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A review by notwellread
The End by Lemony Snicket
2.0
I’m glad to have finished this series and have enjoyed the experience overall, but for a final instalment of what is primarily a mystery series, I felt there wasn’t nearly enough resolution here. The book doesn’t reflect the tone of a dramatic climax, and instead primarily details the Baudelaires’ time hanging around on a remote island, Olaf failing at another attempted disguise, followed by a more serious act towards the very end. The time taken up dealing with the island and its people, strict rules, and controlling leader could have been put to better use tying up more of the threads that were raised in the previous volumes. The absence of established characters and storylines made for a disjointed conclusion.
The following questions seem the most important ones to my mind, though there are probably others I’m forgetting:
1. Who started the fire that killed the Baudelaire parents (if anyone)? Olaf’s remarks at the end suggest it wasn’t him, since he usually boasts about his misdeeds but seems to deny this one, so it’s not clear.
2. How did the VFD schism start? We get hints of ideological differences between the two sides, but it’s not clear how characters who were initially comrades could end up so much at odds: I would like to know what the stated values and agenda of VFD were originally, and how they changed. There are hints of how VFD started in this book, but we don’t get the whole story.
3. What was in the sugar bowl? This was arguably the biggest remaining mystery, but it’s one that you can supposedly piece together. The author, Daniel Handler, when asked what was in the sugar bowl, responded “Whatever is usually in a sugar bowl.” This suggests that the sugar bowl is full of sugar, but with some special significance to it, so it seems logical that, like the apples in this book, it’s been engineered to provide a defence against the medusoid mycelium. Show spoilers:
4. Why was Snicket documenting the Baudelaires’ lives in the first place? The only explanation I can come up with is that, given the twist that his lost love was the Baudelaires’ mother, he wanted to protect the only thing left of her, but this links in with the other unanswered question of why Beatrice married another man, and who their father was, anyway (we find out very little about him as a person). Supposedly an article in the Daily Punctilio may have been behind the decision, but we never find out what that article was, or why someone as intelligent as Beatrice would trust such an unreliable newspaper. I was hoping for a plot twist where Lemony is actually the Baudelaires’ real father, but it’s hard to argue for this with the information available to us. Others have made the point that the Baudelaires don’t react to Esmé saying that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her, though they would have recognised their mother’s name, so this seems like another detail that might not have been planned out from the beginning, or even the middle.
I also found this book presented more questions than it answered: the Incredibly Deadly Viper appears out of nowhere in this book without any explanation; the symbolism alluding to the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge is clear and links in with the theme of having to go out and face the real world, but not logical. The romantic relationship between Olaf and Kit also came out of nowhere but doesn’t get any further exposition: we don’t find out the nature of their relationship, or even who her baby’s father was (presumably it’s not Olaf, but it’s not impossible that it was him). We also don’t really know what happened to the Quagmires, since the Baudelaires don’t get a reunion with them, nor do we know what happened to Fiona and Fernald, nor do we know whether the islanders who rowed off with Ishmael reached shore and ended up infecting the rest of the world with the fungus — if the Baudelaires are the only ones who know the cure, that’s a pretty apocalyptic ending.
Olaf’s backstory is also a bit of a mess. We don’t find out who killed his parents — I liked the detail that they were killed, making him an orphan and giving him something in common with the Baudelaires in an unexpected way, but being killed by poison darts is clearly murder and yet we never find out who is supposed to have murdered them. His VFD background also doesn’t make sense: it’s not clear why he would join an organisation to which he’s so ideologically opposed (the main thing we know about VFD is that they’re very intellectual, and Olaf is clearly against all that and views it as pretentious and arrogant), nor is it clear how his parents’ death factors in. Did he join VFD to fight injustice after his parents’ deaths, like the Baudelaires, or did he turn evil because of it? He tells the Baudelaires over and over that there’s no real justice in the world and that everyone is immoral in their own ways, but we never see why he came to that view.
The fates of the Baudelaires themselves are also left ambiguous, but this seemed more like a deliberate artistic choice since the author told us not to expect a happy ending. On the other hand, some have pointed out that the first book tells us that Violet will return to Briny Beach a third time, and the second book says that Klaus reflects on certain events long after the fact, so the suggestion is there that the Baudelaires survive the journey back to the mainland, and probably to adulthood, too.
