Book the Thirteenth in A Series of Unfortunate Events

I have a confession to make.

This book has set on my shelf since it was published in 2006, unread. I read each of the others as they came out, discussing each volume seriously with my eldest niece who discovered them soon after she started to read and was devouring them quickly in order to catch up with the publishing schedule. But, when this one came out, I put it aside and didn’t read it right away – or at all, until today.

Why? Had I been kidnapped and brainwashed by evil clowns on the lam from the VFD? Was I forced to labor in Mines of Mystery where there was little light for reading by? Was my bookcase invaded by poison-spewing reptiles who threatened to bite me if I reached for Snicket’s latest tome?

Was I tired of the series, of Lemony Snicket’s inimitable style, the vocabulary definitions (“definitions” here meaning the hilarious meanings he gives to words and the even more hilarious ways that he uses the word in a sentence) and turns of phrase, the way the plot imperils small children and doesn’t pull punches, killing off anyone who offers them succor?

No.

I just didn’t want this series to end.

My father-in-law tells the story of when he was a little boy, living in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation in WWII, a time when you did not want to live in the Philippines. There was a lot of danger and not a lot of food: the Japanese threw rice into Manilla Bay where it was heavily polluted, and it became quickly contaminated, and people still dove into the bay to fish it out because they were so desperate for food. Wealthy relatives gifted his family – just his mother and him, his father having died before the war – a can of sardines. Instead of eating the sardines right away, they put them up on a shelf where they could see them, to eat “later.” Gazing up at the can of sardines, the anticipation of eating the sardines “later”, was almost as good, he said, as the actual taste of the sardines when they finally consumed them.

So I refused to read the last book.

But I felt it was appropriate to write about this book for the penultimate post of my 365Books series. And to write about it, I had to read it.

I made this sacrifice for you, dear readers.

And The End did not disappoint.

The book opens with the Baudelaire orphans adrift on a small boat, accompanied by Count Olaf who holds them in thrall with a harpoon with a single remaining bolt and a reserve of a poisonous fungi that proves fatal within hours. Following an overwhelming storm, the boat capsizes and washes ashore on an ocean shelf filled with other flotsam. The Baudelaire sibling’s relief at being alive is tempered by discovering that Count Olaf has also washed ashore – with harpoon and fungi – and is also alive.

The siblings are rescued by a child who lives on the island. The child, Friday, is unique, one of two people who were not also castaways from previous storms, because she was born on the island. Everyone else, with one exception, came there by chance. The other exception is Ishmael, the leader of the castaways, who had been there when they started to inadvertently arrive. The castaways all wear matching white robes with pockets, accented by small seashell cask containing a coconut cordial which is quite strong, and saps their will to leave the island, or do anything else that might cause them to stand up to Ishmael. Ishmael uses peer pressure to maintain his leadership position, consistently telling the castways when they suggest something that might upend the status quo that, “I don’t want to tell you what to do but…” and then explaining that the other castaways might not enjoy a change in menu, or a fan that cools the air around some of them but not all of them, or that they might become depressed if their life stories were written, since their life story is that they ended up on this remote island, far from home. And the castaways don’t do what Ishmael disapproves of.

Luckily, Ishmael allows the children to join his tribe, so long as they wear the white robes and don’t do anything to rock the boat. The children, while not excited to be part of tribe that follows their leader so blindly, prioritize a bit of respite over the variety in life that comes from exercise of free will. So they don the white robes, secretly hiding their most prized possessions – the purple ribbon with which Violet ties back her hair while inventing things, the book and pen with which Klaus records the world around them, and a tiny whisk that Sunny uses to whip up wondrous foods – in their pockets.

I was going to tell you more of the story but I don’t want to spoil the ending.¹

Let me just say that the Baudelaires aren’t the only ones keeping secrets, that Olaf isn’t finished causing trouble, that they are reunited with and then separated from two separate friends and protectors, face certain death, and then find and lose the wisdom of their lost parents.

When I finished reading the book this morning, my husband asked me what it was that I liked so much about Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. I like his command of language and the way he defines words and phrases in ways that children can understand. For example, in this book, the children are asked a question that they don’t want to give a truthful answer to – and yet, they don’t want to lie either. Klaus finally answers, “It depends on how you look at it” an answer that, Snicket tells us, is a great way of getting out of answering a question. I like how, when the narrator – who is also the author – gives a definition of a word, some of the examples he provides reveal what his life has been like. For example, when he defines “an acquired taste” as “something you don’t like the first few times you eat it” and then casually mentioned that the last time he was shipwrecked, he had the fortune to wash aboard an oil tanker, where he enjoyed a gourmet feast.. Wait, what does Snicket do, that he takes being shipwrecked so casually?

But I think the thing I enjoy most about these books is that they are so subversive, a word here that means planting ideas in children’s heads, those ideas being that they need to be independent and courageous and not depend on adults because adults can be so undependable. They don’t believe you when you tell them that the man declaring himself your guardian is a fraud who is kidnapping you in hopes of marrying you – although you are underage – to get your vast inheritance. They let you down again and again, either by turning out to be evil or just selfish or forgetful or overly trusting or getting murdered. Or, as in this book, adults follow a leader blindly, letting him use peer pressure to keep them firmly under his control in the status quo, isolated from civilization, unable to try new things or improve their situation – or worse!

For a moment I wondered what the children who grew up reading these books at an impressionable age have turned out like – and then it hit me: they end up like my niece who read them with me at an impressionable age. Fiercely independent. Able to take care of herself. Unafraid to go new places, face new challenges, stand up to authority.

These kids are awesome!

But how did they take the ending of the series, an ending that was so traumatic to me?

I suspect Snicket knew that children faced possible disappointment when the story ended and so, clever Snicket, refused to end the Baudelaire sibling’s story. The quote below encapsulates it perfectly but it comes late in the book, so I’m going to leave a few blanks to avoid spoiling the plot:

One could say, in fact, that no story really has a beginning, and that no story really has an end, as all of the world’s stories are as jumbled as the items in the arboretum, with their details and secrets all heaped together so that the whole story, from beginning to end, depends on how you look at it. We might even say that the world is always in medias res – a Latin phrase which means “in the midst of things” or “in the middle of a narrative – and that it is impossible to to solve any mystery, or find the root of any trouble, and so The End is really the middle of the story, as many people in this history will live long past the close of Chapter 13, or even the beginning of the story as a new child arrives at the chapter’s end. But one cannot sit in the midst of things forever. Eventually one must face that the end is near, and the end of The End is quite near indeed, so if I were you I would not read the end of The End, as it contains the end of [spoiler hidden] but also the end of a brave and noble [spoiler hidden], and the end of [another key plotline]. The end of The End contains all these ends, and that does not depend on how you look at it, so it might be best for you to stop looking at The End before the end of The End arrives, and to stop reading The End before you read the end, as the stories that end in The End, that began in The Bad Beginning are beginning to end now.

Oh, Snicket, I knew I’d miss you.

And I already do.

VFD.

1. I had to slip this in for my husband who often used that in his childhood book reports and quotes it at me whenever I tell him I am writing a 365Books post. ↩︎