It’s difficult to write a year review
post, because honestly, everything’s pretty much a blur for me. People ask me
how 2015 has been, and all I can think is, I wrote a lot, I read a lot, I aged,
end of story. Yeah, I processed things, and I’d like to believe my mind grew.
I’d like to think I improved at the activities I love. Maybe I got worse.
As always, I added more books to my
personal library and more experiences to my mental records. I moved to a
different state and started a new life. Fortunately, I made a lot of friends in
the blogosphere, and my blog grew, but I still get nervous about posting. I’m
pretty sure I will always get nervous about posting. And I will always have
that tendency to question the quality of my writing.
This year I’ve started to learn more about
caring for other people, about opening up, about talking. I've learned that
sometimes people actually want to read what I have to say, although that still
seems like a crazy notion.
In a strange and wonderful plot twist, I
write full time now. No, I am not published yet—I still haven’t seen a penny
for any of my words. But my sister is providing for all my needs because she
says that’s her investment in my writing career, that I can pay her back when
I’m a crazy rich New York Times Bestselling author. Emphasis on the when. She
has more true confidence in my abilities than I do.
In other news, New Year’s Day is my
birthday. I confess, I always feel weird about having birthdays. Are they optional?
It’s not that I dislike the reminder that I am getting older, and it’s not that
I’m worried I’m too young. I just don’t like age labels. I’ve never felt like I
belonged to my age, and the number tag feels dishonest. Maybe there is a
difference between the number of years lived and the actual age of a person. Birthdays
jar me because they remind me I am nowhere near as old as I think. They remind me
that I haven’t yet lived even a third of the average American life expectancy.
Is it possible to grow old twice? I feel old. Not spectacularly mature, just remarkably
ancient. I don’t remember what it’s like to feel young.
I had goals for this year. Some I met, and
others I didn’t. Life’s like that. But this was not a bad year, and I am happy
to have lived it, even though it was far too short. Years are short. I enter one,
I blink, and it’s gone. Another one comes in its place, only to hurry off into
the sunset. Eventually, I’ll wake up bewildered, wondering when I turned eighty
and how on earth that number snuck up on me. You wait and see. It just might
happen to you as well.
I have goals for 2016. Big goals. Goals that
will keep me busier than ever. But busyness is satisfying because I don’t feel the
weight of time so much when my mind is active. I want to share more of myself with
you, posts like this one and this one and this one. I want
to read more and write more and think more. I want to get published (but I bet
you already knew that). Most importantly, in whatever small way I can, I want
to make 2016 a brighter year for all of you because you made 2015 bright for me.
Happy New Year!
Well, that’s it, little coffee beans. What
are your goals for 2016? Feel free to guess how old I’m turning. Also, if you
have any suggestions on how you think I could make this blog more interesting
in the coming year, please let me know. I love hearing back from all of you.
Note: Over the past two Mondays, I’ve discussed
the first six books of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (the links are here and
here). Today I’ll be talking about the next three. Also, in
case you’d like to read more of my caffeine-induced ramblings, and in case you
missed it earlier, here’s a link to my guest post on Opal’s lovely blog.
Warning: This will be a VERY SPOILERY
discussion of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. VERY SPOILERY.
When I was a child, without fully
understanding why, I knew that THE VILE VILLAGE marked the turning point in
ASOUE. From THE VILE VILLAGE on, the series gets darker, and deeper, and—dare I
say it?—better. So let’s talk about this.
The
Darkness. I’ve come across a bunch of negative
reviews of ASOUE out there, including a fair deal of disapproval aimed at the darkness
and the ambiguity. People have expressed their belief that the difficult elements
in this story are not suitable for children or that kids couldn’t possibly
enjoy a story with those aspects. And I get that. Really, I do. Because, for a while,
I stopped understanding ASOUE as much as I did before, and I wondered if the
books were too depressing. But, at that same time, (I was sixteen) I also
stopped thinking as deeply, I started writing more annoyingly
pretentious-sounding stories, and someone who meant a lot to me died. With the
benefit of hindsight, I realize that the books weren’t lacking. I was the one lacking.
I had temporarily lost my focus.
To take the attitude that children
cannot handle the level of negativity in ASOUE—to say that they should be
shielded—is to borrow too much of Mr. Poe’s mindset, in my opinion. It’s to
forget how capable children can be, how deep, how thoughtful, if given the
chance. Like the pain of childbirth, I suspect that adults tend to forget the
pain of growing up—that niggling feeling of being too big for your mind and too
big for your body.
