The End: Official Discussion

[Orangey Snicket]

When it comes to the picture of the boat sinking and glasses, that's in the Beatrice Letters.
I'm not clear on why in some editions of the End, the last illustration isn't there... but other people have the same problem, I know.

[Gunther]

After letting the book soak in, I think The End makes more sense now. It seems to answer more questions than it appears.

Many posters have been upset that they don't find out about the Quags. You know what? It's o.k. that you're upset. I'm fine with the fact that I'm disapointed that I don't know how the Quags are doing. It's not DH's problem. It's just that LS did not have sufficiant evidence to accurately report what happened. We also have to remember that TVV makes it clear that the Snickets are part of the Bauds' world. It would be dumb of us the reader to assume that the author knows everything. DH does an excellent job of playing the role of LS, a researcher of limited knowledge.

This leads me to my next question, which unfortunately is still unanswered. What was the source of LS's research? It certainly could not be "A Series of Unfortunate Events". To assume that it did come from this book would mean that LS would have all of his facts at the get go. This would make the letter to his sister he conceals inside TSS pointless. I think he released his research as he went on, based on an unknown source. By this assumption, Lemony would not have found out about his ssister's death until he researched The End. How could anyone know who dies on this remote island until they themselves visit it at one point?

The End also seems to imply that the books are not based on the Snicket Files as I had originally thought. The End would have to be about a piece of evidence found in THH. It does not seem to be. Nor does it seem to be based on the photograph of Bertand, Beatrice, Jaques, and Lemony. What this does seem to prove is that Quigley was wrong when he thought page 13 was about him as he wasn't even in the photograph. Depending on how up-to-date the file was, the survivor(s) were the Snickets.

Finally, the Why was not as evident at first, but I think the revelation that Beatrice is the Bauds' mom answers more than we might think. Before The End, I always question why LS would have any interest in the Bauds' story. Beatrice bridges that gap. LS is part of an organization that investigates fires. As soon as he learned about the fire that killed the womon he loved, he took it upon himself to investigate this further and maybe answer the questions he had. It seems that even LS has questions unanswered.

[smileyman457]

gunther said:

Finally, the Why was not as evident at first, but I think the revelation that Beatrice is the Bauds' mom answers more than we might think. Before The End, I always question why LS would have any interest in the Bauds' story. Beatrice bridges that gap.

Both of them do. Lemony would research the children of the woman he loved, as well as his only reamaning blood relative, Beatrice 'You Little Thing' Baudelaire.

[Dear Dairy]

For those who asked about reviews, here's the one from Entertainment Weekly. It's not on their website as of this writing, so I'll type it here (I don't have a scanner, unfortunately).

'End' Game
Lemony Snicket wraps up his Series of Unfortunate Events
by Alynda Wheat

Is it too early to tech the kids about Shakespeare? In this 13th and final iteration of the adventures of the Baudelaire siblings, Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) evokes nothing less than The Tempest to end his saga of woe, of friends lost and found (mostly lost), and parents never to be seen again.

The End begins with the Baudelaires stuck in the same boat as evil Count Olaf. After landing on a coastal shelf, they encounter cultish, white-robed islanders with names plucked from the Western canon of seafarers and castaways (Kurtz, Caliban, Bligh), led by a charismatic man called Ishmael. There, the siblings learn a host of after-school-special lessons on peer pressure, fear, and seeing the world through the same shades-of-gray-colored glasses that adults wear.

It might be an amusing escape if Snicket weren't so persistently present. After 13 books, we've had quiete enough of his too-clever rhetorical devices, a phrase which her means "run-on sentences, self-conscious narration, and vocabulary definitions that are imprecise but make a snarky point." And what happens in the end? Do we ever learn what VFD stands for? Find the siblings' missing friends? Take down Olaf? We only get a few answers. But when the solution is revealed to the series' central mystery -- who is (are?) Beatrice? -- the journey feels satisfying.

Rating: B+

[Gunther]

smileyman457 said:

Both of them do. Lemony would research the children of the woman he loved, as well as his only reamaning blood relative, Beatrice 'You Little Thing' Baudelaire.

At first I would have disagreed. I believe that when he first started his research of the Baudalares, he did not know what happened to his sister. Beatrice#2 could have kept that a secret from her uncle until it was the right time, a recurring trend in the books.

[Grace]

Questions:
-So...according to TBL, there are two Beatrice Baudelaires. One is the baby the Baudelaires are raising, the other one is the Baudelaire's mother. The elder one was Lemony's love. So how did BB#2 know who Lemony was when he was writing to her in TBL?
-JS's in TPP
-How could Sunny talk so well when only a year had passed, and how could she care for a child when she's 2 or so?
-If Violet was to be named Lemony, someone named Lemony has presumably died...who? Lemony Snicket is still alive long after TE, he's alive in TBL.

[Jin]

I guess in a way you could say that Lemony was dead to Beatrice.

[viperperm]

You guys need to read between the lines. You see, Lemony actually does confirm that the Quagmires survive, or atleast aren't eaten or instantly killed by the ?.

Page 187, USA Version.

The children traveled in the dark, just as so many other people had done before them, from the nomadic travels of the Cimmerians to the desperate voyages of the Quagmire triplets, who at that very moment were in circumstances just as dark although quite a bit damper.

