A Sequence of Unlucky Adventures

Author’s Note: I wrote this essay because I am currently reading “A Series of Unfortunate Events” By Lemony Snicket (a series of books). The reason I titled this piece “A Sequence of Unlucky Adventures” is because it is using all the words in the real series, but synonyms for each of them. This is a text analysis piece about how the author planned the stories out. I thought this was a good idea for the books because of how the author wrote each of the books within the series.

“A Series of Unfortunate Events” by Lemony Snicket is really a series of unfortunate events. The three Baudelaire children, the main characters, have a domino-effect life that doesn’t work out too well. Each unfortunate event that happens leads to another, and another, and another, hence the name “A Series of Unfortunate Events.”

The author, Lemony Snicket, uses the same plot for each book except for the last book in the long series, “The End.” In the first book, the ‘bad guy’ is introduced. His name is Count Olaf, and is willing to do anything to gain the money that the children’s parents left behind when they died in a fire, and each time, his plan fails and he escapes. In the next book, he always comes back in some new disguise, attempting yet again to inherit the Baudelaire fortune. I thought that it was interesting how the author set up each book, with a new clue each time. Sometimes, Olaf escapes with the children’s friends or something important to them, and they have to find out how to get those things back without falling into the clutches of Olaf. The author used an interesting method for these books, because once one book ends with Olaf escaping, the reader is on the edge of their seat, looking forward to the moment they can read the next book.

Not only does Lemony Snicket bring the bad guy into each book, he also uses the other important characters in each of the books. For example, in the second book which is called “The Reptile Room,” the author brings an important character in that was from the first book, and who is also in the third. This character is Mr. Poe, and he is a banker in charge of putting the children in a safe home. He appears towards the beginning, end, or both when he puts the children in a new home each book. Mr. Poe has the same personality in each book, too, because he always has a cough and never gets help quick enough.

The books may sound like they’re boring and predictable, but there are a lot of times in the book where something surprising happens. The author writes the books in such a way that it makes the reader want to read more. The author adds new and unpredictable parts to each book at the end to add more suspense so the reader will go to the library or bookstore and get the next one in the series. I haven’t read the whole series yet, but I can predict that the book will have many more surprises and many more things revealed. The last book is called “The End” and is about three times longer than the other 12 books, so more of the mysteries throughout the series will be solved in the last one.

As you can see, the author of “A Series of Unfortunate Events” had a good plan to get more readers. He set up the series in a way that makes the readers want to read more, but it also has the readers guessing what will happen next. A mystery comes up in the children’s lives that is most likely going to be solved in the next book or the book after that, so it makes the reader read more and more eventually finishing the whole series, knowing everything.