Your childhood is your most formative
stage. Most everything has a bigger impact. All the contributing elements in
your environment join forces to shape the person you will be in adulthood. So,
it’s important for children to understand, sooner rather than later, that the
world does not operate in black and white and that suffering does not mean the
end of a person. True, yes, don’t expose young people to something they aren’t
ready for. There’s no need to watch TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE with your
three-year-old because Liz said not to shelter your children. (News flash: Liz
doesn’t know everything. She just pretends to know everything.) But if you
shield young people from reality for too long, you will only raise more people
like Mr. Poe, adults who hide from the ugly truth—who cough into their
handkerchiefs—so they don’t have to get their hands dirty and help people. You
will only create adults who don’t understand what the world is really like.
Mr.
Poe. THE VILE VILLAGE marks the point where Mr. Poe officially
reaches the end of his meager patience with the children. In his mind, he has
found home after home for the Baudelaire orphans, and time after time they have
caused trouble. No, seriously, that’s what he thinks. Never mind that Count Olaf
has been after the children’s fortune since the beginning, that he has caused
all this trouble himself, and that he is the one who should be punished for his
actions. Instead, Mr. Poe blames the children for their misfortunes. According to
him, they are the trouble-makers, the culprits who continuously put his bank’s
name in a bad light, the individuals who make his job thirteen times harder. If
it weren’t for the Baudelaires’ tendency to kick up a fuss and to see Count
Olaf everywhere, he wouldn’t have to keep finding new homes for them. And so on
and so forth.
I guess, since the Baudelaires are
children, and since they are orphans, they are particularly vulnerable, which
makes them easy targets for the blame game. Why on earth would Mr. Poe want to
recognize his own incompetence and blame himself for all the times he has
utterly failed the children? And why would he blame Count Olaf, since Count
Olaf wouldn’t have been such a problem had Mr. Poe done his job properly? No,
the blame must land squarely on the Baudelaires’ shoulders.
So here, at this final juncture in this
final formulaic installment before Snicket delves into unchartered territory,
Mr. Poe cares so little he is willing to dump the children off on a village. It
doesn’t even matter which village. Let the children pick one, any one, and he
will leave them there without fact-checking or researching beforehand. Don’t
first make sure this is a good place. Don’t even take the children over in
person. Just send them on their merry way and warn them that this is their last
chance not to cause trouble and make the bank look bad. Good job, Mr. Poe—you get
a gold star.
The
Village. Now we come to the point where I argue
that the people in the Village of Fowl Devotees don’t even count as guardians.
In my opinion, a guardian, however flawed they might be, is someone who takes
you into their home and at least cares for your basic needs. A guardian is not someone
who dumps you on someone else, in the way that the village council dumps the
children on Hector. Hector may be the one who takes care of the children, because
he was assigned to the role, but he was never intended to be the sole
caregiver. The village as a whole had volunteered for that job. And instead of
fulfilling that responsibility, the only remotely guardian-like connection they
have with the children is in making them do all the village chores.
The
Rules. The people of the village have so many rules, it’s nearly impossible
to do anything without breaking one. Worse than that, they are uncompromising
and unforgiving in their pursuit of the law. They fail to recognize that human
beings need freedom and wiggle room in order to live life fully and completely.
Like a lot of people, they find it easier just to have those in authority
dictate all their actions so they don’t have to think for themselves, so they
don’t have to deviate from established patterns, and so they don’t have to care
about others.
The
Baudelaires’ Struggle. After THE VILE VILLAGE, where another
person who was supposed to care fails them miserably (Hector), the Baudelaires
find themselves at a new emotional low. To have the hope of escape offered to
them (the hot air balloon and the freedom from suffering it represented), and then
to have that taken away, along with their friends (the Quagmire triplets), is
to rub salt in the wound. They have been resourceful and they have tried their
hardest and they have contributed their best, and they still end up worse off
than they were before. They do not know if anyone will rescue them, they do not
know if their friends are safe, and they do not know if they will be thrown in
jail for a crime they did not commit.
