The Dark Day and The Sugar Bowl
Oct 20, 2020 11:22:12 GMT -5
Jacques Snicket, Lemona, and 1 more like this
Post by Dante on Oct 20, 2020 11:22:12 GMT -5
Dante demonstrated that Esmé's sugar bowl could contain information. I will quote you here for clarity:
Neither of these statements indicate that the contents of the sugar bowl pose a direct physical danger in themselves; merely that using them would have wide-ranging repercussions. If the villains can't get their hands on the sugar bowl, the risk is always that those repercussions will come to pass; consequently, if the villains can get their hands on the sugar bowl, they'll be able to act with impunity. This is a valid interpretation.
Lemony's hint in TSS is as follows:
I have at last learned the whereabouts of the evidence that will exonerate me, a phrase which here means "prove to the authorities that it is Count Olaf, and not me, who has started so many fires." Your suggestion, so many years ago at that picnic, that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small in the event of a dark day, has turned out to be correct.
-Lemony Snicket, TSS p. 101
The evidence in question does not only prove Lemony innocent; it proves Olaf guilty - apparently unambiguously and elegantly. It is easy to see why Count Olaf would find this evidence desirable. (The exact nature of the evidence is unclear and seems narrow in scope, which is perhaps one reason why it ultimately could not be revealed.)
A point, Jean Lucio: A container in which to secure something safely may indicate something dangerous, but it may also indicate something fragile. TGG p. 178 clarifies that the sugar bowl has a "tight-fitting lid"; a necessity if you want to keep anything in it while throwing it down rivers and so on, but this also implies that it's watertight, and that whatever is inside may be perishable or otherwise easy to damage.
It was generally agreed back in the day that the "classic" use for sugar bowls was probably for something along the lines of privately passing information or small objects during dinner parties or other meetings; consider how easy it would be to place something small inside a sugar bowl whilst seeming to take sugar, and for the other party to then retrieve it. Listening devices have also been proposed, which would allow coded communication to be potentially overheard but would also allow suspicious conversations to be recorded; it's easy to see how such a recording might incriminate a person who had set a lot of fires, for example, or more pertinently, to exonerate somebody who had not. Something like this I think is probably what is indicated by Lemony's statement on the subject in TSS.
Hermes , however, showed the apparent contradiction in this interpretation. Speaking about the secret letter in TSS, Hermes said:
"This letter is possibly the most paradoxical thing in the whole of ASOUE. It implies that the Sugar Bowl contains the evidence that will exonerate Lemony, although this does not seem to fit what we hear of its significance anywhere else."
I believe Hermes was referring to passages like the ones that Dante and I cited in a recent theory that I will write here for clarity:
"Our enemies capturing the sugar bowl would be as troubling as their capture of the Medusoid Mycelium." - Dewey, chapter 8 TPP.
"The sugar bowl is on its way to the hotel even as we speak, and I'd hate to think what would happen if our enemies got ahold of it. I can't imagine anything worse, except perhaps if our enemies somehow got ahold of the Medusoid Mycelium. " - Snicket Kit, TPP p. 36
I was defending the idea that the SB contained some kind of radioactive material. But even a radioactive stone would not cause a disaster similar to what Medusoid Mycelium can do. Similarly, even information that could clear Lemony and accuse Olaf would actually do similar damage to Medusoid Mycelium. Medusoid Mycelium is a weapon of mass destruction that can cause an epidemic. Medusoid Mycelium can be grown easily and could be used to cause worldwide chaos in the event of coordination of villain efforts. In addition, we have some interesting statements from Captain W regarding the SB content:
"My stepfather says that if the sugar bowl falls into his
hands, then all of the efforts of all the volunteers will be for naught ... "He said it was better I didn't know ... He said people had been destroyed for knowing such enormous secrets, and that he
didn't want me in that sort of danger. "- Fiona, TGG Chapter 3.
That's why I haven't told you why the sugar bowl is so very
crucial. There are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to
know, even as those secrets get closer and closer. - W., TGG, Chapter 4.
