Duality in The Beatrice Letters

[El Juanico Diez]

Regarding my theory making TBL ugly, I can only say that anagrams sometimes spell bad words, but those bad words are still real anagrams' possibilities just because they are ugly words. About the Baudelaires' loss of hope it really exists. But their loss of hope came from the fact that they faced a difficult situation in a hostile and isolated environment. Their loss of hope did not come from new and different evidence. They decided to accept their parents' death and mourn it instead of hope. Lemony beautifully describes this moment from the Baudelaires' point of view, and not from his point of view, just as he did when they were still hopeful. Regarding your theory involving radio, I can only say that I am happy that you put your mind to work in a creative and explicit way about ASOUE again. I will not spoil this moment by disagreeing with that.(I can only say that this is as good a theory as the reconstruction of Hotel D to justify the secret letter in TSS being written many years later.)

About TBL being a mirroring book, I have to agree ... But I must say that mirrors are often used by illusionists to deceive the public, as indicated by Dewey in TPP. When you actually see how a trick is done, the result may be that you think that everything is ugly, and that the illusion is more beautiful than reality. Although I know that there are no real answers in TBL about Beatrice I's survival, I do know that the option that Beatrice I survived and wrote some of these letters is a real option. And the fact that you find this theory ugly, really shows what the feelings that this theory brings are: the feeling of is rather sacrilege, in the sense of ruining something cute that was created in people's minds. I will not fail to go as far as the principles of my theory take me just because there is a risk of tarnishing the reputation of some beloved character, or unbalancing the apparent symmetry in an aesthetically beautiful book. I won the most notable award last year for some reason after all, a reason I am very proud of. I can change my mind, as I have changed several times, based on concrete arguments, not on the basis of sentimentality by the Baudelaires or the fans.

About the two images hidden on the cover ... (I'm going to look like an bear asking that, but looking like an bear never stopped me from doing anything, and this is not going to stop me now) What are you talking about? Have I lost these two images for all these years?

Regarding the changes in decisions involving the moment when Lemony was writing about the Baudelaires, I can say that if Daniel Handler changed the way he thought about when Lemony was writing about the Baudelaires after the publication of LSTUA, he came back to think the same way before when writing TBL and consequently TE. Note that while writing TBL, Daniel Handler had the following mental picture (as indicated in the letter to the editor): Lemony was unaware of the existence of another Beatrice Baudelaire until he received letters from Beatrice JR. As such, TE was written after Lemony received these letters. Soon TE was written after some (or many) years had passed between the events on the island and the publication of TE. If Daniel Handler came back to thinking as he had originally thought about it, my considerations about whether it was possible for Lemony to be an elderly man when he published TE are real.
In fact, since TPP we have already found evidence of this way of thinking about Daniel Handler when he described that the Secret Library went undiscovered for years. Even if you believe that this excerpt was a later addition (which I don't see to make sense, but I still haven't found a strong enough argument to overturn this theory, just an alternative theory), you can't escape the fact that Daniel Handler had the idea in mind that Lemony when he published the final version of TPP was a much older man.

And Dante, which looks ugly to some, may be beautiful to others. I see greater beauty in TBL for being able to see the various possibilities that exist in this book than seeing just one possibility.

[El Juanico Diez]

Duality by reference

This is a very common mechanism used by Daniel Handler in TBL. Duality by reference is what gives the work a mirror effect. Analyzing more carefully we realize that these mirrors are carefully positioned to create questions in the reader's mind. The basic question that the reader asks when perceiving these references is "why did this character make this reference to this other letter", Or "why is there no specific reference in this letter that we find in most others?" The answers to these questions are not clearly presented in the work, leaving the reader with the opportunity to answer using their own deck of accepted premises.

Let's take as a first example BB to LS # 2.