THE HOSTILE HOSPITAL finds them on the
run from the law, in more danger than they have ever faced before, with enemies
on every side. The world is darkening around them, and they fear they are
becoming dark with it. Only now do the children begin to see how truly awful
supposedly non-villainous people are. In V.F.D. the villagers, who condemn
murder, are eager to burn the children at the stake. In Heimlich Hospital the
audience, which condemns murder, is eager to see doctors perform a craniectomy
on Violet. And in THE CARNIVEROUS CARNIVAL the onlookers, who condemn murder,
are eager to watch lions devour one of the freaks in the freak show. Even the
supposedly good people are not good. The law-abiding citizens are not good. No
one is good.
The children begin to doubt their own
innocence in all of this. As they strike out into the bloodthirsty world on
their own, they are forced to make decisions they are not always proud of. They
trick poor, old Hal and steal the keys to his library of records even though
they hate lying to the elderly man. They disguise themselves as freaks and lie
about their identities. They snoop. The commit arson. They begin to wonder if
they are turning into Count Olaf. Surrounded by adults who blind themselves to
reality, adults who accept what they are told without asking questions, adults
who embrace and worship their limitations, adults who enjoy hurting others, how
are the Baudelaires supposed to grow up to be good people? Since the death of
their parents, no one has set a decent example for them, and they have been forced
to forge their own moral compasses. (Don’t worry, I will definitely cover this
topic more in my next ASOUE discussion.)
So yes, I can see where this sort of
story would bother adults—because it reflects reality. Even the good guys are
bad guys. Adults fail children just as they fail other adults. Too often children
have to sink or swim on their own, to figure out their morality in a sea of
ambiguity. But that’s the beauty of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. It’s more
than just a condemnation of those who do not care enough. It is a wake-up call.
And that, more than anything, is why it is well worth reading.
Okay, little coffee beans, that’s it
for today. What are your thoughts? Have you read the series? Which book is your
favorite? I will be posting two more discussions on A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE
EVENTS, and I will try to encompass as much as possible, but if there is a
character or place or theme from ASOUE that you especially want me to discuss and
are concerned I won’t cover, feel free to let me know. As always, I welcome
your feedback.
Post the picture on your blog. (Since I
have no clue where the original picture is, and I’m too lazy busy to
track it down, I’ll just use the one on Victoria’s blog.)
Answer the questions.
Tag up to 12 bloggers.
Make up 10 questions for the other
bloggers.
What
is your favorite Christmas treat?
Can I say all of them? No? Okay. I think
I’m going to have to parrot Victoria and pick wassail because I can never get
enough of it. As a general rule, we tend to make it only around Christmastime,
and I might get a chance to have some on maybe one or two other occasions
throughout the year, which means it’s a pretty big deal for me when it’s
available. I also love German apple pie, but I make it every Thanksgiving as
well, so it’s not specifically a Christmas treat. So yes, wassail, final answer.
Are
there any special traditions that your family has to celebrate Christmas?
Every Christmas morning, my sister, my
cousins, and I get up early and scurry downstairs to open goody-stuffed
stockings in the blue half-light of the morning. (Who says you have to quit
this tradition when you become an adult?) Then my aunt cooks an asparagus bake
(at least, I think that’s what it is), and it’s super yummy.
At around ten o’clock, once all the sane
people drag themselves out of bed and consume enough coffee to reenter the land
of the living, we gather around the ginormous Christmas tree in the living room
and listen to the Christmas story before we dig into the presents. After oohing
and ahing over everyone’s loot, we retreat to our respective burrows where we
nap or eat candy or binge-watch Doctor Who until around three o’clock when we troop
downstairs to perform our solemn duty and devour the Christmas feast. Later on
in the evening, we usually peek at what’s in theaters and, if there’s something
we want to watch, we’ll head out, but it’s not exactly a set-in stone
tradition. Sometimes we go the day before or the day after.
Of course, this year, since we’re not going home for Christmas, my sister and I will have to pick and choose which
traditions we will be able to follow and which ones we will have to reimagine. For
instance, we won’t be going to theaters on Christmas Day, but we do plan to see
THE FORCE AWAKENS on my birthday (New Year’s Day).
Do
you enjoy getting presents for you friends and family? Do you buy your gifts or
go the homemade route?
I love getting presents for the people I
care about, but sometimes it can be stressful because I always worry I’ll get someone
something they don’t want. Usually I buy gifts because I don’t have a whole lot
of extra time for crafty things, but one year I bound books for people, and one
year I went on a major knitting kick and made a couple pairs of mittens for my
mom. You’d think, since I’m a writer and a creative person, that I would feel
more confident in giving handmade gifts, but I find it a lot less stressful
just to shop for pre-made items.