"It's not the sugar bowl," Captain Widdershins said, "it's what's inside it. - W. TGG, Chapter 6
Let me be canonical so you don't think I took this theory out of thin air. TE chapter 9:
The most common use of the word "library," of
course, refers to a collection of books or documents, such as the libraries
the Baudelaires had encountered during their travels and troubles, from
the legal library of Justice Strauss to the Hotel Denouement, which was
itself an enormous library–with, it turned out, another library hidden
nearby. But the word "library" can also refer to a mass of knowledge or a
source of learning, just as Klaus Baudelaire is something of a library with
the mass of knowledge stored in his brain, or Kit Snicket, who was a
source of learning for the Baudelaires as she told them about V.F.D. and
its noble errands."
At first glance this sentence seems to indicate that the hotel where people slept was a library and that the sub-aquatic library was the hidden library. However, that doesn't make much sense in that sentence. Lemony is defining the library as a collection of information in some kind of media that can be accessed and read. The hotel where people slept was not that kind of library, although the rooms were organized as if it were a library, the function of the hotel itself was not to store information. Thus, the Hotel Denouement that Lemony is referring to here as a library was the underwater library, which Dewey referred to as the real Hotel Denouement. So the library that was hidden nearby that Lemony refers to here was something else. And I deduce that this other thing is the content of the SB.
Neither of these statements indicate that the contents of the sugar bowl pose a direct physical danger in themselves; merely that using them would have wide-ranging repercussions. If the villains can't get their hands on the sugar bowl, the risk is always that those repercussions will come to pass; consequently, if the villains can get their hands on the sugar bowl, they'll be able to act with impunity. This is a valid interpretation.
Lemony's hint in TSS is as follows:
I have at last learned the whereabouts of the evidence that will exonerate me, a phrase which here means "prove to the authorities that it is Count Olaf, and not me, who has started so many fires." Your suggestion, so many years ago at that picnic, that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small in the event of a dark day, has turned out to be correct.
-Lemony Snicket, TSS p. 101
The evidence in question does not only prove Lemony innocent; it proves Olaf guilty - apparently unambiguously and elegantly. It is easy to see why Count Olaf would find this evidence desirable. (The exact nature of the evidence is unclear and seems narrow in scope, which is perhaps one reason why it ultimately could not be revealed.)
A point, Jean Lucio: A container in which to secure something safely may indicate something dangerous, but it may also indicate something fragile. TGG p. 178 clarifies that the sugar bowl has a "tight-fitting lid"; a necessity if you want to keep anything in it while throwing it down rivers and so on, but this also implies that it's watertight, and that whatever is inside may be perishable or otherwise easy to damage.
It was generally agreed back in the day that the "classic" use for sugar bowls was probably for something along the lines of privately passing information or small objects during dinner parties or other meetings; consider how easy it would be to place something small inside a sugar bowl whilst seeming to take sugar, and for the other party to then retrieve it. Listening devices have also been proposed, which would allow coded communication to be potentially overheard but would also allow suspicious conversations to be recorded; it's easy to see how such a recording might incriminate a person who had set a lot of fires, for example, or more pertinently, to exonerate somebody who had not. Something like this I think is probably what is indicated by Lemony's statement on the subject in TSS.
Hermes , however, showed the apparent contradiction in this interpretation. Speaking about the secret letter in TSS, Hermes said:
"This letter is possibly the most paradoxical thing in the whole of ASOUE. It implies that the Sugar Bowl contains the evidence that will exonerate Lemony, although this does not seem to fit what we hear of its significance anywhere else."
I believe Hermes was referring to passages like the ones that Dante and I cited in a recent theory that I will write here for clarity:
"Our enemies capturing the sugar bowl would be as troubling as their capture of the Medusoid Mycelium." - Dewey, chapter 8 TPP.
