Death in A Series of Unfortunate Events | 2016

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Death in A Series of Unfortunate Events:

How Lemony Snicket Presents Death to Children

Introduction

I’m sorry to say that the paper you are about to read is extremely unpleasant. It contains the findings of my investigation into the various gruesome death scenes of the juvenile fiction book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Even though the novels are written for preteen children, they include a diverse assortment of graphic content including kidnappings, child abuse, violence, injuries, deaths, near-death experiences, and threats of all of the aforementioned. My research looks at the death scenes in the series, and it is my sad duty to write down the unpleasant findings of the study. Fortunately, there is nothing stopping you from abandoning this paper and reading something happy instead, if you prefer that sort of thing.

The paragraph you have just read is modeled after the back cover of the series’ first book, The Bad Beginning, which humorously cautions the reader not to read it (Figure 1). All of the books in the series have similar “Dear Reader” warning letters on their back covers suggesting that they be avoided at all costs. This gives readers a preview of the series’ writing style and humor before they ever even open a book, and it simultaneously genuinely warns of the dark content that lies in store. And these are just a few of the qualities that make the series unique among children’s literature.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (ASOUE) is the thirteen-book juvenile fiction creation of Lemony Snicket, which is both a pseudonym of the author Daniel Handler and a character in the story who serves as the first-person narrator. The books follow three children named Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire after the death of their parents in a mysterious house fire in the first chapter of the first book, describing their extraordinarily bad luck as they fall into a variety of unfortunate situations. The series was published from September 1999 to October 2006. ASOUE is aimed at children nine to twelve years old, yet the novels contain several gruesome death scenes from the beginning of The Bad Beginning when the protagonists’ parents die in the fire to the end of the thirteenth book The End when the Baudelaires help a pregnant woman give birth as she slowly dies from a poisonous fungus, offering to raise her little girl as their own.

As Lenika Cruz puts it in The Atlantic, “With a plot featuring accidental dismemberment, death by leeches, serial arsonists, and rampant child abuse, A Series of Unfortunate Events seemed to descend from the Grimm’s Fairy Tales tradition of juvenile fiction.” The novels are certainly darker than a lot of other children’s literature, which leads one to wonder how Lemony Snicket manages to make such content palatable and even enjoyable for kids. This is where my research project comes in. Studying all of the dark content of ASOUE would be beyond the reasonable scope of an individual research project, so I decided to take a closer look at the series’ death scenes in particular, investigating strategies Snicket uses to present them and seeking his motives for doing so.

Literature Review

Past research into this topic is limited. Joy Johnson provides a brief, general history of children’s death-related literature in which she explains that little has been said about the subgenre as a whole. Few children’s books with death in them existed until the 70s, and the subgenre has not grown at a particularly fast pace since then (Johnson). The research that does exist on this topic suggests that children’s books that focus primarily on death are often meant to educate them about it, and one study in particular coded children’s literature for specific qualities of death such as its irreversibility and inevitability, the fact that it causes the body to cease functioning, sociocultural practices and beliefs related to it, emotional responses to it, and more (Poling). The most prominent voice, though, within existing research into children’s death-related literature is by far Charles Corr. When he discovered the lack of comprehensive research into the topic, he ran an extensive study comprising multiple installments published in the form of journal articles. Each installment examines a distinct trope or quality within children’s books that deal with death, and the ones that I found particularly relevant to ASOUE were his studies on parents, grandparents, and siblings in children’s death-related literature.

More research on the subject actually comes from the field of psychology. Scholars suggest that books about death are a valuable tool for helping children cope with the death of a loved one because they let them know that they are not alone (Berns, Heath, Hunt, Lowe, Miller 2, Nicholson). Psychologists also explain that understanding death is the foundational and most essential step in the grieving process for children (Perkins, Sardone, Wiseman) because they often lack adequate communication skills and vocabulary to talk about death and how it makes them feel (Miller 1). This is particularly relevant to the study of ASOUE because the series is so well-known for its creative presentation of new vocabulary, which receives from critics both praise for its uniqueness and disapproval for its alleged overuse (Arter, Butt). In relation to the demographic of the series, Aradine explains that children begin to generally understand the concept of around the age of 9 or 10, and DeMinco explains that they start to ponder deep questions of life and death around the age of 12. This, too, is especially relevant to my project because it suggests children will likely view death more complexly by the time they are reading the later novels in the series, which lines up with the increase in dark, graphic content as ASOUE progresses.