Is
it cold where you live? Have you ever had a white Christmas?
In Maine, where I used to live, it can get
super cold, sometimes even down to the single digits (Fahrenheit). It’s very
common to have a white Christmas there. Here, though, I’m not sure of the exact
temperature range. I just know that it’s a fair deal warmer. A few days ago, we
had a teeny tiny snowfall but, sadly, nothing accumulated.
What’s
on your Christmas list this year?
Books.
Coffee.
More books.
A Lamborghini.
Coffee.
Even more books.
Another Lamborghini.
Other books.
More coffee.
Gift card to a bookstore.
Gift card to a coffee shop.
One million dollars.
You get the picture.
What’s
your favorite Christmas song?
What
does your Christmas tree look like?
Like amazingness.
Okay, so my iPod camera isn't spectacular. But trust me, the tree does look better in person.
Also, look at all those presents!
What
are you reading in December? (Anything festive?)
I haven’t read anything festive this
December, but I have been binge-reading A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. Also, I
plan to re-read Jane Austen's PERSUASION because it’s kind of my own personal tradition to at
least start it around Christmas every year. And, of course, I’ll tackle
whatever books I get for Christmas.
Are
you an organized little elf or are you still shopping/preparing on Christmas
Eve?
Let me just point out that I am almost 5’7”
tall, so “little elf” might not be an accurate description of me. I’m more like
a Mirkwood elf. That said, yes, all my pre-Christmas shopping is done. Usually
I end up buying a few more odds and ends after Christmas because I always
forget to add someone to my list and then I remember and freak out a little and
rush to the store to get something cool but not completely useless for them.
But I do try to finish the majority of my shopping two weeks in advance so I’m
not panicking about last minute gift buying and wrapping because honestly, why
kill the holidays with unnecessary stress? Stress can come after, like when you
realize you forgot to buy a gift for your best friend (not that I’ve ever done
that, but it could happen).
How
early do you start to get into the Christmas spirit?
Pretty much right after I finish eating
Thanksgiving dinner.
Do
you make any Christmas crafts? Decorations? Send physical Christmas cards?
No, sorry, I believe you have mistaken me
for an interesting person. On some level, I’d like to be that cool crafty girl who
sends homemade cards to everyone, but I have neither the budget nor the
motivation, so I’ll just have to stick to being mildly jealous of those who do.
What’s
the menu for Christmas Day?!
Food. (Bet you never saw THAT coming.)
Okay, in all seriousness, we’re making
ham, mandarin orange salad, Christmas salad, stuffing, corn pudding, and probably
a few other things that I’m forgetting. We’re also making pie (tri-berry and
German apple). Our fridge is a little bit full right now (translation: GAH,
WHAT DO WE DO? THERE’S NOT ENOUGH SPACE!), and I think we might end up eating
leftovers until December 2016, so yeah.
What
makes it FEEL like Christmas to you? (Weather, specific tradition, food, smell,
person, etc.?)
Honestly, the air smells different when it
gets colder, and the world just has this blue and grey cast to it in December.
It feels rather nostalgic, in a good but painful way. It’s like this every
year.
Do
you have relatives coming? Excited? Nervous?
Nope, I have no relatives coming for
Christmas day. My dad’s twin and his wife live relatively close to me, and we’ll
probably meet up with them sometime after Christmas, but that’s it.
What
famous Christmas character do you most identify with? (Scrooge, Elf, Tiny Tim,
the Grinch, Santa, etc.)
Umm, maybe Elf because sometimes I get
obnoxiously excited about Christmas.
If
you were to start a new Christmas tradition, what would it be?
I think it would be a nice tradition to
buy an entire bookstore every year, just for me. I’m not sure how we’d fit that
into our budget, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
What
Christmas movies do you like to watch this time of year or what’s your
favorite?
Most years we watch IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
on Christmas Eve, so I’d have to say that one is my favorite.
What’s
your favorite Christmasy book or book with a favorite Christmasy part?
