The End: Official Discussion

[superorange]

About the TBL events..

BB2 mentions hearing Sunny on the radio discussing her recipes, and remembering various things the siblings told her. She would NOT remember things that happened at 1 years old at 10 years old. I think they made it across the sea the first time, and somehow, another boat ride got involved and they all were seperated.

[cap777]

i just dont understand the end if the series can someone help me

it feels like i read the whole series for nothing

[TopHat]

I went to the Indigo near my house, and had taken a tour of it before because of a scohol club. I talked to the two people their and got all 4 masks, a pencil, a large sheet with I am prepared for The End stickers, a press-on for a shirt, a beatrice letters contest item.

[RockSunner]

I strongly support the Mrs. Caliban = Mrs. Widdershins theory.

1) Both have stories about a missing spouse that involve manatees. Widdershins has the more plausible "manatee accident" rather than the "devoured by a manatee" which fooled the more ignorant Friday.

2) The three children's name's beginning with "F" as others have mentioned.

3) "You aren't Kit Snicket," so Mrs. Caliban knows Kit by name and appearance. Widdershins and crew worked with the Snicket siblings.

There's quite a bit to rcconstruct about Kit and her final voyage that would make good fanfiction. I see now that she picked up the Queequeg where the Baudelaires left it, went out to sea and found Widdershins (in the inflatable raft, probably). It wasn't clear to me how Klaus could state so definitely that she was in a submarine (p. 81) but her using the Queequeg to get to sea is a reasonable assumption and one that Klaus must have made.

[Jenny]

(I know everyone's a little ahead of me, I got the book this morning and have only just finished it as I was out until 5:00 over here, but I'm going to say this anyway)

Best ending EVER of ANYTHING. LEMONY is a GENIUS.

Ahem.

I agree with the Mrs Caliban = Mrs Widdershins thing. In fact I like that theory a lot.

Being an avid Eslaf supporter, I am sorry to see the relationship subtely but surely destroyed, but I could get used to Kitlaf.

And again-- I adored this. I'm incredibly glad Handler made Olaf a sinister and humorous villain again, rather than just a humorous one.

[dirkamoeba]

My favorite scenes are the one on page 215-217 and 250-251, where everyone is making deductions which seem reasonable to them based on their personal knowledge and experience, but they turn out to be false. probably much like what is going on in this thread now.

Like Caliban=Widdershins. Sounds reasonable, but based on the way Lemony is presenting things in this book I doubt it's correct.

[jacob4000]

I have to say I was rather disappointed by The End. The plot just doesn't match the bar set by the previous books--especially the brilliance that was The Penultimate Peril (IMHO), and no questions are really answered at all.

+Most people already knew that Beatrice was the Baudelaire's mom.

...and that was about all that was answered--except the kind of bizarre notion of three (albeit mature) kids raising the second Beatrice on soft cake made by Sunny. Hmm...

Also, I agree that Mrs Caliban = Mrs Widdershins. That was the first thing that came to mind as I read about the manatee. But we may never know, Snicket decided to leave us all in the dark when the reason we even read the book was for answers. *sigh*

Anyhow, I'm knew here. Hi!

EDIT:

By the way, isn't it true that hybrid seeds are not fertile and thus unable to form a plant? I wonder how they were able to plant seeds on the island...

[beatriceblake]

I was thinking about Ishmael as God and the islanders as religious followers. It is interesting that no one can live by the rules of the island or taking the story as an analogy, by religious rules . Ishmael is a hypocrite who presents his flouting of the rules as a sacrifice and most of the others have kept/ done something forbidden.

I like the thing with the apples in The End because instead of the apple being full of sin and death as in the Bible, the Baudelaires are saved by their curiosity. It motivates them to investigate the arboretum and to read the book that mentions the hybrid fruit. In contrast the rest of the islanders are endangered by their lack of curiosity because they accept Ishmael's lies about not needing to eat the apples.

[theduchess]

I LOVED The End. The "Book the last" at the end was genius. That explains the 170-chapter comment.
The whole religious connection is interesting, with the IDV and the apples...

sadoccasion said:

My theory: The giant ? is crewed by the FFP, of which Isadora and Fiona have become members and the others (Duncan, Quiqley, Hector, Fernald, etc.) areb eing held captive. The FFP captured the Baudelaires and the baudelaires mey up with their friends, freed them, escaped to Briny Beach and either donned new identities or re-established contacts with the noble side of V.F.D.

You took the words out of my mouth. That's exactly what I thought! ^_^
Kitlaf! Yay! =D I thought, "WTF?!?" at first, but I likes it.
Awww, Olaf's grave. The Baudelaires are so kind. T-T
So sad about the Quagmires...I really liked them. But they would have distracted from the plot if they showed up.
Overall, TE is absolutely perfect. It's a wonderful ending to this awesome series.

