" have this detail that Beatrice needs to sleep early.

[Hermes]

What do you see as the timeline for this, JL? I take it that, if 'ten-year-old girl' is a disguise, we don't need to see the 'future' events of TBL as happening ten years after ASOUE. But if I remember rightly, you think L met Beatrice Sr at the masked ball fifteen years after ASOUE, so the letters must come before that; and fifteen years after ASOUE, I don't think Beatrice would be much over fifty, and so not especially likely to be going ro bed early.

[El Juanico Diez]

Apr 10, 2020 17:51:33 GMT -5 Hermes said:

What do you see as the timeline for this, JL? I take it that, if 'ten-year-old girl' is a disguise, we don't need to see the 'future' events of TBL as happening ten years after ASOUE. But if I remember rightly, you think L met Beatrice Sr at the masked ball fifteen years after ASOUE, so the letters must come before that; and fifteen years after ASOUE, I don't think Beatrice would be much over fifty, and so not especially likely to be going ro bed early.

Oh Hermes (or Herms, or Germes) thanks for remembering and paying so much attention to my previous texts. I still believe that the Ball took place 15 years after Count Olaf's death. But, considering that this is true, for TBL to make sense in this context, we still need to believe that Beatrice survived for many years after that Ball, and that Lemony did not meet her for many years after this. Beatrice Sr's letters to Lemony that hypothetically are in TBL were sent to Lemony before TE's publication. According to several ASOUE books like TSS, Lemony has devoted her entire life to researching the Baudelaire case. This indicates that after Lemony's return from abroad (Lemony spent several years abroad, the return happened at the time of the publication of TMM) he also spent years researching the issues related to the Baudelaire case. So, what I am saying is that it is possible that elderly Beatrice sent letters to an equally elderly Lemony when he had not yet published TE. But she sent letters to him after his return abroad, that is, after the publication of the TMM. In the letter to the editor in TBL, Lemony claims to have searched for the poem My Silence Knot for many years, and it was only then that he realized that there were two Beatrices.

Olaf's Schism It had happened about 15 years before the main events described in ASOUE, (by the time Fiona was born, Olaf was already a villain).
About 20 years before the main events described in ASOUE, Beatrice was captured by an eagle. This seems to indicate that the eagles, at that time, were already in possession of Olaf's supporters, which indicates that Olaf's Schism had already started.
This puts Olaf's Schism around (at least) 20 years before the main events described in ASOUE.
Lemony fled abroad (for the first time) at the start of Olaf's Schism, when Jacques was still helping Captain W.
At that time his wedding would have happened. If he was to be married around the age of 23, then, about 20 years later, he would be 43, at the time of the main events described in ASOUE.
15 years after Count Olaf's death, he was about 58 years old. He spent a few years abroad. If he spent a few years researching the Baudelaires after his return, he must have been well over 60 when he published TE. Being Beatrice and he of similar age, she would be an old lady at that time.


I am putting the time much less than I really believe. Lemony says she saw Beatrice being carried away by the eagles. This means that 20 years before the main events recorded in ASOUE, Lemony had already returned from abroad. Similarly, Lemony participated in the fight for salmon, indicating that he had already returned from abroad at this time. Beatrice seems to have participated in the training of lions, which confirms that before the Olaf Schism, the lions were in the care of the volunteer side. Similarly, Lemony recalls the eagles still being on the voluntary side, which indicates that the eagles were only captured at the time of Olaf's Schism, although a larger Schism took place during Lemony's early childhood.


So when Lemony published TE, he was about 65 years old.

Or even more ... When he received the first letters from Beatrice what remains was that he realized that there was more than one Beatrice and began the work of collecting Beatrice's letters and the poem My Silence Knot. All of this may have taken even more years. In any case, Beatrice's letters to Lemony are from a few years prior to the publication of TE. So I think that around 65 is a good age estimate for Lemony and Beatrice when Beatrice's last letter to Lemony was written. Of course, all of this taking into account the secondary interpretation of TBL.

[El Juanico Diez]

Intensional duality in the letter content from BB to LS # 1.