Would you doubt my love of Christmas if I
said I didn’t have one? It’s weird, because as much as I get excited about
Christmas, I enjoy experiencing it firsthand rather than consuming it secondhand
through media. I’m not a huge fan of Christmas-themed stories, so I tend to
avoid them. (Probably the main reason why I enjoy IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE is that
I’ve watched it with family so many times, it’s become almost a scrapbook of
memories.) I think if someone wrote a Christmas novel with tragedy and betrayal
and murder, I would be down for that, but most Christmas stories are too happy
feely and gold-colored and Christmas for me is blue and muted so they just don’t
fit the mood.
Well, that’s it little coffee beans. I’m
not going to think of new questions or nominate anyone today because Christmas
is so close, and I imagine a lot of you will be busy. But, if you really want
to do this tag, by all means, knock yourself out.
Oh, and by the way, MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY
LITTLE COFFEE BEANS, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Note:Last week I began my analysis of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS by
discussing the first three books. Today I’ll be talking
about the next three. Also, in case you’d like to read more of my caffeine-induced
ramblings, here’s a link to my guest post on Opal’s lovely blog.
Warning: This will be a VERY SPOILERY
discussion of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. VERY SPOILERY.
For the most part, books 3-7 in A SERIES
OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS follow the same basic pattern as book 2. Mr. Poe places the
Baudelaire children in a new home after their previous guardian situation turns
out to be a no-go. Then, while the children try to remain optimistic, Olaf
shows up and wreaks havoc. With the exception of Uncle Monty’s home in THE
REPTILE ROOM, the environments are already less than optimal before Olaf appears.
And, of course, each book ends with the children needing a new home.
Mr.
Poe. While books 2-7 do follow the same basic plot formula, the
characters have plenty of room to grow and/or change. For instance, in books
1-3, Mr. Poe seems relatively willing to dig up what he deems to be a nice, new
home for the children, but THE MISERABLE MILL marks the part where even that small
willingness dwindles. If it weren’t bad enough that he had initially dropped
the Baudelaires off with a man whose relation to the children he couldn’t
remember (THE BAD BEGINNING), now he deposits the children at a lumber mill run
by a man whose name he does not even know and whose face he has never seen. At
this part of the story, also, he begins to spend less time making sure the
children acclimate well. And his noticeable absence leaves the children open to
exploitation. Were Mr. Poe invested in the Baudelaires’ lives even a tiny bit
more, the children could be spared a great deal of suffering.
Likewise, at the boarding school in THE
AUSTERE ACADEMY and at the penthouse in THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR, Mr. Poe performs
the very least he can of his duties and dumps the children off before hurrying
away to deal with other “important” things. Given what has continually happened
to the children in their new homes, you would think he would do more to make extra
sure that they remain safe and protected. Instead, he cares less and less.
Ironically, the point where he becomes Mulctuary Money’s Vice President in
Charge of Orphan Affairs (at the beginning of THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR) marks the
point where he pretty much stops helping the orphans at all.
The
Hypnosis. What I didn’t quite realize as a child
was that ASOUE tracks the gradual effects, both negative and positive, of prolonged
trauma on young people. I will cover this more in my next discussion, but for
now I want to talk about Klaus’s hypnosis and how it might tie in with this.
Twice Count Olaf’s associates hypnotize
Klaus and use him to hurt both Phil (a worker at the Mill) and Charlie
(co-owner of the mill). Of course, in real life, hypnosis is a little different
than is commonly portrayed in movies and literature. Someone who is hypnotized
will not obey orders to perform an act they would not ordinarily do willingly.
In other words, if you are not a killer at heart, hypnosis cannot make you a
killer. Now, it’s possible that Lemony Snicket (or should I say, Daniel Handler) was not privy to this information while he was writing THE MISERABLE
MILL. But what if he did know? If we are to assume that Lemony Snicket was
aware of this fact, is it possible that he was trying to say that deep down,
Klaus wanted to hurt the people who didn’t care enough about him (and
consequently, by not caring enough, contributed to his torment)—that the dark
and bitter parts of him are being brought to life through hypnosis? Just
something to think about.
Sir.
Sir, the children’s guardian in THE MISERABLE MILL, sees them as both a burden
and an asset. He is not willing to treat them any better than he treats his
workers, and he does not treat his workers well at all.