Unlike the letter BB to LS # 1, the identification of the fictional author of this letter is very evident, and leaves no room for doubt. Beatrice wrote: "I am leaving this city, only hours after finally seeing it for the first time ... Without Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, I am an orphan ... This is a very handsome paperweight, by the way, although I cannot tell if it depcts a snake, a worm, or an elctric eel. "
These words make it clear that this letter was written by Kit's daughter, who had been adopted by the Baudelaires. In this letter we find some references to the first letter. For example, Beatrice Jr claims to have arrived at the "small, dusty office". Those same words had been written in the letter BB to LS # 1, to describe Lemony's office. If you believe that the same fictional author wrote both letters, you will credit this as evidence that you are right. But if you don't believe it, you will attribute it to a simple coincidence, very common in the ASOUE universe. For example, Carmelita Spats, Lemony Snicket and the villain who disguised himself as a cow chose to describe Prufrock Prep's librarian in the same words. (LSTUA, chapter 9 and 11)
Similarly, Beatrice Jr states the following: "The only letter missing is the one I feel you. Either it never arrived or you have taken it with you." If you believe that the missing letter was BB to LS # 1, you believe that the author of the two letters is the same person. But Daniel Handler purposely left open the possibility that Beatrice Jr's first letter never reached Lemony Snicket's hands, thus allowing some to believe that Beatrice Jr is not referring here to BB to LS # 1.

Duality by reference exists not only through the things that are quoted, but also through the things that are not quoted. In this letter, Beatrice Jr reveals no specific desire to know or talk about Lemony Snicket's past. In this letter, there is also no quote from the poem "My Silence Knot". There is another letter from Beatrice that also does not contain the anagram My Silence Knot also does not contain any specific desire for Beatrice to know or talk about Lemony Snicket's past. The letter in question is BB to LS # 3. If you believe that these two letters were written by Beatrice Jr while the others were written by Beatrice I, you will add these details to your evidence. But, on the other hand, if you don't believe it, you will point it out as a coincidence. But the fact is that Daniel Handler created this duality by reference so that you could decide what to believe, the two possibilities being a hypothetical reality.


Note: The letter from BB to LS # 6 also does not contain "My Silence Knot", but has the anagram Baticeer instead.

Note 2:Furthermore, you can believe that Beatrice's last letter did indeed come from Beatrice JR, and still believe that BB to LS # 2 and # 3 also came from her. Soon I must write an exclusive text about BB to LS # 6

[Dante]

Perhaps I'll identify better with you on BB to LS #6, Jean Lucio. I too have a theory regarding that note which nobody else agrees with.

[El Juanico Diez]

Duality by Literary Reference.

Lemony's letters to Beatrice contain a story that can be easily deduced. In this story there is a reference to the story of Romeo and Juliet. It is a story of corresponded love, secret love and forbidden love. But how similar are the references to what actually happened to Beatrice and Lemony? The answer to this question creates a duality by literary reference.

Let us recall some highlights of the love story of Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet loved each other, but for family reasons they were forbidden from getting married in a conventional way. Therefore, Juliet accepted to be part of a plan in which she would fake her own death. She then sent a letter to Romeo explaining the whole plan, and explaining that she would only look dead, but in fact she would be alive. Her plan was for her to secretly marry Romeo after she feigned her own death. However, Romeo never received Juliet's letter. So he thought she was really dead. Romeo, in so much pain, ended up committing suicide. Juliet, when she woke up from her fake death, she ended up killing herself when she realized that Romeo was dead.

The poem My Silence Knot, which was definitely written by Beatrice Sr, states: "A piece of mail fails to arrive on day". This is a clear reference to Romeo and Juliet, and in a way a tribute by Daniel Handler to the most famous author of fictional stories in the world. After so many literary references, Daniel Handler needed to refer to him somewhere, and this was the best place he could have done. But did Beatrice, like Julieta, also plan to fake her own death? Well, here comes the duality of the work.