This letter has many indications that it was created by Daniel Handler to cause the impression of duality in the reader. The attentive reader will notice that there is so much evidence in her that the fictional author in the letter is Beatrice I and evidence that the fictional author is Beatrice Jr. This letter was created to be interchangeable, so to speak.

To begin with, the expression "Dear Sir" seems too informal for Beatrice I to use with Lemony. (Point to Beatrice Jr). But as soon as we entered the opening paragraph of the letter, we found phrases that seem to make more sense of having been written for Beatrice I. For example: "This small piece of stationery must cross mountains and cafeterias, in the trunks of autobobiles and in the waterproof pockets of long-distance swimmers ... in order to make its way to your small, dusty office on the thirteenth floor of one of the nine dreariest buildings in the city. " These claims appear to be made by someone who has a secret messaging network. Soon after, the fictional author of the letter wrote: "hoping for the best, like hoping for a bat to obey your orders, almost always leads to disappointment." These statements seem to point to the fictional author of the letter being Beatrice I, who was a bat trainer and a member of a secret organization. Also, Beatrice I is more likely to know what Lemony's office is (small and dusty) than Beatrice Jr.

Hence, the fictional author wrote in the second paragraph: "There are many people ... with the same initials as you, just as there is at least one other person with the same initials as me." How to understand this sentence? Evidently it was written for dual interpretation causes. If you believe that Beatrice Jr wrote this letter, you will believe that she is talking about the late Baudelaires' mother, who she might think was still alive, who knows ... Or she could be talking about anyone else she knew and that had the same initials as herself. On the other hand, if you believe that the author of this letter is Beatrice I, you will believe that the mother of the Baudelaires was wrote that there was at least one other person with the same initial as her, that is, Beatrice Jr.

The third paragraph is even more dualistic. It starts like this: "For years I kept quiet, feeling all my words twisting and tangling inside me like skeins of yarn, as I searched desperately for someone who could be of assistance." Those words don't seem to apply very well to Beatrice jr ... A 10-year-old girl looking for adoptive parents had to restrain herself from saying words ... Well, it could be. Although it seems to fit more with Beatrice I ... Especially since, right after, the fictional author of the letter makes a direct reference to the poem My Silence Knot. She wrote: "Now I must untie" My Silence Knot "... It would be a point for Beatrice I, if it were not for the conclusion of the sentence that seems to contradict that conclusion:" ... and write to a man I have never seen " Beatrice I had seen Lemony over and over again, but Beatrice Jr had never seen him. Daniel Handler purposely put us here in a logical dilemma. To believe one thing, we need to believe that something unlikely happened, and get away from it.

If you believe that Beatrice Jr is the fictional author of this letter, you will need to believe that there was a divine intervention, so to speak, so that she would know how to quote the poem My Silence Knot and the comparison with training bats that she did before. On the other hand, if you believe that Beatrice I wrote this letter, you need to believe that she was saying that she needed to write to someone other than Lemony shortly after writing this letter. This other person would be the man she had never seen. Another possibility would be that Beatrice I would be being confused in her words on purpose, in case someone unauthorized decided to read this letter.

Finally, we have the last paragraph ... Notice how this sentence was prepared to create multiple meanings: "My name is Beatrice Baudelaire. I am searching for my family - Violet Baudelaire, Klaus Baudelaire, and Sunny Baudelaire." By using the word "family", Daniel Handler left open whether the three Baudelaires were the author's children or parents. In any case, we have entered into another conceptual conflict. What is the author's goal with Lemony after all? Does she want to find the family, or does she want to discuss Lemony's past? Or both? In the penultimate paragraph we find the phrases: "I am hoping you will discuss your past with me. I am hoping you will tell me a story that began many years ago, in what I was told is a sort of classroom." Again, these phrases seem to apply more to Beatrice I than to Beatrice Jr, since her interest in Lemony's past is very intense. It seems unlikely that the 10-year-old girl looking for adoptive parents had a specific interest in Lemony Snicket's past, especially since at no time does she present herself as the daughter of Kit Snicket, who would be the link between Lemony and Beatrice Jr.

In any case, this letter intentionally points in both directions. It is up to the reader to realize this, and marvel at it.

[Hermes]

I sympathise with much of this, Jl, especially regarding the last paragraph, which seems clearly written to create ambiguity: the unclarity of 'family' is significant, and points very naturally to the Baudelaires' mother.