The onus of finding out whether Sir would
be a good guardian or a failure is on Mr. Poe, which means Mr. Poe should do his
research. And it wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out that Sir feeds his
workers gum for lunch after not providing breakfast or that he only pays them in
useless coupons. Naturally, if Mr. Poe knew that, it would be worse than
negligence to leave the children with a man like Sir. But the fact that Mr. Poe
isn’t expecting Sir to put the children to hard labor does not negate the fact
that it would be wise for him to see how the mill is run and to see whether the
employees are happy or not. That alone would give him a decent idea of Sir’s
character. Instead, it seems that Mr. Poe eagerly dumps the children off on the
first available person and thinks no more about it. And I doubt I need to tell
you how irresponsible that is.
Charles
and Jerome. While Charles, from THE MISERABLE
MILL, is not the children’s guardian, he is their guardian’s business partner,
and he is in a perfect position to witness how they are being treated and to do
something about it. The very least he could do is call the police or inform Mr.
Poe that the children are being underfed and overworked, which is, by the way,
ILLEGAL. Although he is polite and nice and gives the Baudelaires small snacks
from time to time, his lack of action makes him complicit in Sir’s abuse of the
children. His spinelessness and his avoidance of difficulties coupled with his
surface kindness and his compassion, do not make him any less of a bad guy
because the end result remains the same—his complacency puts the children in
danger.
Jerome, on the other hand, is the children’s guardian for a time
(in THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR), so he is responsible for making sure they stay safe
and well. And his negligence is inexcusable. He has such an aversion to
arguing, even when it is necessary, that he will not even tell a waiter that
no, he doesn’t like salmon, so no, he doesn’t want a salmon puff. Even when he recognizes
that the children are genuinely concerned about Olaf masquerading as Gunther the
auctioneer, he does not press the issue because he does not want to argue with
Esme and Olaf/Gunther. When the children show that they are determined to find
and rescue the Quagmire triplets no matter the cost, he surrenders guardianship
of them because he does not want to argue and he is not willing to do what he
knows he needs to do, which is take care of the poor hurting children. Even
when he knows they have no one, even when he had promised to take care of them
when he took them on in the first place, he does not care enough to help them
out in their time of need. Incidentally, he is the last guardian that the
children ever have (since I don’t count the village in THE VILE VILLAGE as a
guardian—and I’ll explain why next week).
The
Baudelaire Children. Okay, I’ve spent a lot of time
discussing the various adults who have failed the Baudelaires, but it’s time I cover
the children themselves. Despite all they have been through, I think it’s safe
to say that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have unbreakable spirits. When they have
to do scary things for the sake of others or for the sake of survival, such as Sunny
climbing up an elevator shaft with her teeth or Violet scaling a tower using a
homemade grappling hook and homemade rope, they do so willingly. If it weren’t
for their intelligence, their quick-thinking, and their resourcefulness, they wouldn’t
have escaped Olaf’s clutches even the first time. Basically, their ability to
think on their feet is the only thing that keeps them alive and free—not the
adults, not anyone else, just their innate ability to function no matter what.
While we know they have faced—and
continue to face—a great deal of suffering, and while we know that suffering
has left its mark on their souls, we never see them wallow. Even Lemony Snicket
frequently acknowledges that they are braver and smarter and stronger than he
is and that he would crumble under the pressures they withstand. True, the
Baudelaires would benefit greatly from external support, such as a guardian who
actually cares, and I pity them for having to suffer so very very much throughout
the course of the series, but the fact that they have survived what they have survived
and still manage to get out of bed (so to speak) every morning is phenomenal. Even
in adversity, they thrive—Violet with her inventions, Klaus with his booksmarts
and research skills, and Sunny with her fearsome toothiness and her culinary
talents. They are some of the best role models you could find, and I am happy
that I spent my childhood looking up to them.
Okay, little coffee beans, that’s it
for today. What are your thoughts? Have you read the series? Which book is your
favorite? I will be posting three more discussions on A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE
EVENTS, and I will try to encompass as much as possible, but if there is a
character or place or theme from ASOUE that you especially want me to discuss and
are concerned I won’t cover, feel free to let me know. As always, I welcome
your feedback.
If you’ve been reading my blog for the
past month or so, you’ll know that I just recently moved to a different state.
Since I relocated from Maine to Virginia, travel back and forth can be an
interesting affair. Plane tickets, especially last-minute ones, tend to be
expensive, and driving there and back presents a significant time investment. Not
to mention the fact that my sister (who I live with now) has to work on
Christmas Eve. So, all that to say, I won’t be going home this time around.