"The sugar bowl is on its way to the hotel even as we speak, and I'd hate to think what would happen if our enemies got ahold of it. I can't imagine anything worse, except perhaps if our enemies somehow got ahold of the Medusoid Mycelium. " - Snicket Kit, TPP p. 36
I was defending the idea that the SB contained some kind of radioactive material. But even a radioactive stone would not cause a disaster similar to what Medusoid Mycelium can do. Similarly, even information that could clear Lemony and accuse Olaf would actually do similar damage to Medusoid Mycelium. Medusoid Mycelium is a weapon of mass destruction that can cause an epidemic. Medusoid Mycelium can be grown easily and could be used to cause worldwide chaos in the event of coordination of villain efforts. In addition, we have some interesting statements from Captain W regarding the SB content:
"My stepfather says that if the sugar bowl falls into his
hands, then all of the efforts of all the volunteers will be for naught ... "He said it was better I didn't know ... He said people had been destroyed for knowing such enormous secrets, and that he
didn't want me in that sort of danger. "- Fiona, TGG Chapter 3.
That's why I haven't told you why the sugar bowl is so very
crucial. There are secrets in this world too terrible for young people to
know, even as those secrets get closer and closer. - W., TGG, Chapter 4.
"It's not the sugar bowl," Captain Widdershins said, "it's what's inside it. - W. TGG, Chapter 6
What Captain W makes it clear is that there is a terrible secret within the SB. Let me fix this. Captain W makes it clear that there are huge secrets (in the plural) within the SB. And from there everything becomes more interesting.
Let's go back to the TSS secret letter. There is a strong indication that the use of a sugar bowl to protect and hide information was Kit Snicket's idea. Kit Snikcet is more than the sister of Lemony Snicket and mother of Beatrice Jr. Kit Snicket is known as the creator of the submarine Quequeeg. This seems to indicate that in his youth, Kit was able to create highly technological mechanical devices, like a submarine in which only a captain and two crewmen are needed. (Compared to submarine C, in which a large number of humans are required using arm force to move the submarine). I just want to highlight Kit Snicket's genius. Lemony's letter to Kit reveals for what purpose Kit had the idea of using an SB. Lemony wrote:
"Your suggestion, so many years ago at that picnic, that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small in the event of a dark day, has turned out to be correct." - Lemony Snicket on the secret letter in TSS.
The original objective of SB was to protect something small and important in the event of a Dark Day. What is a Dark Day? In North America, something called Dark Day happened on May 19, 1780. An unusual darkening of the day sky was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada. (You can search for it on Wikipedia). But what caused this Dark Day? Wikipedia says:
"The primary cause of the event is believed to have been a combination of smoke from forest fires, a thick fog, and cloud cover. The darkness was so complete that candles were required from noon on. It did not disperse until the middle of the next night. "
In other words, that Dark Day was caused by a big fire. So the SB's goal is likely to be to protect something small and important from a Big Fire. Although Kit was responsible for giving the idea, the implementation of the idea to protect it came from Esmé. The sugar bowl serves as a protection against fire (and apparently also against water and other weather).
But why could a Dark Day be so dreaded as to need a fireproof container? And what could this container contain? One of the biggest reasons that fires are so destructive is that fires destroy libraries. Large libraries throughout the real history and throughout the fictional history of ASOUE have already been lost to major fires. What if it was possible that all crucial information in a library could be compressed to the point of being fit into a portable device? Well ... It exists in our universe! In fact, digital information is just like that. Think about how many books will fit on your SD card on your phone. When ASOUE's books were written, we were in the age of data compression. Daniel Handler spoke about various types of libraries. Did he not leave out digital libraries? After all, there were computers in Prufrock Prep. Of course, we don't necessarily have to imagine a pen drive within the SB. But we can imagine an entire library within the SB. A library that can contain the most different types of secrets, some of which are really dangerous. If Count Olaf had access to these secrets, in addition to being able to eliminate important evidence against him, who knows what he would be able to do with all that information! It is likely that there were shameful secrets for VFD, which made Captain W hesitate just thinking about them. In the case of a Dark Day in which all physical libraries were destroyed, the information from those libraries would be saved inside the sugar bowl. And that is why Esme, despite having the SB did not make much use of it. Esme hates to read. She only discovered the value of what she had in hand when she lost it. I mean ... She already valued the SB itself.