You can believe that the references to Romeo and Juliet are only subtle, and that there is nothing in the plot of Lemony's story with Beatrice that is anything to do with faking her own death. After all, references have limits, because if there were no limits, references would become plagiarism. The references to Romeo and Juliet may be only conceptual and not in the format that the story was planned.

On the other hand, you can believe in her plan to take her own death. In this case you could say that the poem My Silence Knot itself is a message that failed to arrive, in the sense that the poem was not understood by Lemony Snicket at the appropriate time. This seems to be Daniel Handler's intention, since in the letter LS to BB # 5, Lemony states in the answer to question 4 that she does not remember the poem and does not remember having been confused when reading it. Furthermore, the answer to question 11 seems to indicate that Beatrice wanted to show Lemony that he had failed to realize that the sonnet had a secret message included in it. The answer to question nine seems to indicate that Beatrice wanted to assure herself of Lemony's love no matter what. The letter LS to BB # 2 indicates that Beatrice was trained to insert secret codes in melodramatic dialogues, while Lemony did not participate in this class. And finally, we read in Lemony's letter to the editor that many years after the fire at the Baudelaire mansion, Lemony may have realized the importance of that poem and started looking for it. After finally finding this poem, Lemony was full of tears in her eyes and said that finding all the documents and objects inserted in TBL almost finished him. Another indication that the poem itself was a lost message, are Lemony's final sentences: "Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily. " Before that, Lemony had written on the paper on which the poem My Silence Knot was written: "I have found the same scrap of paper I had once examined in a glass case - and, years before that, examined in hallway of library, with the scrap of paper in the glass case. Sadly, this missing sonnet is like a missing sock - it had been lost for so long that everything else has completely unraveled in it's absence. "

As Lemony says, one secret can reveal another secret, and so on. You may believe that Beatrice planned her own death, but that does not mean that she did manage to carry out the plan. The poem may even contain a secret message, but it will depend on the reader trying to deduce which message it is. And in the end, Juliet really died because of her plan. Did this also happen to Beatrice Sr? It is up to the reader to decide whether to believe it or not. I particularly believe that the final sentence of the poem is an indication that Beatrice was trying to inform Lemony that one day a person who had "died" would break the silence. I believe that when Beatrice wrote that the cloth would fall, she was referring to the end of a play. In other words, I believe that Beatrice was giving the following message to Lemony: "I'm going to pretend my own death". And I also believe that Beatrice Sr ended up dying after trying to reunite with Lemony, before the publication of TE. (I believe this because of one of the statements contained in 13 Secrets).I also believe that she died before the writing of Lemony's letter to the editor found in TBL, because there Lemony claims that Beatrice JR is the remaining Beatrice.


But of course, this is just my own way of understanding this poem. Unlike other codes, Daniel Handler purposely left us no conclusive clues on how to decrypt this poem. But I find it very nice that the TBL ends with an enigmatic poem that makes literary references and still allows the reader to choose what to believe.

Edit 1 - Thanks to a link that Dante sent me, I now realize that there are other literary references to Romeo and Juliet in TBL. These references were specially created for TBL because they had never before been made or mentioned, not even in LSTUA. They are found in LS to BB # 5:



Lemony wrote regarding the answer to question 9: "I will love you with no regard to the outrage of certain parents" ... "I will love you if you betray your father." This seems to indicate a family plot, referring to the famous family intrigue that exists in Romeo and Juliet.

[Dante]

Well, it's an interesting analysis of TBL through the lens of Romeo and Juliet, Jean Lucio, and I can see why such a point of reference would suit your ideas. We know that Handler knows his Shakespeare because of his repeated allusions to The Tempest, so the proposal isn't groundless; and I suspect you would also appreciate learning that The Winter's Tale concludes with the sudden emergence from the form of a statue of a wife and mother long thought dead...