This will be the first year either of us
has been away for Christmas, and it will take some adjusting. Of course, we
will try to maintain some of our traditions, like binge-watching Doctor Who and
waking up to goody-stuffed stockings. We will make wassail and buy sparkling
grape juice (and we’ll cross out the “non” on the label where it says “non-alcoholic”
because yeah, we live on the edge like that). A couple weeks ago my sister
bought a Christmas tree and brought it back strapped to the top of my little
Ford Focus, and now it graces our kitchen with its loveliness (the tree, not
the car). So we’re doing all right.
But in case you were wondering, Virginia
is not Maine. It’s not really anything like Maine. It has different grocery
stores and different restaurants and different people. Maine is rather rural,
and the county where I spent most of my childhood is known for being one of the
poorest counties in the US. Now I live near the richest county in the country,
so saying things are different here would be a bit of an understatement. In
Maine, winter has always been a snowy affair. Last year was especially bad, and
the snowbanks at the ends of the driveway got to be taller than me (I’m almost
5’7”). It felt like I spent more time shoveling than breathing. Here, though,
the prospects of having a white Christmas are next to nil.
So yes, Christmas here will not be the
same as Christmas there. I will miss the magical feeling of looking out the
window of my cousins’ house and seeing, yet again, all those fluffy snowflakes
floating down to kiss the earth on Christmas day. I will miss the sugar cookies
my aunt usually makes and the grand selection of pies in the pantry. I will
miss watching It’s a Wonderful Life
on Christmas Eve with my cousins, and I will miss waking up early and sneaking
downstairs with those same cousins to open our stockings in the dark even
though none of us are little children anymore. I will miss the people.
This year the two of us will have to forge
our own Christmas path. It will be much quieter here, since even my sister’s
college friends will be home spending the holiday with their families. We’ll
have to occupy ourselves some other way. We could take a walk among the trees
around our cul-de-sac and pretend the branches are laden with snow instead of
deer ticks. We could make imaginary snow men. We could even throw pieces of
store-bought ice at each other and pretend we’re having a snowball fight. The possibilities
are endless.
Either way, we’ll be okay. True, we’ll end
up missing out on what the rest of our family is doing, and sure, it will be
rather quiet here. But my sister and I haven’t forgotten the main reason why we
celebrate Christmas in the first place. More than family and presents,
Christmas is about gratitude—it’s about celebrating the fact that Jesus came to
earth to pay the ultimate price for our sins. And I can’t be lonely when I’m
thinking about that sort of love.
What about you, little coffee beans? What
are your plans for this Christmas?
Starting on that fateful Christmas day
years and years ago when I unwrapped the first ten books of Lemony Snicket’s A
SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS and, incidentally, fell down the staircase while
reading THE REPTILE ROOM, this series was a staple of my childhood. As a young
person, I connected very deeply with the stories, but only now, as an adult, am
I beginning to understand why. So I figured I’d share my revelations with you. You’re
welcome.
From the very beginning of the series,
the Baudelaire children become forcibly acquainted with misery—long, drawn-out
misery. When I was younger, I sometimes wondered why Lemony Snicket chose to
cover such dark subject matter in a series of children’s books. Like, why not
write about happy things? Don’t get me wrong—I really enjoyed the stories. I
just wondered, is all. (I believe that question came from this sense I had as a
child that I could handle much harder things than most little people could. I
was rather pompous back then, I think.) Now I get it, though. On the one hand, I
would hazard a guess that this series is meant to help adults understand what
it is like for a kid to experience suffering, but on the other hand, it is also
meant for kids who are suffering to see that they are not alone, that there is someone
out there who not only understands but cares.
Mr.
Poe. After the children lose their parents and their home in a
terrible fire, their parents’ banker, Mr. Poe, is charged with finding a good home
for them. He fails miserably at this job—in fact, all thirteen books in this
series are pretty much a tribute to the fact that he is a horrible
guardian-seeker (that’s totally a proper term). While he does take the
Baudelaires in for a while before handing them off to their distant relative,
Count Olaf, he offers no true support. When the children come to him with their
concerns about Count Olaf, he shuts them down and does not bother to look into
the matter, even though Klaus tells him that Olaf struck him.
Worse still, Mr. Poe supposedly has a
chronic cough, but I believe his cold his more habit than anything since it
seems that whenever one of the children has something big and important to say,
something that might involve difficulty and action, Mr. Poe breaks down into
one of his infamous coughing fits and then changes the subject.
