Everything is Backward
Pop culture has long held an obsession with identical twins, and nearly every media involving twins shows one of them pretending to be the other. Examples of this include The Parent Trap, Liv and Maddie, and of course, The Mysterious Benedict Society. There are two direct instances in which one of the twins plays the part of the other. The first takes place at the end of the first book. Ledroptha Curtain has just been defeated, but Nicholas Benedict stays behind to bewilder the Whisperer (the machine Curtain invented to put thoughts in the public’s minds). Curtain escapes to start working on the plot for book two, but to everyone’s surprise, he appears to re-emerge mere moments later. He is driving the sort-of wheelchair contraption that Curtain often uses, swerving wildly, and yelling orders at his guards. He commands them to leave the getaway car where the protagonists are currently waiting, claiming that it’s a decoy and a trap. As soon as the guards are out of the way, the man walks over to the car and reveals himself to be Benedict. When he asks how Reynie, the one who figured it out, knew, Reynie replies “To be honest, I knew it the second I saw how badly you drove that wheelchair!”
We’re going to come back to that line.
For now, let’s look at the other example of the twins replacing one another. This time it’s the other way around. I won’t drag you through the entirety of book two, The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey (although I do strongly recommend reading the books), but as a brief summary, Curtain and his guards kidnap Benedict. There is a lot of drama around this, but the important thing to know is Curtain kidnaps Benedict with the express intent of replacing him. Curtain plans to either kill or lock up Benedict and return to Stonetown to take his place. He intends to pretend to be Benedict and use his newfound position of power and respect to resume his plan of world domination. He would also regain access to the Whisperer. Obviously, he fails, but had Benedict neglected to escape, everyone believes Curtain would have succeeded.
Benedict and Curtain are frighteningly good at replacing each other, and we will continue exploring this concept in my next blog.