The question is what to make of this. When we read this, we, the audience, know nothing of Beatrice Jr, and it's possible that Lemony did not either (I'm not sure whether your timeline would allow for this). So we naturally take this as a letter from Beatrice Sr, and it's plausible that L would have done the same, gaining new hope that B is alive. But as we go through the letters, we realise that there is another Beatrice, and that she is a child. This might be seen as resolving the mystery. Should we accept that it does so, or should we suppose that even after we know about young B, it is a mystery whether she is writing? Certainly 'which Beatrice wrote this?' cannot be the puzzle we are first presented with when we read the letter.

It's true that there are some puzzles about B's situation - how has she access to a secret network? how does she know about 'My Silence Knot'? But so much is mysterious about young B anyway that I don't think we can rule out that she does so. How did she escape the wreck of the Beatrice, while being separated from the Baudelaires? Where was she between the wreck, which happened when she was one, and the start of the letters, when she is about seven? She could have been researching her background. Perhaps she is a Snicket fan, and found out about these things on her world's equivalent of 667.

As for the classroom reference, there's an ambiguity about what this relates to. Ishmael's story begins in a classroom, and young B may well have been told this story by the Baudelaires. The parallel is pointed up when this is mentionrd in The End, where one of the orphans (sorry, no books) asks 'why should we care about what happened long ago in a classroom?'. So perhaps B is referring to something quite different, and accidentally awakes Lemony's memories.

[Dante]

Yes, Jean Lucio, this is something I remember taking up with you before, that you appear to be approaching TBL outside of its original context. Remember, this is a book which was published before Book the Thirteenth; people reading the books in publication order had no inkling of the existence of a second, child Beatrice, and could not have approached TBL with that foreknowledge. What you're doing is the equivalent of looking at the answers to a puzzle before you start and then wondering why the puzzle is hiding something. Or perhaps a better analogy would be reading ATWQ before ASoUE, and then wondering why the latter makes a big mystery out of V.F.D. You're approaching the problem backwards, in other words.

The first letter in the book is from Lemony, evidently as a child, to Beatrice (I, not that we know yet there's a II), also evidently a child. All well and good. Then we come to the second letter, and the context of the first letter and the conventions of chronology lead us to expect that the second letter will follow in sequence, that it will be the child Beatrice (I) replying to the child Lemony. But then we come across an increasing number of references in the letter which unsettle that assumption, both in time and in authorship. Is this a letter from before the series, or after it? Is the author an adult, or a child; and if a child, how to reconcile it with the previous letter? These questions are also informed by the mysteriousness of Snicket's own relation to the events of ASoUE and to long-standing speculation that his investigations and perhaps his whole existence postdate the series by many years. So we read on, and we gradually come to understand that the letters aren't in direct sequence, that the authorial Beatrice has a background we can't yet reconcile with any known information, until finally (especially with BB to LS #6) we piece together that we are looking at two separate sequences of events involving two separate Beatrices, and Lemony's final letter to the editor confirms this. Much is still speculative but we use the book to assemble the theory of Beatrice II the child and sibling of the Baudelaire orphans. We don't come with that interpretation pre-made and ask why the book unsettles that; rather, the book unsettles the previous assumption that there was only one Beatrice and constructs Beatrice II as a new interpretation that resolves more problems than it creates.

The End coming second in sequence is doubly important because it does provide the final clarification and the final answers. It confirms the existence of the child raised by the Baudelaires, it confirms that her name is Beatrice... Moreover, Beatrice II knowing about things like Beatrice Baudelaire I's name, My Silence Knot, bat-training - these aren't huge mysteries once you know her origins; being raised by the Baudelaire orphans on an island where the primary reading material was an enormous journal written by Beatrice I, she'll naturally have picked up an enormous amount of information about her namesake and about her adoptive siblings' adventures. So we read TBL and come to some conclusions but with lingering questions; and then we read The End, and we say, "Aha, I see, I understand everything now." (Well, for this mystery, at least.)

