Elementary, My Dear Olaf! School, That Is...

After nearly a month of being too busy to pick up a book, I decided to resume my reading activities last week with the fifth book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. I was drawn in right away by what seemed to me a blaring tip of the hat to C.S. Lewis. Perhaps it was no such thing. But as I read the first line of The Austere Academy – “If you were going to give a gold medal to the least delightful person on Earth, you would have to give that medal to a person named Carmelita Spats, and if you didn’t give it to her, Carmelita Spats was the sort of person who would snatch it from your hands anyway" – I was forcefully reminded of another fifth book in a series. Well, I knew it as the third book, but most kids reading it now will know it as the fifth. I refer to Voyage of the Dawn Treader, one of the seven Chronicles of Narnia. That book has one of the best opening lines I have ever encountered: “There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.” Anyway, whether or not it was intentional, anything that reminds me of C. S. Lewis is automatically at an advantage. I can’t help but think there was some small degree of influence there, as Voyage of the Dawn Treader launches a small assault on the state of current schooling that is amplified in The Silver Chair, while The Austere Academy provides an exaggerated vision of the worst boarding school has to offer.

Of course, exaggeration is expected on any book bearing the name Lemony Snicket. His macabre tales are skewered just enough that we can heave a sigh of relief that this probably couldn’t happen in contemporary society. Of course, if contemporary society had their way, I suspect the Baudelaires would be separated and sent to three foster homes, and I can’t imagine a more unfortunate event than that. Nonetheless, the intrepid orphans’ troubles are far from over when they reach Prufrock Preparatory School, which is headed by a narcissistic Vice Principal (curiously, no mention of a Principal is made) whose passion for the violin is only matched by his lack of talent for playing it. This ponytailed, sarcastic Vice Principal is so unreasonable that he forces Violet, Klaus and Sunny to reside in the “orphans’ shack,” a dilapidated residence whose ceiling leaks fungus and whose floor is infested with crabs. What’s more, he enlists Sunny as his administrative assistant and forces her to make her own staples when his office supplies run out. Additionally, he enforces a number of ludicrous rules, the violation of which usually involves the revoking of certain lunch privileges, such as being allowed silverware. Missing one of his interminable concerts carries the especially harsh penalty of being forced to buy him a large bag of candy and watch him eat it. I couldn’t help but be reminded a bit of Chalie’s teacher in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and a lot of Miss Trunchbull in Matilda when I observed this administrator’s antics, and the more I think of it, the more echoes of Roald Dahl I find in Snicket’s work.

As unpleasant as the orphans’ lot is at Prufrock Prep, it doesn’t get truly grim until the arrival of the new gym teacher, a turbaned fellow who insists that the Baudelaires possess unique athletic abilities and promptly enlists them in the Special Orphans Running Exercises, the acronym of which describes how they feel after they are forced to participate. It doesn’t help that there is something very familiar about this particular instructor… But there are bright spots in all this misery. Along with the children’s own interminable optimism, they soon acquire a much more solid morale booster: friends. Although their first encounter with their classmates was negative – due to the aforementioned Carmelita Spats – they soon find solace with Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, children as compatible as possible with the Baudelaires, not only in terms of temperament and interests but also because of their own incredible misfortune. Now instead of three, there are five working together to uncover the next sinister plot of the greedy and omnipresent Count Olaf.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. In fact, it may be my favorite book in the series so far. Duncan and Isadora are welcome additions whom I hopefully suspect will return at some later point. In spite of Snicket’s descriptions to the contrary, I found Mrs. Bass and Mr. Remora, Klaus and Violet’s teachers, to be quite sympathetic characters, if admittedly rather dull. Four relatively pleasant new people in one book is the highest count so far, and it probably contributed to the lighter feel of this volume, especially after the exceedingly dark Miserable Mill. Snicket slathers on the one-off oddities here, too, which is again a welcome relief. Examples: “Klaus had known for all twelve of his years that his older sister found a hand on her shoulder comforting – as long as the hand was attached to an arm, of course.” “Each morning, she would walk into Room Two carrying a bag full of ordinary objects – a frying pan, a picture frame, the skeleton of a cat…” “Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make – bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake – if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble.”

The delectable berries may signal trouble to the deluded mind of Lemony Snicket, but I’m sure that if the Baudelaires could “remember the taste of strawberries,” they might draw some small comfort from that, and from the hope that they might one day have the privilege of enjoying the pleasures of life again. For the time being, all they have is each other, but that is just enough to keep them going as they venture uneasily towards their next inevitably unfortunate escapade.