What you have not convinced me of, though, is that Handler actually intended a Romeo and Juliet metaphor. Shakespeare didn't invent lost mail or family feuds, and a piece of mail failing to arrive does not make a convincing foundation on which to establish this theory. I think there is a fairly good argument that there is more going on in the LS to BB side of TBL than meets the eye, and I'm clearly going to have to take some time out one day to revisit the text on my own account and look into the case; but this theory doesn't stand scrutiny. (Incidentally, my own view on "the silence broken by the one who dies" is that this is more a tragic parallel than a statement of intent; that Beatrice's long silence is indeed broken by a person bearing her name, which both in itself and through its parallel to the sonnet and the story of the play disturbs Lemony so much that he refuses to see her and flees for the hills; but the parallel is not a literal one and the individual in question is not the same person.)

[El Juanico Diez]

Yes ... I understand your point of view. The parallel with Romeo and Juliet was evident to me, of course, because of my little knowledge of classical writers. I feel a little embarrassed about it ... (I'm lying about being embarrassed). Beatrice and Lemony's romance seems a lot like Romeo and Juliet ... A tragic and forbidden romance that ends in death ... A Hermedy caused by a letter that never came .... I will probably only change my mind when I read older classical writers ... But until then, I remain here.
I understand that your beliefs about the silence being broken by Beatrice Jr indicates that you believe in the power of destiny (or divine interference) being applied to TBL. I want you to understand that following this path leads to other interesting and possible consequences, which I believe you have already thought about. When Beatrice insisted on trying to remind Lemony about that poem in the letter she wrote to end the wedding plans, she would need to be having another kind of divine revelation, that the poem would have meaning in the future. Beatrice Jr, when referring to that poem in BB to LS # 1, would need to be having a kind of divine revelation that specifically mentioning that poem would touch Lemony's deep feelings. It would be necessary to disregard the search for any intensional meaning hidden in the poem by Beatrice being the meaning added by the "god" of this fictional universe, causing Beatrice Sr to predict the arrival of Beatrice Jr. All of this is possible, and I understand that this is an way of seeing TBL. But try to understand my feelings, Dante. Just as you see my beliefs about Beatrice's survival making TBL ugly, I see all of these divine interferences as ugly. I know they are possible, but I don't like it. For me it doesn't break the mirror of TBL, but it breaks the beauty of the ASOUE universe as a whole ... An almost magical inference, for me it is a break in ASOUE's style. In any case, I still understand that this is one side of the coin, but that the other side of the coin also exists. And that a two-sided coin (or even a multi-sided coin if it exists somewhere) was designed by Daniel Handler.

[El Juanico Diez]

Duality on Baudelaire survival



The Baudelaires' survival was left as an unresolved issue in TE. However, when writing TBL Daniel Handler apparently didn't want to leave that open. I believe he had decided that the Baudelaires would survive for a few years after leaving the island when he started writing TBL. He must have opted for an open ending at some point while writing TBL. Then when he came back and reread what he had already written, he realized that it was still possible to interpret the set of texts as if they had died (or not) shortly after leaving the island. Then he decided what the TBL poster would look like. And this poster, unlike what many believe, is not a confirmation that the Baudelaires died shortly after leaving the island. Consider that posters function as a photograph and not as illustrations. The duality exists in the following: Did the Baudelaires actually die shortly after leaving the island or did they fake their own death?

This is the idea described in chapter 14: "There are some who say

that the Baudelaires rejoined V.F.D. and are engaged in brave errands to this day, perhaps under different names to avoid being captured. There are others who say that they perished at sea, although rumors of one's death crop up so often, and are so often revealed to be untrue. "