The intended experience is reading TBL with the assumption of Beatrice (I and only), and then wondering why there are all these hints to a second Beatrice. What you are doing, Jean Lucio, is reading TBL with the foreknowledge of Beatrice II and then wondering why there are all these ambiguities about Beatrice I. Well, it's because you cheated, essentially. And that's not necessarily your fault, because the publication sequence of ASoUE is more significant than it would be for other series and to non-serial readers and especially readers outside the English-speaking world it won't necessarily be either clear how to read the series or even possible to read it in sequence. But the publication history is a factor you do have to take into account if you're performing an in-depth analysis.

[Hermes]

I'm interested by the thought that Lemony's whole existence might come long after the unfortunate events. I think that there are things in the early books that might suggest this, but I would have thought that the impression had been dispelled long before TBL, as it emerges how L's own story is entwined with the Baudelaires' story. The first clue comes in TMM, where we learn that Beatrice once asked 'where is Count Olaf?'; then we get 'Beatrice stole from me' in TEE, Lemony stealing a sugar bowl from Esme in THH, and finally L revealing that he once stayed at the carnival (which is now destroyed) in TCC. Also the hints that Jacques is Lemony's brother in TVV. Etc.

But now I'm wondering how many of these clues could be subverted - e.g. we don't yet know O is dead, so perhaps Beatrice said 'where is Count Olaf?' twenty years after the events. But I think by the time we reach the carnival the matter is settled.

It's possible, certainly, that young B got her whole education on the island. We do know, if I remember rightly, that she learned something from the Baudelaires which enabled her to find the VFD school. I was discounting this, I think, because she was less than one year old at the time; but of course she is a precocious child, and was under the guardianship of the similarly precocious Sunny.

[El Juanico Diez]

Apr 16, 2020 3:02:31 GMT -5 Dante said:

Yes, Jean Lucio, this is something I remember taking up with you before, that you appear to be approaching TBL outside of its original context. Remember, this is a book which was published before Book the Thirteenth; people reading the books in publication order had no inkling of the existence of a second, child Beatrice, and could not have approached TBL with that foreknowledge. What you're doing is the equivalent of looking at the answers to a puzzle before you start and then wondering why the puzzle is hiding something. Or perhaps a better analogy would be reading ATWQ before ASoUE, and then wondering why the latter makes a big mystery out of V.F.D. You're approaching the problem backwards, in other words.

The first letter in the book is from Lemony, evidently as a child, to Beatrice (I, not that we know yet there's a II), also evidently a child. All well and good. Then we come to the second letter, and the context of the first letter and the conventions of chronology lead us to expect that the second letter will follow in sequence, that it will be the child Beatrice (I) replying to the child Lemony. But then we come across an increasing number of references in the letter which unsettle that assumption, both in time and in authorship. Is this a letter from before the series, or after it? Is the author an adult, or a child; and if a child, how to reconcile it with the previous letter? These questions are also informed by the mysteriousness of Snicket's own relation to the events of ASoUE and to long-standing speculation that his investigations and perhaps his whole existence postdate the series by many years. So we read on, and we gradually come to understand that the letters aren't in direct sequence, that the authorial Beatrice has a background we can't yet reconcile with any known information, until finally (especially with BB to LS #6) we piece together that we are looking at two separate sequences of events involving two separate Beatrices, and Lemony's final letter to the editor confirms this. Much is still speculative but we use the book to assemble the theory of Beatrice II the child and sibling of the Baudelaire orphans. We don't come with that interpretation pre-made and ask why the book unsettles that; rather, the book unsettles the previous assumption that there was only one Beatrice and constructs Beatrice II as a new interpretation that resolves more problems than it creates.

The End coming second in sequence is doubly important because it does provide the final clarification and the final answers. It confirms the existence of the child raised by the Baudelaires, it confirms that her name is Beatrice... Moreover, Beatrice II knowing about things like Beatrice Baudelaire I's name, My Silence Knot, bat-training - these aren't huge mysteries once you know her origins; being raised by the Baudelaire orphans on an island where the primary reading material was an enormous journal written by Beatrice I, she'll naturally have picked up an enormous amount of information about her namesake and about her adoptive siblings' adventures. So we read TBL and come to some conclusions but with lingering questions; and then we read The End, and we say, "Aha, I see, I understand everything now." (Well, for this mystery, at least.)

