Discussion: A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS // Books 10-12

Note: Over the past three Mondays, I’ve discussed the first nine books of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS (the links are here, here, and here). Today I’ll be talking about the next three.

 

Warning: This will be a VERY SPOILERY discussion of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS. VERY SPOILERY.

 

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE // THE GRIM GROTTO // THE PENULTIMATE PERIL

Hopefully, most of you have never been punched in the nose before. Some of you have (I’m sorry). But for those of you who haven’t, let me tell you what it’s like. Between the time when knuckle collides with cartilage and the time when the pain sinks in, there is a moment where you feel this strange numbness. During that moment your body tries to decide what it wants to do—if it will drop you, weak-kneed and half conscious, or if it will let you shake it off and fight back. Of course, you know something bad has happened, but it hasn’t sunk in yet. And, in the meantime, you don’t know exactly what you’re feeling. For the Baudelaire children, these three books are like that instant before the pain hits.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have been through so much, but they have always had each other. THE CARNIVEROUS CARNIVAL, though, ends with their traumatic separation—Sunny trapped in Count Olaf’s clutches, and Violet and Klaus hurtling down a mountain pass to their seemingly inevitable deaths. It feels like, from that moment till the moment THE PENULTIMATE PERIL ends, the world is just ringing from the force of a great blow while the Baudelaires wait for the full weight of the pain to start.

Loss of Innocence. In each installment of A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, the children struggle against evil. But that struggle changes over time. At first, they only face external evils—the people who hurt them and the people who fail to help them—and those evils are easy to recognize. Yet as the series progresses, the categorization of evil and not-evil becomes harder. Though they have always considered themselves to be the good guys, they begin to notice a certain measure of evil in their own hearts. They discover how relatively easy it is to lie, to commit arson, and to do other morally reprehensible activities. Admittedly, they only do these things for a good cause. But they are also beginning to realize that a “good” justification doesn’t take away the guilt, or the wrong.

Now that they are entering premature adulthood, nothing is quite so black and white as it once was. People who are supposed to be noble don’t always do the right thing, and sometimes the villains surprise everyone with good deeds. Worse still, the children themselves do not know if they are more noble than villainous or if they are becoming just as bad as Count Olaf. They have fought so long and so hard, and they have survived so much, but life is finally taking its toll on them. They are becoming cynical and jaded.

The Triplets. Frank, Ernest, and Dewey physically represent the Baudelaires’ moral struggle. Frank and Dewey are good guys, while Ernest is bad, but the triplet are identical. Which means, try as they might, the Baudelaires can’t tell good and evil apart. Instead, they have to rely on their own judgment, and sometimes that judgment is flawed.

With the triplet quandary comes another hardship. Like in THE VILE VILLAGE (with Hector’s hot air balloon), the children are offered hope—hope for a good life, a way to escape all the evil around them and in them. Dewey wants to take them under his wing and see to it that all their needs are met, and for once, he doesn’t seem like the type to fail them. This time, though, the children are the ones to destroy this hope. Of all the awful things that have happened to them, this is the worst: they accidentally kill Dewey Denouement. And I’m not sure they ever figure out how to forgive themselves.

True, yes, Dewey’s death is not their fault, and if anyone is to be blamed, it should be Count Olaf. Count Olaf is the one who shoved the harpoon gun into the Baudelaire orphans hands without making sure they had a good grip on it before he let go. But no one ever tells the children that it’s not their fault they dropped the gun, it’s not their fault the gun fired when it hit the ground, and it’s definitely not their fault that the harpoon happened to kill Dewey. Regardless of how little they deserve the blame, they feel as if the fault is their own.

Failures. In THE PENULTIMATE PERIL, the children have to face almost everyone who has ever failed them since the time Mr. Poe sent them to live with Count Olaf. They run into Sir and Charles from THE MISERABLE MILL. They run into the teachers and headmaster from THE AUSTERE ACADEMY. They run into villagers from THE VILE VILLAGE. And they run into Jerome Squalor and Justice Strauss who apologize profusely for the way they have wronged the children, and who tell them just how much they want to help this time around. Once more, though, despite all their best intentions, Jerome and Justice Strauss fail the Baudelaires just as badly as before. It hurts more this time because Jerome and Justice Strauss really were trying and it still wasn’t enough. At the end of THE PENULTIMATE PERIL, it seems evident that no one will ever be able to save the Baudelaires, not from Count Olaf, not from misery, and certainly not from themselves.

The Hotel. The Hotel Denouement itself is a huge milestone in the Baudelaire children’s lives. Before now, they have always been fighting to find someplace safe to live, somewhere away from all the evil in this world. And they come to the hotel in hopes of protecting it—the last safe V.F.D location. Instead, they end up burning it to the ground. While this act of arson is necessary as a signal to V.F.D., and while the hotel had been compromised anyway, it is still significant. In a way, it is the physical communication of the one main, bitter thing the children have begun to realize over THE SLIPPERY SLOPE, THE GRIM GROTTO, and THE PENULTIMATE PERIL. For them, most of all, there is no place truly safe.

Even the most secure locations get compromised. Even the best people with the best intentions fail. They come to this hotel, and they find that every living person who has ever hurt them is staying there, as if to rub it in. And finally, it just cements their sinking suspicion that, not only will Olaf destroy their happiness and safety, but they will help him.

 

Okay, little coffee beans, that’s it for today. What are your thoughts? Have you read the series? Which book is your favorite?