The poster basically explains the origin of the rumors about the Baudelaires' death at sea. Their boat was found destroyed at sea. But let's go back to the poster depicting the wrecked boat. Isn't it strange that the object that portrayed something that belonged to Sunny was literally tied by a rope? There is a knot in the kitchen object and loop three loops at the other end around a piece of wood. Doesn't that look like it was intentionally done so that someone would find that object and then relate it to Sunny? Would it be possible? I have to say yes. The plot of people faking their own death or taking advantage of the common sense that they were dead in order to act more freely is a recurring issue in ASOUE. Aunt Josefine feigned suicide, and then asked Olaf not to kill her, but only to do something that would make the vast majority of people believe she was dead, (and Olaf agreed, and she would still be alive today with a false name if she did not insist on correcting the grammatical errors of others). Olaf himself was able to take advantage of the fact that the vast majority of people thought he had died. Quigley also made no effort to prove that he was alive after he was presumed dead ... Quite the contrary, he walked around in disguise. So it would be no wonder that Daniel Handler and the Baudelaires thought of such a plot for their lives after leaving the island. In the case of Daniel Handler, I believe he thought about it after starting TBL. But I believe he forgot to remove a detail from a letter he had already written. The letter is BB to LS # 5. Beatrice wrote: "I owe my life to them, and now the we have been separeted, I will not rest until I find them again".



The word I want to highlight is "now". You can try to make the most miraculous theories and hypotheses, but the fact is that from the way it was written it is evident that from Daniel Handler's mind he visualized someone who had recently separated from the Baudelaires. The scenario in which Beatrice Jr is separated from the Baudelaires when she was a one-year-old baby, and then at the age of 12 tries to talk to Lemony about them just doesn't fit with that phrase. Maybe he changed his mind ... I'm not on his mind. I can only judge what he wrote.



In this letter Daniel Handler wrote that Beatrice remembered things that Violet, Klaus and Sunny told her. Of course, Beatrice Jr could remember details of when she was a year old. But the chances that Daniel Handler planned this when he wrote this letter are very slim. In the letter BB to LS # 3, Daniel Handler made Beatrice Jr write: "As time goes on, many memories fade. Violet tring her hair up in a ribbon, too keep it out of her eyesm Klaus squiting at a book through his glasses, Sunny appearing on the radio to discuss her secipes - I don't want these to be the only things I remember of the theree most important people in my life. " So it is evident that in the letter BB to LS # 3, Daniel Handler wanted to portray Beatrice Jr as someone who only remembered a few flashes of the life she led with the Baudelaires, and the only things she remembered were these things she wrote . The Beatrice Jr from BB to LS # 3 is a great match for the one-year-old who was taken away from the adoptive parents. But Beatrice who wrote BB to LS # 5 does not match this description, without having to force yourself to believe it.


In fact, there is no way out for you. No matter what you believe in, you will need to push yourself to believe something improper in one way or another. Thus, adding the possible survival of the Baudelaires with the possible survival of Beatrice, we have 4 possible realities depicted in TBL.



1 - Only Beatrice Jr wrote all the letters from Beatrice and the Baudelaires died shortly after leaving the island.



2 - Only Beatrice Jr wrote all the letters from Beatrice and the Baudelaires survived long after leaving the island.



3 - Beatrice Jr and Beatrice Sr wrote letters in TBL, and the Baudelaires died shortly after leaving the island.



4 - Beatrice Jr and Beatrice Sr wrote letters in TBL, and the Baudelaires survived long after leaving the island.



Yes, there are multiple possible meanings, and TBL was meant to be that way. You can choose any of the 4 to believe, but the coolest thing is to see the consequences that exist when dealing with each of these 4 possible endings, and the meaning of each of the letters considering each of these possibilities.

[Marlowe]

Excuse the thread bump.

Apr 17, 2020 5:21:32 GMT -5 Dante said:

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.

It's interesting to see you be this blunt as to your position on the Baudelaires' fate, Dante. Is there anything in particular, in TBL or elsewhere, that led you to suspect this?  

[El Juanico Diez]

I particularly believe that Lemony ran away from Beatrice Jr for not understanding who she was claiming to be, or for not believing who she was claiming to be. I prefer to believe that there is a letter from Beatrice Jr missing, a letter that never arrived. In this letter she had probably been more explicit about who she was: Kit Snicket's biological daughter. In the letters to which we have access, Beatrice Jr never makes this statement so clear. Furthermore, Lemony has proven that the author of letter # 1 was probably an impostor whose initial name was the letter E. In the letter to editor Lemony it is clear that he did not know of the existence of two Beatrices. So...