The intended experience is reading TBL with the assumption of Beatrice (I and only), and then wondering why there are all these hints to a second Beatrice. What you are doing, Jean Lucio, is reading TBL with the foreknowledge of Beatrice II and then wondering why there are all these ambiguities about Beatrice I. Well, it's because you cheated, essentially. And that's not necessarily your fault, because the publication sequence of ASoUE is more significant than it would be for other series and to non-serial readers and especially readers outside the English-speaking world it won't necessarily be either clear how to read the series or even possible to read it in sequence. But the publication history is a factor you do have to take into account if you're performing an in-depth analysis.

I understand that Dante, and I have questioned myself several times in the past few weeks on the subject. But I believe the island book lacked information about Lemony Snicket, and there was not even Lemony's own name other than the reference to Klaus's possible name. But I want to highlight something from that sentence that I just wrote: "I believe". I am fully aware that my vision depends on the premises that I decided to adopt. But these premises are based on my beliefs. I just wish you could understand that in the same way, your interpretation depends on the premises that you decided to believe. And therein lies the question. The details of the island's book content are not revealed. In the end, if you want Beatrice dead, you will go to your imagination to complete the missing details. If you want it alive (as I want it) you will imminate other things. But and if you want to see only the facts (as I am trying, and not really being able to do) you will see that there are no clear answers because Daniel Handler did not want to give clear answers.

In addition, TBL makes it clear by itself that there are two Beatrices, referring to this since that letter, and especially in the letter to the editor. Someone who doubted this after reading TBL simply had not read TBL carefully. You might even find it weird Daniel Handler spoiling before the big TE reveal, but Lemony Snicket does it all the time during ASOUE, giving details of what is going to happen before the narrative reaches that point. Similarly, anyone who believed that this letter was written by Beatrice Sr as a child, would not have read this letter carefully, as the letter was evidently written after the birth of Klaus, Sunny and Violet, and this is very evident in this same letter. Of course, you can argue that this mystery is easy because the target audience is children. But this argument contradicts itself when you need to make assumptions about what would be written in the island's book for this letter to make sense. And don't get me wrong, I agree that your reasoning is one of the possible solutions. I'm just saying that the other possible meaning of this set of texts is that the Baudelaires' mother was still alive at that time.

If you think about it, why do you believe that the Baudelaires may be dead or may be alive? Wasn't it because you realized that this was the author's intention at the end of TE? Leaving an open ending on the Baudelaires' death was Daniel Handler's intention, and we know this because of one of TE's final words: "rumors of one's death crop up so often, and are so often revealed to be untrue." Based on this, you believe that Beatrice Jr may be mistaken to think that she heard Sunny's radio program, and that Daniel Handler purposely created this phrase said through Betrice Jr making her an unreliable narrator. We are not going to use two weights and two measures, okay? Thinking about all this is too much for an ordinary child, but the reasoning is still valid and seems to be true. What's wrong with using the same reasoning with Beatrice's survival? Is it sacrilegious to believe that Lemony could in some of the books be wrong about Beatrice's death? Is it sacrilegious to say that Beatrice's death is not a confirmed fact and that Daniel Handler wanted to leave this question open?

Look, this is a subject that definitely crossed Daniel Handler's mind. Daniel Handler definitely asked the question "Did their mother survive the fire" in the minds of readers. I'm just saying that he definitely does not provide a satisfactory answer to that question. And he didn't give an answer because he didn't want to give the answer. And as I wrote in my previous texts, Daniel Handler definitely wanted to give several meanings to the set of texts. TBL is not like a puzzle with several pieces that fit together in a single way. Definitely TBL is like an anagram, and therefore has several meanings. TBL was created to be that way. And one of the obvious mechanisms for this effect to happen is the fact that there are characters with the same name. The revelations found in TE do not change the nature of TBL at any time.

Apr 16, 2020 6:36:47 GMT -5 Hermes said:

I'm interested by the thought that Lemony's whole existence might come long after the unfortunate events. I think that there are things in the early books that might suggest this, but I would have thought that the impression had been dispelled long before TBL, as it emerges how L's own story is entwined with the Baudelaires' story. The first clue comes in TMM, where we learn that Beatrice once asked 'where is Count Olaf?'; then we get 'Beatrice stole from me' in TEE, Lemony stealing a sugar bowl from Esme in THH, and finally L revealing that he once stayed at the carnival (which is now destroyed) in TCC. Also the hints that Jacques is Lemony's brother in TVV. Etc.

