The End
Yesterday, I finished ‘The End’. I have to admit, I was rather disappointed. I never expected all the questions to be answered, but ‘The End’ turned into a broadly painted treatise on moral relativity and coming-of-age symbolism that I can’t really reconcile with the rest of the series.
I was immensely satisfied with two things - Count Olaf’s demise, and that we learnt the truth about Beatrice. You knew the name of the boat had to have some significance, and using it to confirm once and for all that Beatrice was indeed Mrs. Baudelaire fit nicely. I liked the last minute twist with Olaf (yeah, I shed a tear for him), and it fit into the book Handler was writing (that of the parents’ world a child can never touch), and the fun, quirky, complicated twelve installments that preceded it. The connection between Olaf and Kit is something I think I appreciate more unexplained. But so many other things were left to the imagination, and the nine-year-old in me rolled her eyes at all of the mysteries remaining masked as "wonders/responsibilities of adulthood" when we’d been asked to invest so much in their discovery all along.
I enjoy religious allegory as cultural shorthand, but it felt a bit heavy handed in ASoUE (even if it was closer to Pullman’s brand than Lewis’s). I prefer Rowling’s take on "the knowledge of good and evil" in ‘Order of the Phoenix’, because when you take a bite of that bitter apple, it’s not neat and pretty and symbolic. The injustice and indignity is in the details, and it hurts, and you want to go all CAPSLOCK!Harry on people. My reaction to ‘The End’ also leaves me wondering how I’ll take the seventh Harry Potter book, but I think Rowling’s more reliable and/or predictable than Handler - that’s probably part of the reason I prefer her universe.
All the talk of apple trees and serpents and men with long beards in white robes has, however, made me want to give ‘His Dark Materials’ (particularly the ending) another chance. And no, finding out Daniel Craig will be Lord Asriel in the movie version has no bearing on this decision whatsoever.
Happy Thanksgiving to the majority of my flist. Now that most of the kids on my father's side of the family are grown, we're all going to Reston Town Center for our dinner. :p I'm hoping we can slip in a movie while we're there. The Queen, perhaps? Saw Bond again tonight, with the 'rents. Even my mom enjoyed it. ^_^