Research about the book series itself is even more limited than research on the genre, and it discusses aspects other than the death scenes, such as the series’ postmodernist style (Cruz) and unique presentation of ethical questions (Langbauer). Langbauer suggests that Lemony Snicket intentionally puts forth a new kind of ethics for a new kind of generation through ASOUE, arguing that this could even be his central purpose for writing the books the way he does. This article proved uniquely beneficial to me in my research as its premise became one of the lenses through which I examined the death scenes. Although my specific topic has not been covered in previous studies, I was able to use all of the research I discovered as the foundation for my project, and the notable gap in the existing scholarship let me know that my own research would be of value.

Methodology

The first step in the research process was narrowing down the passages that I would be coding, which meant I needed a strict definition of what the death scenes would look like. I chose scenes based on 3 criteria: the death had to occur during the course of the narrative, the Baudelaires had to know the victim, and they had to either witness the death or discover it immediately after its occurrence. This produced a total of 9 scenes from 8 of the 13 books: (1) The Bad Beginning, (2) The Reptile Room, (3) The Wide Window, (4) The Miserable Mill, (7) The Vile Village, (9) The Carnivorous Carnival, (12) The Penultimate Peril (with 2 separate death scenes), and (13) The End. I did not include deaths that are only referenced in supplemental literature (The Unauthorized Autobiography, The Beatrice Letters, Horseradish, and All the Wrong Questions). The 9 scenes totaled 49 pages of text to code, with 11 victims individually specified plus a scene involving an indeterminate number of victims. I coded these passages for an assortment of qualities, which I divided into 2 categories: characteristics of the death itself and characteristics of its description.

Coding Scheme

The first category, characteristics of the death, consisted of 5 codes:

(1) How many people die in the scene?

(2) Do the Baudelaires see the death occur? Do they see the body of the victim?

(3) Is the person who dies a loved one or an enemy of the Baudelaires?

(4) Is the death a murder or an accident?

(5) Does the death happen slowly or quickly?

The second category, characteristics of the death’s description, began as 8 codes:

(1) Does the scene include humor?

(2) Does it have an illustration?

(3) Does it include one of Snicket’s “a word which here means” definitions?

(4) Is the description more graphic/emotional or more sterile/detached?

(5) Are the Baudelaires’ emotional responses described?

(6) How long is the scene?

(7) Does the scene educate children about death?

(8) Does it talk about the Baudelaires’ sibling relationship?

During the coding process, 3 more codes emerged, falling into the characteristics of the description category:

(1) Does the scene call the Baudelaires “orphans”?

(2) Is Lemony Snicket’s connection to the death or the deceased mentioned?

(3) Does the description include moral/ethical questions?

In addition to coding for these characteristics, I also paid attention to which most often showed up together, looking for trends regarding which strategies Snicket combines. This helped me form a better understanding of his method of presenting death to preteen children.

I implemented my coding scheme by making copies of the passages that including the death scenes and assigning a marker color to highlight words and phrases that fit into each category. In cases where a word or phrase fit multiple categories, I highlighted with the color of the most fitting category and underlined with the colors of any additional categories. I made a handwritten list of my codes using their assigned marker colors to serve as my visual key, which helped me to mentally associate the correct colors with their correlating codes while I was reading through the scenes (Figure 2). I went through the scenes about 3 times each, sometimes 4 on particularly dense or tricky passages. I also made notes in the margins of the copied pages when I saw interesting trends cropping up. When I had finished color coding, I spread the pages out on the floor so I could more clearly identify which trends were most common and which ones most often showed up together. Figures 3, 4, and 5 show examples from the death scene in the series’ final book of what my coded pages looked like when I was finished (Figure 6).

During the coding process, in addition to the new codes that emerged, some of the codes on my initial list evolved as well. I found that coding for whether the described death was slow or quick, for instance, was only beneficial for the descriptions of slow deaths because these were the only ones that actually referred to the duration of the death. Within the humor category, I found myself specifically labeling things like running gags, comic relief, irony, sarcasm, and more in the margins next to words and phrases that I found funny. This was an attempt at making my coding process for the humor code more replicable because I know that humor is generally subjective and therefore difficult to nail down.

I started out looking specifically for the phrase “a word which here means,” which Lemony Snicket regularly uses when he presents definitions for things his child audience might not be familiar with. During the coding process, however, I expanded this to include any definitions of new vocabulary rather than just those that specifically had the phrase “a word which here means.” When I recalled reading the series as a child, I thought it included that specific wording a lot more than it did, and Snicket actually presents new vocabulary in a variety of creative ways.