But now I'm wondering how many of these clues could be subverted - e.g. we don't yet know O is dead, so perhaps Beatrice said 'where is Count Olaf?' twenty years after the events. But I think by the time we reach the carnival the matter is settled.

It's possible, certainly, that young B got her whole education on the island. We do know, if I remember rightly, that she learned something from the Baudelaires which enabled her to find the VFD school. I was discounting this, I think, because she was less than one year old at the time; but of course she is a precocious child, and was under the guardianship of the similarly precocious Sunny.

In T.C.C., Lemony says that when he arrived at Carnival, the place was already destroyed ... But he writes in a way that might indicate that it has been destroyed for many years.

TCC chapter 9:

And I have stood alongside the roller coaster at Caligari Carnival, and known what the Baudelaires could not possibly have known that quiet morning. I have looked at the carts, all melted together and covered in ash, and I have gazed into the pit dug by Count Olaf and his henchmen and seen all the burnt bones lying in a heap, and I have picked through the bits of mirror and crystal where the fortune-telling tent once stood, and all this research has told me the same thing, and if somehow I could slip back in time, as easily as I could slip out of the disguise I am in now, I would walk to the edge of that pit and tell the Baudelaire orphans the results of my findings. But of course I cannot. I can only fulfill my sacred duty and type this story as best I can, down to the last word.

TCC chapter 11:

But the Baudelaire orphans, of course, could still imagine what was happening, as I can imagine it, even though I was not there that afternoon and have only read descriptions of what occurred down in the pit. The article in The Daily Punctilio says that it was Madame Lulu who fell first, but newspaper articles are often inaccurate, so it is impossible to say if this is actually true. Perhaps she did fall first, and the bald man fell after her, or perhaps Lulu managed to push the bald man in as she tried to escape his grasp, only to slip and join him in the pit just moments later. Or perhaps these two people were still struggling when the plank teetered one more time, and the lions reached both of them at the same time. It is likely that I will never know, just as I will probably never know the location of the fan belt, no matter how many times I return to Caligari Carnival to search for it. At first I thought that Madame Lulu dropped the strip of rubber on the ground near the pit, but I have searched the entire area with a shovel and a flashlight and found no sign of it, and none of the carnival visitors whose houses I have searched seem to have taken it home for a souvenir. Then I thought that perhaps the fan belt was thrown into the air during all the commotion, and perhaps landed up in the tracks of the roller coaster, but I have climbed over every inch without success. And there is, of course, the possibility that it has burned away, but lightning devices are generally made of a certain type of rubber that is difficult to burn, so that possibility seems remote. And so I must admit that I do not know for certain where the fan belt is, and, like knowing whether it was the bald man or Madame Lulu who fell first, that this may be information that will never come to me.

Especially in this section of chapter 11, it is evident that much of Lemony knows about the history of the Baudelaires comes from something he read. He states that he did not witness the events described in TCC. He read about it some time later. He read about fan belt. He probably read about it in Violet's own description of the subject, as she or Klaus wrote in the island's book.

In TSS we also find, in chapter 13 something that can be understood that Lemony was already an elderly man when he published TPP. (Or if you prefer, when he published the updated version of TPP)

"Even for anauthor like myself, who has dedicated his entire life to investigating the mysteries that surround the Baudelaire case".

Regarding the letter that talks about Beatrice having access to information from the Baudelaires and why she managed to reach Prufrock Prep, I will be happy to write about the duality that exists in this letter in some future text.

[Dante]

Apr 16, 2020 6:36:47 GMT -5 Hermes said:

I'm interested by the thought that Lemony's whole existence might come long after the unfortunate events. I think that there are things in the early books that might suggest this, but I would have thought that the impression had been dispelled long before TBL, as it emerges how L's own story is entwined with the Baudelaires' story. The first clue comes in TMM, where we learn that Beatrice once asked 'where is Count Olaf?'; then we get 'Beatrice stole from me' in TEE, Lemony stealing a sugar bowl from Esme in THH, and finally L revealing that he once stayed at the carnival (which is now destroyed) in TCC. Also the hints that Jacques is Lemony's brother in TVV. Etc.