I understand that we were never promised a satisfying resolution, but I feel it’s the duty of a good mystery writer to provide answers to questions they have raised. Leaving one or two ambiguous was fine, but this was overboard, and a different attitude from the author could have allowed it to be so much better.
The following questions seem the most important ones to my mind, though there are probably others I’m forgetting:
1. Who started the fire that killed the Baudelaire parents (if anyone)? Olaf’s remarks at the end suggest it wasn’t him, since he usually boasts about his misdeeds but seems to deny this one, so it’s not clear.
2. How did the VFD schism start? We get hints of ideological differences between the two sides, but it’s not clear how characters who were initially comrades could end up so much at odds: I would like to know what the stated values and agenda of VFD were originally, and how they changed. There are hints of how VFD started in this book, but we don’t get the whole story.
3. What was in the sugar bowl? This was arguably the biggest remaining mystery, but it’s one that you can supposedly piece together. The author, Daniel Handler, when asked what was in the sugar bowl, responded “Whatever is usually in a sugar bowl.” This suggests that the sugar bowl is full of sugar, but with some special significance to it, so it seems logical that, like the apples in this book, it’s been engineered to provide a defence against the medusoid mycelium. Show spoilers:
Spoiler
This is consistent with what Kit says in the show, where the sugar bowl contains a genetically engineered sugar that provides immunity from, rather than an antidote to, the medusoid mycelium.4. Why was Snicket documenting the Baudelaires’ lives in the first place? The only explanation I can come up with is that, given the twist that his lost love was the Baudelaires’ mother, he wanted to protect the only thing left of her, but this links in with the other unanswered question of why Beatrice married another man, and who their father was, anyway (we find out very little about him as a person). Supposedly an article in the Daily Punctilio may have been behind the decision, but we never find out what that article was, or why someone as intelligent as Beatrice would trust such an unreliable newspaper. I was hoping for a plot twist where Lemony is actually the Baudelaires’ real father, but it’s hard to argue for this with the information available to us. Others have made the point that the Baudelaires don’t react to Esmé saying that Beatrice stole the sugar bowl from her, though they would have recognised their mother’s name, so this seems like another detail that might not have been planned out from the beginning, or even the middle.
I also found this book presented more questions than it answered: the Incredibly Deadly Viper appears out of nowhere in this book without any explanation; the symbolism alluding to the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge is clear and links in with the theme of having to go out and face the real world, but not logical. The romantic relationship between Olaf and Kit also came out of nowhere but doesn’t get any further exposition: we don’t find out the nature of their relationship, or even who her baby’s father was (presumably it’s not Olaf, but it’s not impossible that it was him). We also don’t really know what happened to the Quagmires, since the Baudelaires don’t get a reunion with them, nor do we know what happened to Fiona and Fernald, nor do we know whether the islanders who rowed off with Ishmael reached shore and ended up infecting the rest of the world with the fungus — if the Baudelaires are the only ones who know the cure, that’s a pretty apocalyptic ending.
Olaf’s backstory is also a bit of a mess. We don’t find out who killed his parents — I liked the detail that they were killed, making him an orphan and giving him something in common with the Baudelaires in an unexpected way, but being killed by poison darts is clearly murder and yet we never find out who is supposed to have murdered them. His VFD background also doesn’t make sense: it’s not clear why he would join an organisation to which he’s so ideologically opposed (the main thing we know about VFD is that they’re very intellectual, and Olaf is clearly against all that and views it as pretentious and arrogant), nor is it clear how his parents’ death factors in. Did he join VFD to fight injustice after his parents’ deaths, like the Baudelaires, or did he turn evil because of it? He tells the Baudelaires over and over that there’s no real justice in the world and that everyone is immoral in their own ways, but we never see why he came to that view.
The fates of the Baudelaires themselves are also left ambiguous, but this seemed more like a deliberate artistic choice since the author told us not to expect a happy ending. On the other hand, some have pointed out that the first book tells us that Violet will return to Briny Beach a third time, and the second book says that Klaus reflects on certain events long after the fact, so the suggestion is there that the Baudelaires survive the journey back to the mainland, and probably to adulthood, too.
I understand that we were never promised a satisfying resolution, but I feel it’s the duty of a good mystery writer to provide answers to questions they have raised. Leaving one or two ambiguous was fine, but this was overboard, and a different attitude from the author could have allowed it to be so much better.