My code for educational material about death expanded during the coding process as well. I started out coding for the specific qualities listed in the aforementioned psychological study by Poling (inevitability, irreversibility, nonfunctionality, sociocultural practices/beliefs, and emotional responses), but I expanded to include any words or phrases that seemed intended to teach children about death. For example, Snicket uses second-person asides in some of the scenes to talk about what it feels like to lose someone. These passages teach children what dealing with the death of a loved one feels like and fit well within the educational category.

The final category that evolved during the coding process was the one that looked for words and phrases related to the Baudelaires’ sibling relationship. I expanded this slightly to include any words and phrases related to their familial relationship more generally. This allowed me to include mentions of how they missed their parents and how they feel about their various adoptive guardians, and it fell in line with Corr’s research as well.

Findings

Through my research, I discovered several notable trends. For example, as I mentioned before, the scenes grow darker, more graphic, and more complex as the series progresses. Additionally, I found that these more intense scenes are also more likely to include comic relief to make them easier for readers to deal with. Overall, the three codes that drew the most significant results and stood out the most were humor, emotional language, and education about death.

First of all, I found that humor is a common theme in the death scenes in ASOUE, and their most common form of humor is running gags. Snicket utilizes recurring jokes to create a sense of familiarity and comfort throughout the series. For example, every time the character named Mr. Poe shows up in any of the books, he is always coughing, which causes him to take a really long time to say anything and therefore intensifies some of the negative situations the Baudelaires find themselves in. Another example of a running gag is the initials VFD, which stand for a multitude of different phrases including Village of Fowl Devotees (a town that reveres crows), Verbal Fridge Dialogue (a secret code involving the arrangement of the contents of a refrigerator), Very Fancy Doilies (a box of precisely what the name suggests), and a secret organization that remains a mystery for most of the series but eventually turns out to be the Volunteer Fire Department.

In addition to running gags, Snicket uses irony for comedic effect. My favorite example of this is a case of verbal irony when the character named Carmelita spats yells, “Leave us alone! We can find our own way!” while simultaneously running into a wall. The novels, and specifically the death scenes, are rife with situational and dramatic irony as well. The results of my research suggest that Snicket uses humor (running gags, irony, and much more) to provide much-needed comic relief in the midst of dark and gruesome situations, distracting the reader from the heaviness of the events and lightening the mood enough to make the extreme content acceptable. As I mentioned before, humor shows up even more in the darker and more graphic scenes and therefore shows up more later in the series as the content grows increasingly intense.

The second major trend that stood out to me was emotional language, which is one of the main things that makes the death scenes in ASOUE especially graphic and vivid. A notable example of this is when the Baudelaire children find the dead body of their Uncle Monty in the second book, The Reptile Room. Snicket says, “His mouth was slightly agape, as if he were surprised, and his eyes were wide open, but he didn’t appear to see them. His face, usually so rosy, was very, very pale.” Another vivid example is when they accidentally shoot their friend Dewey Denouement in the stomach with a harpoon gun near the end of The Penultimate Peril (the twelfth book in the series). Snicket says, “By now, only his head was above the surface of the water, and his two trembling hands. The children could not see his body, or the harpoon, which was a small mercy.”

Graphic, emotional language such as this creates a blunt and honest depiction of death while simultaneously making it seem so exaggerated as to feel somewhat unrealistic and distant. Like humor, emotional language increases as the series progresses, making the scenes all the more graphic and intense. In other words, Snicket’s death scenes grow more complex as his readers grow older and more mature. Because the novels were published over seven years from 1999 to 2006, the children who started reading them shortly after the first ones came out grew up several years by the time the last ones came out. Therefore, it makes sense that the later books would present death more maturely and complexly to keep up with the emotional and intellectual growth of the series’ readers.

The last preeminent theme that I noticed in ASOUE was the educational material Lemony Snicket includes in his death scenes, including his creative definitions of words and phrases his child readers might not be familiar with, detailed descriptions of how seeing people they know die makes the Baudelaires feel, and second-person asides from the narrator to provide additional insight on death in general. Snicket inserts his definitions immediately following words and phrases that might be unfamiliar to children in order to both expand their vocabulary and allow him to use terminology he might not otherwise be able to incorporate in a children’s book series. For example, “There was an accident at the lumbermill…a fatal accident, which is a phrase used to describe one that kills somebody” (an example of the type of humor Snicket uses in his writing as well as an example of one of his creative definitions).