But now I'm wondering how many of these clues could be subverted - e.g. we don't yet know O is dead, so perhaps Beatrice said 'where is Count Olaf?' twenty years after the events. But I think by the time we reach the carnival the matter is settled.

It's possible, certainly, that young B got her whole education on the island. We do know, if I remember rightly, that she learned something from the Baudelaires which enabled her to find the VFD school. I was discounting this, I think, because she was less than one year old at the time; but of course she is a precocious child, and was under the guardianship of the similarly precocious Sunny.

The idea that Lemony's story might follow long after ASoUE was an old, old theory, probably primarily based on early references in the series which make it seem like Lemony was writing many years after the events described; and which people who wanted to believe in it clung onto long after the point at which it was clear that the author's intentions had shifted. As you say, the unknown of Olaf's death plays a major role in this; that he would die at the end of the series was not a foregone conclusion, and indeed nobody knew what to expect. I specifically remember at least one person expressing the genuine fear that the concluding note of the finale would be (I think this is roughly what they said), "Olaf wins, suckers!" It's really only The End that put a lid on such things.

Incidentally, such speculation occasionally proposed that the very names of Lemony Snicket and perhaps Beatrice were in fact only pseudonyms adopted by some of the child cast members after the events of the series; Beatrice was Violet, Lemony was Duncan or Quigley, etc. Amusingly, a very similar plot twist actually proves to be the case in Pseudonymous Bosch's Secret series; and given that that author is plainly strongly inspired by Snicket, I've always wondered if such speculation was what inspired that development.

Apr 16, 2020 11:15:23 GMT -5 El Juanico Diez said:

In addition, TBL makes it clear by itself that there are two Beatrices, referring to this since that letter, and especially in the letter to the editor. Someone who doubted this after reading TBL simply had not read TBL carefully. You might even find it weird Daniel Handler spoiling before the big TE reveal, but Lemony Snicket does it all the time during ASOUE, giving details of what is going to happen before the narrative reaches that point. Similarly, anyone who believed that this letter was written by Beatrice Sr as a child, would not have read this letter carefully, as the letter was evidently written after the birth of Klaus, Sunny and Violet, and this is very evident in this same letter. Of course, you can argue that this mystery is easy because the target audience is children. But this argument contradicts itself when you need to make assumptions about what would be written in the island's book for this letter to make sense. And don't get me wrong, I agree that your reasoning is one of the possible solutions. I'm just saying that the other possible meaning of this set of texts is that the Baudelaires' mother was still alive at that time.

A small correction, Jean Lucio. The End isn't the big reveal, except for people who haven't read TBL (and since it's only a supplementary volume, the main series will always take that into account). TBL is the big reveal; The End only explains it. It might be interesting for you to look back at some point over posts and threads from 2006; even in only the space of a month between TBL and The End, there was still a great deal of discussion as to what it all meant and how it would work out. As I recall, most guessed that Kit's child would be born in The End and would prove to be, one way or another, the second Beatrice; but it wasn't a foregone conclusion.

The mystery is easy because it is for an audience of children, but the groundwork which can account for it is there for the older readers (or possibly for Handler's own satisfaction). There is no contradiction, not least when there's a nine-year gap in the timeline in which you can propose anything you want. That the sinking of the Beatrice is what separated Beatrice II and the Baudelaires isn't accepted by everyone, either.

If you think about it, why do you believe that the Baudelaires may be dead or may be alive? Wasn't it because you realized that this was the author's intention at the end of TE? Leaving an open ending on the Baudelaires' death was Daniel Handler's intention, and we know this because of one of TE's final words: "rumors of one's death crop up so often, and are so often revealed to be untrue." Based on this, you believe that Beatrice Jr may be mistaken to think that she heard Sunny's radio program, and that Daniel Handler purposely created this phrase said through Betrice Jr making her an unreliable narrator. We are not going to use two weights and two measures, okay? Thinking about all this is too much for an ordinary child, but the reasoning is still valid and seems to be true. What's wrong with using the same reasoning with Beatrice's survival? Is it sacrilegious to believe that Lemony could in some of the books be wrong about Beatrice's death? Is it sacrilegious to say that Beatrice's death is not a confirmed fact and that Daniel Handler wanted to leave this question open?