"Your suggestion, so many years ago at that picnic, that a tea set would be a handy place to hide anything important and small in the event of a dark day, has turned out to be correct." - Lemony Snicket on the secret letter in TSS.
The original objective of SB was to protect something small and important in the event of a Dark Day. What is a Dark Day? In North America, something called Dark Day happened on May 19, 1780. An unusual darkening of the day sky was observed over the New England states and parts of Canada. (You can search for it on Wikipedia). But what caused this Dark Day? Wikipedia says:
"The primary cause of the event is believed to have been a combination of smoke from forest fires, a thick fog, and cloud cover. The darkness was so complete that candles were required from noon on. It did not disperse until the middle of the next night. "
In other words, that Dark Day was caused by a big fire. So the SB's goal is likely to be to protect something small and important from a Big Fire. Although Kit was responsible for giving the idea, the implementation of the idea to protect it came from Esmé. The sugar bowl serves as a protection against fire (and apparently also against water and other weather).
But why could a Dark Day be so dreaded as to need a fireproof container? And what could this container contain? One of the biggest reasons that fires are so destructive is that fires destroy libraries. Large libraries throughout the real history and throughout the fictional history of ASOUE have already been lost to major fires. What if it was possible that all crucial information in a library could be compressed to the point of being fit into a portable device? Well ... It exists in our universe! In fact, digital information is just like that. Think about how many books will fit on your SD card on your phone. When ASOUE's books were written, we were in the age of data compression. Daniel Handler spoke about various types of libraries. Did he not leave out digital libraries? After all, there were computers in Prufrock Prep. Of course, we don't necessarily have to imagine a pen drive within the SB. But we can imagine an entire library within the SB. A library that can contain the most different types of secrets, some of which are really dangerous. If Count Olaf had access to these secrets, in addition to being able to eliminate important evidence against him, who knows what he would be able to do with all that information! It is likely that there were shameful secrets for VFD, which made Captain W hesitate just thinking about them. In the case of a Dark Day in which all physical libraries were destroyed, the information from those libraries would be saved inside the sugar bowl. And that is why Esme, despite having the SB did not make much use of it. Esme hates to read. She only discovered the value of what she had in hand when she lost it. I mean ... She already valued the SB itself.
Let me be canonical so you don't think I took this theory out of thin air. TE chapter 9:
The most common use of the word "library," of
course, refers to a collection of books or documents, such as the libraries
the Baudelaires had encountered during their travels and troubles, from
the legal library of Justice Strauss to the Hotel Denouement, which was
itself an enormous library–with, it turned out, another library hidden
nearby. But the word "library" can also refer to a mass of knowledge or a
source of learning, just as Klaus Baudelaire is something of a library with
the mass of knowledge stored in his brain, or Kit Snicket, who was a
source of learning for the Baudelaires as she told them about V.F.D. and
its noble errands."
At first glance this sentence seems to indicate that the hotel where people slept was a library and that the sub-aquatic library was the hidden library. However, that doesn't make much sense in that sentence. Lemony is defining the library as a collection of information in some kind of media that can be accessed and read. The hotel where people slept was not that kind of library, although the rooms were organized as if it were a library, the function of the hotel itself was not to store information. Thus, the Hotel Denouement that Lemony is referring to here as a library was the underwater library, which Dewey referred to as the real Hotel Denouement. So the library that was hidden nearby that Lemony refers to here was something else. And I deduce that this other thing is the content of the SB.
Edit 1 - Dante , what did you think of this new theory? I have not yet heard your comments on my observations regarding the fact that the real Hotel D is the underwater library, which ended up becoming something important for my theory about when the letter in TSS was written and about the SB.