[Dante]

Nov 3, 2020 1:38:11 GMT -5 Marlowe said:

Excuse the thread bump.

Apr 17, 2020 5:21:32 GMT -5 Dante said:

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.

It's interesting to see you be this blunt as to your position on the Baudelaires' fate, Dante. Is there anything in particular, in TBL or elsewhere, that led you to suspect this?

It's the sheer desperation with which he avoids her - combined with the character of Lemony Snicket. This man is a brilliant investigator, and a thorough one. He would have had a pretty clear idea of who Beatrice was from early on, whatever other paranoid eventualities he feared; and this goes especially once we reach the point where she is physically chasing him around the city, mere metres away. Of course he knew who she was. Still, he did everything he could to avoid meeting her. It's not confirmed that they ever met. What explains this, other than that the man who has always been the bearer of bad news about the Baudelaires did not care to tell her the worst?

That's just a personal suspicion, though, not an absolute statement. Canon wants the truth to remain unknown, and that's the real final word.

[Marlowe]

I intended to respond to you two weeks ago, but it slipped my mind. Better late than never.

Nov 3, 2020 3:29:20 GMT -5 Dante said:

It's the sheer desperation with which he avoids her - combined with the character of Lemony Snicket. This man is a brilliant investigator, and a thorough one. He would have had a pretty clear idea of who Beatrice was from early on, whatever other paranoid eventualities he feared; and this goes especially once we reach the point where she is physically chasing him around the city, mere metres away. Of course he knew who she was. Still, he did everything he could to avoid meeting her. It's not confirmed that they ever met. What explains this, other than that the man who has always been the bearer of bad news about the Baudelaires did not care to tell her the worst?

That's just a personal suspicion, though, not an absolute statement. Canon wants the truth to remain unknown, and that's the real final word.

How do you think the Baudelaires would have died, though? The sinking of the Beatrice and/or The Finnish pirates would have to be the most likely culprits, but there is that business in the Rare Edition notes about Violet's third visit to Briny Beach.

As for Lemony's evasiveness, can this be explained by his general reclusiveness and suspicion of anyone claiming to be someone related to his past? He does write "E?" in the margins of Beatrice II's first letter, as if suspecting her to be someone else.

[El Juanico Diez]

Yes ... Discussions on this topic led me to other opinions. I am now very convinced that there is canonical evidence that the Baudelaires survived, despite the fact that Lemony is uncertain about the extent to which this evidence is conclusive. On the other hand, Beatrice II certainly believes that the Baudelaires are alive and she practically claims that she was with them shortly before meeting Lemony at the Cafe (or almost meeting him at the Café). The letter E for me evidently refers to Esmé. Lemony believes that Ésme most likely survived the Hotel D fire. However, his beliefs cannot be considered conclusive evidence (unfortunately for @ roxy222). On the other hand, despite what Dante believes, I still believe that there is canonical evidence that BB's letter 1 to LS was not the first that Beatrice Jr wrote to Lemony. I believe that the evidence points out that this the real first letter never arrived, as Beatrice Jr indicates as being a possibility. Beatrice Jr went to Lemony's office for the first time before the publication of TWW, since she did not recognize the leech. Years later she went to The City again (as she states in one of the letters) but before that she sent the letter we now call BB to LS # 1. At that time Lemony must have painted the name "detective" in front of the door. But the case is that in this letter Beatrice Jr appears to have an advanced knowledge about the world and she knows the anagram My Silence Knot as well as making references to bat training. All this information she obtained after picking up the letters that were in Lemony's writing. For me, this is a better explanation and it practically eliminates many of the dualities of TBL.