The answer to this may not be something you can understand, Jean Lucio; but broadly speaking, it has to do with hope. Not my hope, but that of the characters; and not hope that's derived from something like hard evidence, but hope that's derived from the themes of the work and the way the characters feel about it.

Let's begin with TBL. Throughout Beatrice's side of the story, we get the same message repeated over and over: She is searching for her family. That's the overarching note of her story, and it's never capped off. She acknowledges at one point that perhaps the three Baudelaires are gone, but she still wants answers, no matter what. We aren't ever given any grounds to presume how their separation can have been so definitive or why it should now be her responsibility to search for them, and more specifically, no concrete speculation is ever made as to their fate. It is unknown; the final statements are of mystery and absence of knowledge - but without despair. As it happens, I suspect that the Baudelaires are in fact dead; that the reason Snicket doesn't want to meet Beatrice is because he has no good news to communicate to her. But there are other possibilities, and this is one case where the books don't provide a clear answer; even The End ultimately reinforces this open conclusion, because the books want to nurture that hope.

(A new theory, off the top of my head: Perhaps the Baudelaires set up a short-range radio network on the island so that they could communicate with one another even whilst at their separate tasks across the island, and it is on this system that Sunny appeared to discuss her recipes. This accounts for why Beatrice describes Sunny "appearing" on the radio; a visual memory, like her memories of Violet and Klaus in the same letter (BB to LS #3). Beatrice was physically there with Sunny.)

But let's look also at The End, and at one passage in particular:

They cried for the world, and most of all, of course, the Baudelaire orphans cried for their parents, who they knew, finally, they would never see again. Even though Kit Snicket had not brought news of their parents, her story of the Great Unknown made them see at last that the people who had written all those chapters in A Series of Unfortunate Events were gone forever into the great unknown, and that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny would be orphans forever, too.

-The End, p. 307

This, to me, is the true resolution to the "survivor of the fine" subplot. There's not a trace of hard evidence in it, but this isn't about evidence; it's about themes and emotional journeys. As a statement from the author, it is definitive and unambiguous. This is the note the series leaves these characters on. There is no hope for the Baudelaire parents. They are dead.

To be quite frank, though, Jean Lucio, there's also the matter of aesthetics. TBL is a book built on doubles and mirroring; the two figures hidden on the cover, the two fonts for the title used on the booklet cover, the two sets of letters; past and future, recipent and sender, dead and alive. Your theory turns TBL into an asymmetrical and unbalanced text, Beatrice's half of which is this chimerical fusion of two opposing aspects... I wouldn't normally put it into these terms; but because The Beatrice Letters is a beautiful book, yours is an ugly theory.

Look, this is a subject that definitely crossed Daniel Handler's mind. Daniel Handler definitely asked the question "Did their mother survive the fire" in the minds of readers. I'm just saying that he definitely does not provide a satisfactory answer to that question. And he didn't give an answer because he didn't want to give the answer. And as I wrote in my previous texts, Daniel Handler definitely wanted to give several meanings to the set of texts. TBL is not like a puzzle with several pieces that fit together in a single way. Definitely TBL is like an anagram, and therefore has several meanings. TBL was created to be that way. And one of the obvious mechanisms for this effect to happen is the fact that there are characters with the same name. The revelations found in TE do not change the nature of TBL at any time.

TBL is more like the kind of anagram you find in a crossword. There's a specific result desired, but until you have more evidence, it can be difficult to know what that result is and what's only a red herring (the use of the word "brae" is there purely to create more options for the anagram, for instance); and as you gather more clues, a single interpretation emerges as the one that best fits the evidence. The End is then the answer pages, and confirms the solution. The revelations in The End do, in fact, change TBL. They give the other side of the picture and abbreviate the whole puzzle. (As a matter of fact, I actually disapprove of the addition to the TBL text of the punch-out letters and the poster. They are spoilers which make the puzzle too easy.)