Descriptions of the Baudelaires’ emotions range from simple ones like “The children’s hearts sank” to more complex and intricate ones like “the Baudelaires felt as if they were balancing very delicately on a mysterious and perplexing heap of unfathomable mysteries” (another example of Snicket’s style of humor). Even more notable than either of these, though, are Snicket’s unique second-person asides directed at his readers, when he interrupts his narrative to share some philosophical commentary about death or about another specific aspect of one of the death scenes. In one example, he says, “It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know.”

Discussion

The educational material in A Series of Unfortunate Events, as the psychological texts that I found in my research suggested children’s literature on death should, serves to increase child readers’ vocabulary and their understanding of death so that they can talk about it and learn how to communicate the way that it makes them feel. Snicket also lets them know through this type of material that the emotions they feel in response to death—whether it be the death of a loved one, of a stranger, or of someone they do not really like—are natural and okay.

Because my findings in this category matched up so well with my initial research on the topic of children’s death-related literature, especially the findings of the psychological texts I read, I found the educational material code to bring me more useful, significant results than any of the rest of my codes. Furthermore, my research seems to suggest that teaching child readers about death and the complex emotions that it can provoke may be Snicket’s primary motivation for presenting death in the way that he does.

All of Snicket’s strategies for presenting death worked together to lead me to this conclusion regarding the motivation behind his writing style. As I have stated previously, he uses emotional language to provide a blunt, honest portrayal of death, but his use of such excessively graphic descriptions simultaneously makes the scenes feel somewhat exaggerated and unrealistic, creating a sort of surreal atmosphere. This exaggeration combined with the way he sprinkles humor in the midst of the dark content help to lighten the mood, which makes the gruesome death scenes palatable enough for kids, and Snicket’s recurring jokes bring comfort and familiarity into the mix.

All of these stylistic choices collaborate to set the stage for the educational material, allowing Snicket to increase children’s vocabulary and understanding of death while also providing them with an enjoyable reading experience. All of Snicket’s strategies and especially the three main ones that I have focused on work together to achieve his purpose, and their combined effect is greater than what they could accomplish individually. In fact, his presentation of death would likely not work if any of the individual strategies were missing. By using them all together, though, he is able to achieve his purpose of helping children better understand and cope with death while also presenting a fun and interesting story.

Future Research

Because the scope of my study only included the death scenes in A Series of Unfortunate Events, it covered a relatively small portion of the overall story and its dark, graphic content. Researchers seeking to continue this investigation in the future might choose to look at other portions of the books instead, especially some of the other equally dark and graphic ones. Lemony Snicket offers a wide variety of options to choose from, such as child abuse, kidnappings, injuries, violence, and death threats (whether they be verbally addressed to the children or described near-death experiences). Researchers could use my existing list of codes to investigate these other types of scenes, develop their own list of codes, or combine the two.

Researchers might also choose to the take the study in an entirely different direction, looking instead at other juvenile fiction series and comparing how they treat death with how Lemony Snicket treats it in ASOUE. This would fall in line with some the research that already exists regarding children’s death-related literature aimed at even younger audience, further helping to bridge the gap between those studies and the ones that investigate young adult fiction. A study of this nature might compare ASOUE alongside both individual novels aimed at the same age group (popular examples include Roald Dahl’s works like Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars) and series aimed at the same (such as J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series or C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia), possibly even examining differences between the two media types.

Additionally, rather than taking the research in a different direction, this study could be expanded by taking an even deeper look at my existing results and quantifying the exact number of times each strategy is used either alone or with the other trends. Researchers developing this topic in the future could also augment my list of codes or define them differently in order to expand or change the results. Finally, researchers might choose to study interviews with Daniel Handler (the author’s real name), looking for any quotes where he has talked about his strategies for presenting dark content to kids.

Conclusion

In Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, he combines humor, emotional language, and educational material about death in order to achieve his primary purpose of helping children understand and cope with death, which answers both the how (the strategies he uses) and why (his motivation for using them) portions of my original Research Question. These three major strategies make dark, graphic content palatable and even enjoyable for children and simultaneously give them a better comprehension of death so that they can more easily communicate about it and how dealing with the death of someone they know makes them feel. Future research to expound on this might augment the question to include other similarly dark and graphic aspects of A Series of Unfortunate Events, compare the findings of my research with the presentation of death in other juvenile fiction novels or series aimed at the same age demographic, or develop the results of my research even further to be more detailed or cover interviews with the author as well.

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