ANSWERS!

[blowinbubbles]

Ok..ok...this will be a long post, but PLEASE read all of it ;D

Well, according to the 12 shocking secrets, Lemony Snicket is wanted for arson. Which means that he MOST probably started the fire that burnt down the Baudelaire's mansion. Which is why in The 14th chapter, Count Olf says that he didn't burn down the house

The 12 Shocking Secrets Are:
1. Lemony Snicket is not you think he is.
2. Lemony Snicket is one of three siblings.
3. Lemony Snicket's niece is an orphan.
4. Lemony Snicket is wanted for arson.
5. Lemony Snicket grew up with a terrible villian.
6. Lemony Snicket attended boarding school.
7. When he was a baby, Lemony Snicket was kidnapped by a secret organization.
8. Lemony Snicket was fired from The Daily Punctilio.
9. Lemony Snicket helped Beatrice commit a serious crime before her death.
10. Lemony Snicket was disguised as a bullfighter when he was captured. (HEHE....a bullfighter?)
11. Lemony Snicket's work is filled with secret messages meant for his associates.
12. Lemony Snicket has a tattoo of an eye on his ankle.


AND..Bertrand Baudelaire was the FATHER of the Baudelaires...NOT Lemony!.... according to Wikipedia (scroll down for link ;D)

And so, what do I think?? I think that Lemony Snicket had an affair with Beatrice, and that he loves her so much that he wanted to kill Bertrand, and so he burnt down the Baudelaire mansion in order to kill Bertrand.

PLEASE REPLY!

My sources :
www.thequietworld.com/books.php?page=book13
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_and_Beatrice_Baudelaire

[Dante]

Actually, the document in question is entitled "13 Shocking Secrets [etc.]"; perhaps you missed the 13th because it was in code, although it was rather conspicuous. The 13th was just to note that Snicket had finished the last book, anyway. It's also worth noting that the statement by Olaf to which you refer was actually in Chapter Thirteen of The End, and he didn't confirm or deny anything - he said "You don’t know anything... You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal. You’re just like your parents." That doesn't give anything away; it doesn't prove Olaf's guilty or innocent. It's up to us.

In addition, Snicket's repeatedly denied the claims of arson against him, in TSS and in the U.A.; in the former, he said that he was searching for the evidence - implied to be within the sugar bowl - that would "prove to the authorities that it is Count Olaf, and not me, who has started so many fires" (TSS, p101), and in the latter, three of his suggested autobiography titles explicitly deny any allegations of arson (The Story of a Man Who Has Never Burned Anything Down, The Story of a Man Who Has Never Burned Anything Down, Despite What You May Have Heard, and The Story of a Man Who Suspects Others of Having Burned Things Down, Even Though He Himself Did Not).

Beatrice broke up with Snicket because of something that she read in The Daily Punctilio (TVV, p74), almost certainly allegations of arson; this was before she married Bertrand, quite a while before. Lemony blames Olaf, in LS to BB #5, for breaking up his relationship with Beatrice, and given that Olaf's a famous arsonist, that The Daily Punctilio rarely gets anything right, and that Jacques suspected Olaf of being able to change the stories the newspaper printed, then that strongly indicates that Olaf was setting fires and blaming them on Lemony, which ties in with the quote from TSS. In The Beatrice Letters, LS to BB #6, Lemony congratulates Beatrice on her pregnancy and hopes for all the best for her children, and attempts to warn her of some threat or other, which if he was madly jealous he would not have done; additionally, if Lemony was going to burn the Baudelaire mansion down because he was jealous of Bertrand, why did he wait at least fourteen years to do so?

In conclusion, there's not really any point in accusing Lemony of being an unreliable narrator; not only is he thoroughly honest about the fact that he doesn't know some things and won't tell us others (the nature of the Great Unknown, for example, in TGG), then the unreliability of an unreliable narrator is generally exposed in the narrative and they turn honest and confess their lies, which is not the case with Lemony; finally, since the entire story is told by Lemony, then if you believe that he is unreliable, you cannot take any single line of text from the entirety of A Series of Unfortunate Events as being true, and so you cannot be sure that the crimes Lemony supposedly committed, or indeed the evidence that he committed them, even happened; the entire story vanishes, essentially. It also undermines the real-life incarnation of the character as an author of other books, which is also the reason why he did not die in The End, as some predicted.

[TheManager]

Very good responce Dante.

[Spymaster E]

ffwf said:

In addition, Snicket's repeatedly denied the claims of arson against him, in TSS and in the U.A.; in the former, he said that he was searching for the evidence - implied to be within the sugar bowl - that would "prove to the authorities that it is Count Olaf, and not me, who has started so many fires" (TSS, p101), and in the latter, three of his suggested autobiography titles explicitly deny any allegations of arson (The Story of a Man Who Has Never Burned Anything Down, The Story of a Man Who Has Never Burned Anything Down, Despite What You May Have Heard, and The Story of a Man Who Suspects Others of Having Burned Things Down, Even Though He Himself Did Not).

Beatrice broke up with Snicket because of something that she read in The Daily Punctilio (TVV, p74), almost certainly allegations of arson; this was before she married Bertrand, quite a while before. Lemony blames Olaf, in LS to BB #5, for breaking up his relationship with Beatrice, and given that Olaf's a famous arsonist, that The Daily Punctilio rarely gets anything right, and that Jacques suspected Olaf of being able to change the stories the newspaper printed, then that strongly indicates that Olaf was setting fires and blaming them on Lemony, which ties in with the quote from TSS. In The Beatrice Letters, LS to BB #6, Lemony congratulates Beatrice on her pregnancy and hopes for all the best for her children, and attempts to warn her of some threat or other, which if he was madly jealous he would not have done; additionally, if Lemony was going to burn the Baudelaire mansion down because he was jealous of Bertrand, why did he wait at least fourteen years to do so?

In conclusion, there's not really any point in accusing Lemony of being an unreliable narrator; not only is he thoroughly honest about the fact that he doesn't know some things and won't tell us others (the nature of the Great Unknown, for example, in TGG), then the unreliability of an unreliable narrator is generally exposed in the narrative and they turn honest and confess their lies, which is not the case with Lemony; finally, since the entire story is told by Lemony, then if you believe that he is unreliable, you cannot take any single line of text from the entirety of A Series of Unfortunate Events as being true, and so you cannot be sure that the crimes Lemony supposedly committed, or indeed the evidence that he committed them, even happened; the entire story vanishes, essentially. It also undermines the real-life incarnation of the character as an author of other books, which is also the reason why he did not die in The End, as some predicted.

AH, but how can you be sure. I recently got the vibes that Snicket wrote all that himself. This means we may only have HIS word for it. He could just as easiy be lying about it all as he could be telling the truth.

[Antenora]

jamesquagmire said:

AH, but how can you be sure. I recently got the vibes that Snicket wrote all that himself. This means we may only have HIS word for it. He could just as easiy be lying about it all as he could be telling the truth.

Following that logic: Snicket could just as easily have hallucinated the whole series while passed out after drinking too much, or indeed written these books(in fictional canon as well as in real life) just to make money and perhaps get his dubious moral views across, but the problem with theories like that is that they render the whole series meaningless. There'd be no point to Snicket being unreliable-- as opposed to admitting that he doesn't have all the details, or can't reveal certain things-- unless this was strongly implied within the story itself.

[alyssa]

Thats all very interesting.....I think the bullfighter disguise was the most amusing.