That's around Chapter Nine, and the storm happened in Chapter Two, and Kit got seperated from the Quagmires before Chapter Two, but after The Penultimate Peril, so what I say above is true. Either the Quagmires are made as slaves, or the ? saves them. No fateful battle would last a couple weeks.

EDIT:

-So...according to TBL, there are two Beatrice Baudelaires. One is the baby the Baudelaires are raising, the other one is the Baudelaire's mother. The elder one was Lemony's love. So how did BB#2 know who Lemony was when he was writing to her in TBL?

-How could Sunny talk so well when only a year had passed, and how could she care for a child when she's 2 or so?

-If Violet was to be named Lemony, someone named Lemony has presumably died...who? Lemony Snicket is still alive long after TE, he's alive in TBL.

-Beatrice says she heard of him, but she also said that she didn't exactly know who he was in the first letter.

-She talked pretty much the same way as she did in Chapter Thirteen in Chapter Fourteen, except she could speak larger sentences because TIME PASSED. And Sunny wasn't the only one caring for Beatrice. Fifteen year-old Violet and Thirteen year-old Klaus were helping her.

-Lemony faked his death. Kit explains how she lost both brothers, so that means that even Kit thought that Lemony was dead. Did you read UA? That book answers a lot of questions, and is a really good read.

[superorange]

Reminds me of Pinnochio, when he's in the belly of the Whale.

Also, did anyone else notice the Q mark in the very last picture?

[korovamilkbar14]

There was a question that came up on another site I read, about whether or not the Baudelaires were being tested for VFD.

I think they were, because they were 'scattered around the globe' when they visited various guardians, and their 'researching skills' were tested as well, with the introduction of the commonplace books. And last but not least, they were on the island for nearly a year, by which time 'no one would be searching for them anymore'.

All the quotes are from the VFD meeting in UA, btw.

In regard to the Entertainment Weekly review - the critic didn't read the book carefully enough. Lemony himself states that VFD stands for Volunteer Fire Department.

[Jessie]

I finished The End about an hour ago. Wonderful. I've read all the posts and I agree with a lot of the things mentioned (specfically the ? signifying all the the things we won't know)

I don't think Esme knew what was in the sugar bowl, though. She just wanted it because everyone else wanted it, like it was "In" or something like that. Or because Olaf wanted it. She just knew it was something important.

[beatriceblake]

For those who asked about reviews, here's the one from Entertainment Weekly.

Thanks Dear Dairy.

So what are peoples' thoughts about whether or not Count Olaf did set the Baudelaire fire and whether or not Beatrice (and Mr Baudelaire) killed Olaf's parents?

[pullerofstrings]

Sorry if this has already been asked, but what WAS the "truly haunting secret about the Baudelaire parents"? I read the book, and yet I found none of the few revelations very haunting.

And also, I've spotted a continuity error. In TPP, LS says something along the lines of "the Quagmires were in the sky fighting eagles and a terrible henchman with hooks for hands". Yet in this book, Kit says that she met with all three Widdershins in the sea while the self sustaining hot air mobile home was still in the sky, so how COULD Fernald have possibly made it up there to fight the Quagmires AND THEN return to the sea in time? Could someone please confirm if I'm onto something?

[viperperm]

More people than just Fernald can have hooks for hands. You never know, it could of been the FFP! That's my current theory of what controls the ?. Either that, or the Evil Realtors that took over Curdled Cave, which in TPP is revealed to of been a safe place.

Oh yeah, and in TPP it DID confirm the survivors of the Denouement Fire... Lemony was mentioning characters that may be our neighbors, teachers etc., and it's obvious that the people he mentioned MUST be alive now, or else why would he say that could be our neighbors? I'm pretty sure that the rest of the people died.

I think that the three biggest questions are:
1. Kitlaf? HOW!?
2. The ?, Who controls it, What is it, When was it created, born, trained, Where is it now, Why is everyone afraid of it? Does it have anything to do with V.F.D? How did Widdershins know it's bad, if it's unknown?
3. The Opera. Why did the Baudelaire Parents kill the Olaf Parents? Who was all there?

[infitsofprint]

The sugar bowl is clearly not an antidote to the medusoid mycelium. Why would VFD fight so hard over something you can buy in any supermarket? When the taxi drives away in TPP, we are pretty much being told that we will never be told what the sugar bowl is. It's some nameless thing that we can't imagine, seemingly insignificant but unimaginably important.

I, for one, am glad TE didn't flat-out answer most of the questions raised throughout the series. (What is the ?, what happened to the quagmires, etc.) In fact I had only two complaints with TE:
1) That the Baudelaires find a book that answers most of their questions (Called ASoUE? A little cliched). It would have been more in keeping with the series if they had gotten just a glimpse of it before it was destroyed.
2) That it abandons the narrow scope of the previous books, and spans an entire year. The others had this sense of immediacy, with the Baudelaires constantly rushing from one place to the next.

But how do The Beatrice Letters fit in? Beatrice is seperated from the orphans, presumably because of the shipwreck (if the boat sank and they all made it to shore anyway, why would we care? It's the central puzzle of TBL, it must be more important to the plot). So does Beatrice hear Sunny on the radio as she's being raised by foster parents?

And is the series itself a response to the BLs, or the other way around? Presumably the latter, but then what is Lemony trying to find out by researching the older Baudelaires, or gathering the BLs together? Especially if he already knows that they are still alive and well, as he seems to (or am I imagining that)?

Just noticed- The cave on the poster contains both Beatrice's bats Lemony's bowler.