Mr. Poe is the classic adult figure
that so many suffering children in real life must face. He is the man who
claims to care and has been charged with caring but does not really care. As
long as it does not take too much effort, he will help out, but when it comes
to exerting himself or digging deep or actually trying, he won’t do anything.
He’s too busy with his bank or he’s too busy with coughing and he just not
invested enough. Worse, he won’t take the children seriously because they are
just that—children. Every time the Baudelaires warn him about Count Olaf, now
that they know his evil plans, no matter how often they have been right before,
he brushes them off as being too distraught or as having a tendency to see
Count Olaf everywhere. His reluctance to listen to them is often what puts them
in the most danger, and every time, without fail, Count Olaf escapes after
being exposed and Mr. Poe does nothing to stop him. Absolutely nothing.
Like Mr. Poe, many adults downplay what
children have to say because they are children or because they have been
through something traumatic or just because. Adults can assume that, since
children are young, they need not be trusted or listened to. So too often
children with legitimate struggles, children who need help, get swept under the
rug because let’s face it, kids with issues are a hassle and why bother with
all that effort—all that work—when you can just cough into your handkerchief
loudly enough to drown out the sound of suffering?
Count
Olaf. Count Olaf is pain; he is the antagonist; he is the constant
source of misery that follows the Baudelaire children around everywhere. He is
the one who taints everything, the one who takes even happy moments and twists
them into something awful. And no matter how hard the children try, they can
never escape him. Perhaps, if they had had actual help from those in a position
of authority and power, they would have been able to live happy childhoods. But
no one cared enough to truly save them from Count Olaf. Instead, the vast
majority of adults in the Baudelaires’ lives offered Band-Aid solutions, patted
themselves on their backs, and left it at that.
But Olaf is also the adult who sees the
children only as a sum of their misfortune. True, I know that he looks down on
them and so chooses to talk down to them, but I don’t think it’s an accident
that he refers to the Baudelaires as orphans, as if orphans are a different species
of people. That’s something else that adults often do to children—label them
and see them only as the sum of their suffering.
Aunt
Josephine. Aunt Josephine is so afraid of
everything, she won’t even let herself or those around her live. She allows her
fear to control her, and it puts the children, who are under her protection, in
danger. Instead of taking care of them, which is her job, she puts her own life
first. She is terrified of door knobs and welcome mats and telephones, but she
isn’t frightened by the things that should truly scare her, like the fact that she
lives in a house literally suspended on rickety stilts over Lake Lachrymose.
Maybe if she had stopped caring so much about the things that couldn’t hurt
her, and maybe if she had started focusing on the things that still could, she
would have been able to be a proper guardian. Maybe if she hadn’t been such a sniveling
coward, to the point where she couldn’t even bring herself to use the phone in
order to call the police, she wouldn’t have sold out the children to Count Olaf
in order to save her own skin.
But I think in some ways it’s easier
for her to be afraid of the small manageable things, the ones that—deep down—she
knows can’t really harm her, so she doesn’t have to think about the big things,
the ones that can harm her, the ones she feels she can’t avoid. Why else would
she live teetering on the brink of a precipice yet refuse to use the stove
because it might catch fire?
Ultimately, it seems to me that A
SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is a veiled lesson about the many ways in which
adults fail children—a muted harangue of sorts. This is why I especially
appreciate the fact that Lemony Snicket pulls in so much intelligent material,
as though he is telling his audience how he believes that they are more than
just young people, that they matter, and that they are smarter than adults
often assume. While he explains bigger vocabulary words along the way (which
really helped me when I was a young person, even though sometimes his
explanations wouldn’t count for proper definitions) he doesn’t make the mistake
of assuming that, because children might need a few words defined for them, they can’t understand big things like death, loss, suffering, and
abandonment.
Finally, beyond the hard, powerful
themes, Lemony Snicket can’t seem to keep from pulling in literary and
classical references, like the “Virginian Wolfsnake” (bonus points if you get
that) and Brett Helquist’s illustration of Damocles Dock depicting an arch with
a sword hanging over the Baudelaire children’s heads (even more points if you
get that reference without clicking this link here)—all of which serve to deepen the
story.
Okay, little coffee beans, that’s it
for today. I will be covering the next three books in a week or two. In the
meantime, what are your thoughts? Have you read the series? Do you
agree/disagree with my analysis? What literary/classical references have you
noticed in the books? Which installment is your favorite? Which character is
your favorite?
