Alex Dombrowski

Alex Dombrowski      

Series of Unfortunate Events: #3 The Wide Window

Lemony Snicket

Fantasy

Holiday

57

 

1.      The three orphans Violet, Klaus and Sunny meet their new guardian after the unfortunate death of their Uncle Monty. Aunt Josephine is a rather odd woman. Her husband died in Lake Lachrymose where he was eaten by a type of leech that lives in the lake. Because of this, Aunt Josephine has many fears about the lake, which is ironic because she lives on a cliff side looking over it. In addition, she is scared of many of her household possessions like her telephone and the radiator. The orphans settle in to the house quickly and find their aunt is fascinated with grammar; she has a large library full of books on grammar. The Baudelaires hear about a hurricane that will occur on the lake, so Aunt Josephine and the three children go shopping for supplies. While they are shopping, they meet Captain Sham. He tells them he is the owner of a boat rental company. Violet and Klaus quickly realize that this man is Count Olaf in disguise. They cannot prove that this is Olaf because he has a wooden leg covering the ankle where his tattoo of an eye is. In the middle of the night, there is a large crash. The children rush down to the library where they find their Aunt’s suicide note. The note says their new guardian will be Cpt. Sham. Klaus is very suspicious of the not because it has a lot of grammatical errors in it. He knows that his aunt loved grammar and wouldn’t have made these errors.

2.      I am really enjoying the book, even though I am only half done with it. Snicket creates the most interesting characters in the books. This keeps each book exciting because every new guardian is very unique. Also, he defines words that you may not know so you don’t have to look anything up or be confused. The book has many exciting twists. For example, I didn’t expect aunt Josephine to kill herself, I thought Olaf would have done it or made it obvious. Snicket also does a very job keeping Count Olaf different. In every book, he pretends to be a different person.

3.      I think the major theme is desire to escape. I think it is this because the orphans are always trying to get away from a bad place or person. In every book, so far Olaf has tormented them and made them want to get away from him. Usually the places they go don’t have the best conditions: by that I mean their guardian is mean or insane, or their guardian is killed making them want to get away from the place. In this book they want to get away from Olaf because he is disguised as Captain Sham. Olaf  always continues to try to steal their great fortune and that is why the three want to get away from him. Desire to escape is a prominent theme in this book and I expect it to continue throughout the series.

4.      My favorite character is Klaus. He is a very smart boy who loves to read. Since he reads so much, he is extremely intelligent. He usually can get himself and his siblings out of sticky situations because he always knows what to do. Also, he cares for his sisters, He is always looking out for them and teaching them things. In The Wide Window he figures out it couldn’t have been Aunt Josephine who wrote the letter because they were grammatical errors. Only he could have figured that out because he knows grammar so well from reading. These attributes make him my favorite character.

5.      My least favorite character is Count Olaf. He is a greedy man who is always trying to steal the Baudelaire’s fortune. After he met them in the first book, he has always been scheming to steal their money. He will do anything to get their money from trying to marry the eldest girl to killing their real guardian. In this book, I think he killed their aunt because there were grammatical errors in her suicide note. Also, Olaf always tries to pretend to be someone else so the orphans won’t realize it’s him. Unfortunately for him it never works. Olaf is evil to the Baudelaires it is impossible to like him.

6.      My predictions for what are to come next are that the three will confront Captain Sham about being Olaf. To prove that he is Olaf they have to get his wooden leg off to unveil the tattoo. To do so I think they will get him stuck in the lake so he will have to take it off. I also think they may call Mr. Poe back to help them prove that’s its Olaf just like in The Reptile Room. If none of these events occur, it would surprise me a lot.