Saturday, January 13, 2018
A Series of Unfortunate Events
I don't know how many of you all read A Series of Unfortunate events, but Snicket includes a variety of references to Baudelaire and Poe. The first and most obvious is the Baudelaire children. Baudelaire's themes of life and death are apparent in the series, as the Baudelaire children are thrown into a completely different lifestyle after their parent's death. Moreover, Beatrice's name probably comes from La Beatrice, another Baudelaire poem. Poe's name is apparent in Arthur Poe, who has a child aptly named Edgar. Obviously, there is an obvious theme that Poe, Baudelaire, and Snicket share, but nonetheless I still this it's an interesting collection of references.
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2 comments:
I LOVE THE SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS! I was so annoyed that Count Olaf escape for thirteen books!!!
Just as Baudelaire’s poems are pretty dark, Lemony Snicket’s books (yes, that’s a pen name) can get pretty depressing. They’re also filled with tons and tons of allusions, as Elizabeth said. Many of these instances reference works or authors we’ve actually read/discussed in Humanities this year…
-I’m really glad you brought up Beatrice! An interesting tidbit I read is that the other reference to which the name Beatrice refers is Dante Alighieri. Baudelaire’s poem La Beatrice also reads: “In a burnt, ashen land, where no herb grew,/I to the winds my cries of anguish threw;/And in my thoughts, in that sad place apart,/Pricked gently with the poignard o’er my heart.”
-The books also directly quote Baudelaire’s “Le Voyage” with the lines: ”O Death, old captain, it is time! Let us lift the anchor! / This country wearies us, O Death! Let us set sail! / Though the sea and the sky are black as ink, / Our hearts which you know well are filled with rays of light!”
-Also, in The Vile Village: There’s a brochure called “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child.” One of the villages is named Ophelia, a reference to Hamlet. One site I read claims that Mr. Poe’s (the guy who’s supposed to take care of the Baudelaire orphans) dislike of the bank in town is a reference to Polonius’ spiel to Laertes: ”Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Like the Baudelaire children, Ophelia was a pretty tragic character.
-The coconut cordial in one of the later books is called "the opiate of the people.” This line is a reference to Karl Marx: "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
-Lemony Snicket, the narrator, also continually says, "History is indeed little more than the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." This sentence is an indirect reference to something Voltaire once said.
-Klaus (the middle of the Baudelaire children) quotes Nietzsche at one point: “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.”
https://lauraoosterbeek.wordpress.com/2015/10/22/every-literary-reference-in-a-series-of-unfortunate-events-that-i-missed-when-i-was-10/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Series_of_Unfortunate_Events
I'm so glad you posted on this! I've been thinking about this connection as well.
So as y'all mentioned, like the Baudelaire orphans, who suffer indeed a very long series of unfortunate events, Baudelaire himself had it pretty rough. Apparently he was brought to court for obscenity and blasphemy, had a stroke (after which he suffered from partial paralysis on one side and eventually wasn't able to speak), was put into a medical facility, got syphilis, and got addicted to opium.
About a few other not-yet-mentioned characters and their interesting namesakes...
Dr. Georgina Orwell hypnotizes one of the Baudelaire kids, Klaus. Of course her name comes from George Orwell, who wrote 1984 and Animal Farm. 1984 is very well known for the totalitarian regime/Big Brother concepts which are related to hypnosis/brainwashing.
Vice Principle Nero has the kids listen to super long concerts and is a violinist. Aka, the crazy Roman Emperor who is said to have played the fiddle as Rome burned.
Coach Genghis is the gym teacher. See: Genghis Khan, Mongol leader and conqueror of Asia.
Prufrock Preparatory School: T.S. Eliot's famous poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (also connected to Dante's Inferno). Personally my favorite line is, "Do I dare to eat a peach?"
There are seriously a ton more references throughout the series that I didn't necessarily understand while reading the books the first time around, but it's pretty cool to see how many I've learned about now. Also thought this was interesting because we talked about Charles Dickens' (and other writers') penchant for naming characters in a way that relates to their personalities or situations, like Mr. Bounderby's somewhat ironic name.
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