[Jerome's Necktie]

Olaf is not the father of Kit's Beatrice. They have been seperated far too long for that. One can assume that the Baudelaires have been on the run from Olaf for the past nine months. At that time, Olaf was treacherous, and Kit would not have been with him. The Kit/Olaf history dates back way before TBB. If anything, they were in love during training, and then when he picked the fire-setting side of the schism, she broke off association with him, and eventually found her way to Dewey who, "

the woman he loved distraught and pregnant" when he died. I really doubt Kit would be so eager to get back to Dewey or vice versa if Dewey knew that Olaf was the father of her child.

[descartes]

About the sugar bowl, is it possible that the reason that the baudilaires could never find horseradish is because there isn't any left, and the last of it is in the sugar bowl? Because no one knew about wasabi working, and very few knew about the hybrid apple tree, maybe olaf wanted to burn it so that if he released the mycelium that there wasn't a cure, or maybe just have the horseradish with him so that he could live.

[joshspazjosh]

The End. Jesus H. Christ.

What a depressing book.

I was going to write a long thing about my opinion of ASoUE now that we can actually evaluate the series as a whole but I don't know if I can. Just . . . wow.

There were no noble people after all. Everyone just did what they thought was right, regardless of the amount of indictments for arson or murder. And our lives will just keep going and schisms will keep dividing people and nothing is certain except for one thing: that when all is said and done it will lead to a series of unfortunate events . . .

How terribly morose. And Olaf quoting Larkin as his last words? Completely out of left field. Love that guy's poems.

The thing is, though, when you've been building up to what you believe is going to be a bunch of big revelations at the end and instead get next to nothing, it's really hard to enjoy the books on a superficial level. [Not everyone has the attention or know-how to pay close attention to clues.] I hope the upcoming "Horseradishes" book clears some things up so the book can stand on its own. Some critics are accusing Handler of just making random stuff up, when obviously he didn't . . . it would be good to set the record straight.

[korovamilkbar14]

The whole Caliban = Widdershins idea sounds pretty plausible. It reminded me of "Superstar" (which is a movie) and about how both of their parents were killed by hammerhead sharks. The same idea is used here, when both Friday and Fiona are told their parents wer ekilled by manatees. Random thought, but interesting nonetheless.

I think the books had a lot of religious references, but the one I recently discovered is by far the strangest.

I finished reading "The Omen" a few days ago, and I was looking up info about it on Wikipedia. I was doing something with the number 666 when i came across this phrase - "Vicarius Filli Dei". Apparently it means 'Representative of the Son of God' in Latin.

I don't think it's connected with the books, but it's a strange piece of trivia.

Go here for more info.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_Beast

[Gigi]

I finally finished the book this morning and have spent some time reading the spoiler and discussion threads before I put in my own thoughts. (I took some time to savor the book while I read it instead of rushing through it.)

I really liked it. We've seen the Baudelaires become something short of noble and I don't think we should think badly about them because of it. None of us is completely noble. We all have our faults and do what seems best for our own lives at the time. The Baudelaires are no exception. In the end they are human like the rest of us.

I was satisfied with the way that mysteries were solved and unsolved. I was pleased that the two Beatriced were somewhat explained. The one thing that still bothered me though is the boat Beatrice. Who really named it that? Where did Olaf get the boat from when he gave it to Carmelita at Hotel Denouement? And did it ultimately sink after they left the island? We know that somehow young Beatrice was separated from V, K, and S, but to survive a boat sinking at 1-year old is somewhat far-fetched, even for Handler.

One of the big things I was watching for in the book is Sunny saying somebody's name from the auction last year. (You remember, somebody paid $5000 on ebay for the right for Sunny to say a name or phrase of their choice.) Anyway, I paid close attention, and I couldn't say for sure which word or phrase it was. Everything she said seemed to make sense at the time. BUT, I did notice that Sunny said "six, six, seven" at the top of page 209. Could it be that Handler lurks here, saw how we tried to win the auction and failed, but then put that in as a nod to us? If you go back and look, there really is no reason why it couldn't have been some other number. They weren't talking about TEE or Dark Avenue at all at the time.

[Dear Dairy]

dgrune said:

The one thing that still bothered me though is the boat Beatrice. Who really named it that? Where did Olaf get the boat from when he gave it to Carmelita at Hotel Denouement? And did it ultimately sink after they left the island? We know that somehow young Beatrice was separated from V, K, and S, but to survive a boat sinking at 1-year old is somewhat far-fetched, even for Handler.

1. Bertrand named it that. (p. 1 of Chapter 14). He built it and named it after his wife. They left the island on it.
2. ? (One of the Great Unknowns)
3. It would seem so, from TBL's hidden clue. But I agree with your comment completely. Perhaps Violet survived long enough to get the baby and herself (for the 3rd time) to Briny Beach. She still needed to meet the FFP, according to TBB:RE. (Although that never made sense to me, because she supposedly learned the Devil's Tongue from the FFP, and she used it several times throughout the series, so that must have happened before TBB, right?)

Swans, I like your Ish = God analogy. Here's one more: Ish considered himself like a parent of the islanders. Christians call God their Heavenly Father.