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Post by Dante on Jun 13, 2014 1:33:35 GMT -5
I always thought that the Great Unknown was a metaphor or the Merlion as interpreted by V.F.D  Well, you could certainly do worse. I'm sure the Great Unknown as written is playing on all kinds of mythical sea monsters. As indeed is the Bombinating Beast. |
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Post by Tryina Denouement on Jun 13, 2014 2:53:27 GMT -5
I always thought that the Great Unknown was a metaphor or the Merlion as interpreted by V.F.D Well, you could certainly do worse. I'm sure the Great Unknown as written is playing on all kinds of mythical sea monsters. As indeed is the Bombinating Beast. That is more likely than my assumption. |
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Post by Hermes on Jun 18, 2014 8:23:42 GMT -5
I think the irrelevance of the MacGuffin's purpose is supposed to be that it is in some way interchangeable. There are many explanations as to what's in the sugar bowl (or to what the Great Unknown is), for instance; the stolen submarine plans might as well be for planes or tanks or bombs and we won't ever need to understand exactly what's so special about them; that suitcase could contain money or a radioactive element or incriminating photographs of a public figure. The story is more about what people will do for the MacGuffin rather than what they will do with it. I admit it's rather vague, but that's how I rationalise it. OK, that makes a lot more sense. But in that case the frequent claim that a McGuffin 'is only there to drive the plot' is deceptive; a McGuffin and a non-McGuffin are both there to drive the plot, but in different ways. The usual way of putting it seems to reflect a tendency, which turns up in other contexts as well, to see the plot as an alien thing which imposes itself on the characters. |
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Post by Dante on Jun 18, 2014 15:59:31 GMT -5
Maybe. I don't dispute that thos two interpretations lend themselves to each other - the real plot is about the characters and how they interact, not the magical lands they live in or the riches they're after. I couldn't wholly agree with that, because I think plot is great. But perhaps another way of thinking of it is that... well, okay, an example. Harry gets his mitts on the Deathly Hallows, doesn't he? He uses them for stuff. They do things as much as the characters do. So for that reason I wouldn't really call the Deathly Hallows McGuffins, because the nature of the items directly affects the story.
...I don't want to give the impression that I'm defending the concept of the McGuffin here, or for that matter attacking it. I don't think its formulation was ever under particularly specific terms. I just think it's interesting to think about. Which, to try and guide this ever so gently back towards the ostensible subject of this thread, one might say about the Great Unknown as well - I don't think there's one true answer to what it is, or one canon answer, but it's interesting to think about the answers people have.
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Post by Wasabi on Jul 29, 2014 5:50:57 GMT -5
The way I look at it is that it's a series of unfortunate events, so therefore, yes, the Baudelaires went into this thing called the Great Unknown, leaving us to think whether they were safe or not. Because if he just said that they lived happily ever after at the end, that's not really the purpose of the book. So either their lives got better or worse, we'll never know. I just hope they did, for all our sakes.
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rheichou
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Post by rheichou on Jul 29, 2014 5:58:59 GMT -5
In my opinion, I felt really discontented with the ending of ASOUE series because I thought all my questions would be answered in the end but in all actuality I ended up having more questions. I have to admit though, it wasn't a bad ending, but it just left me hanging, which I think was Snicket's purpose.
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Post by Dante on Jul 29, 2014 9:15:12 GMT -5
I think that a lot of us were unsettled in that way because we didn't expect it. In retrospect, it's easy to see the signs that ASoUE was going to conclude in a rather open-ended way, but leaving several major mysteries unresolved just wasn't a thing that was done, so very few people saw it coming.
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rheichou
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Post by rheichou on Aug 9, 2014 1:16:52 GMT -5
Do you think Lemony Snicket will write another book regarding the whereabouts of the Baudelaire children?
Honestly, it was my friend who asked me this and i was so torn between wanting to know what would happen next and leaving it as it is.
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Post by Dante on Aug 9, 2014 3:07:02 GMT -5
I don't think he will, personally. I think that if The End was unambiguous about anything, it was about leaving the Baudelaire children to themselves from now on. Beatrice the younger is the best you're likely to get, in my opinion, but even then no-one can say how likely that is.
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rheichou
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Post by rheichou on Aug 9, 2014 20:18:08 GMT -5
I felt a little bit sad when ASOUE ended, but I couldn't help but feel relieved too. I just really crave for more knowledge of V.F.D. because it has such an interesting concept. I wouldn't be surprised if someone came up with something similar to V.F.D.
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Post by Dante on Aug 10, 2014 3:15:54 GMT -5
The elaborateness of V.F.D.'s activities, secret codes and methods, and diverse research interests probably wouldn't be mirrored in real life, but a secret organisation dedicated to knowledge and which performs a lot of good deeds isn't such an outlandish idea.
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Post by MisterM on Aug 10, 2014 4:53:41 GMT -5
I could see handler writing an in-universe book about vfd
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Post by moseymoo on Aug 21, 2014 15:21:24 GMT -5
I agree with what's been said above about the Great Unknown being a metaphor. Handler seems to enjoy playing with the physical and the metaphorical (think the Slippery slope or the road less taken: in each case a metaphorical or allegorical concept given physical weight). In my opinion, the Great Unknown is much the same: much like similar characters etc in medieval romances (or, perhaps more aptly, The Divine Comedy, in which Dante undergoes a similar journey of self discovery that occupies both literal and allegorical spheres), it is merely the physical manifestation of all that is unknown in the world. Hence why the Quagmires were never heard of again: they chose to face up to the unknown quantities in their life (including death) and, because the Great Unknown is inherently unknowable, the reader can never be given an insight into the result of that confrontation (as a side-note, the Baudelaires also face up to The Great Unknown at the very end of the novel, which I see as a clever way of Handler saying "and nobody will ever know what happened to them). It is just my opinion, but, because of it, I have never had any burning desire to unearth the truth about the Great Unknown simply because I think it is meant to be left unknown.  |
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rheichou
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Post by rheichou on Oct 5, 2014 21:32:08 GMT -5
It's true that the truth about the Great Unknown should never be uncovered for certain reasons. However, I feel like there were so many questions in ASoUE that were never answered. If all the open ends were closed and the series ended with the Great Unknown, then I wouldn't have the urge to find out what it is. But this isn't the case and I feel so caught in a cliff hanger. I accept that the Great Unknown is all that is unknown in the world, but I need to know exactly how it related or affects the Baudelaires because I feel like only then will I be able to look at the full picture with no missing puzzle pieces.
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sundust
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Post by sundust on Jun 9, 2015 20:26:01 GMT -5
The bombinating beast is very likely to be the great unknown as it is shaped just like a question mark. The only problem with this theory is if the bombinating beast is even real. Lemony Snicket did seem to know what the great unknown was so he possibly encountered it before.
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