by Fred Moleck
Wait, It Can�t Get Any Worse
This past weekend, American moviegoers were introduced to the Baudelaire children.
More than likely most of the moviegoers already knew the Baudelaires from reading the books in the series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.
If you are not among the initiated, then you need to know about the eleven books that are already out, read, and talked about by any reader over eight years old.
The readership is not much different from Harry Potter’s in the sense that adult readers are also addicted to the books—and who wouldn’t want to read a book by an author whose name is Lemony Snicket (the pseudonym of Daniel Handler)?
The Baudelaire children are orphans who lost their parents and family’s mansion in a most tragic fire.
The events in A Series of Unfortunate Events deal with places and people the children encounter as they are shuffled from one care provider to another. Each is more horrible and dastardly than the previous one.
While all of these trauma-laden shufflings are taking place, their first guardian, a distant cousin, Count Olaf (Jim Carrey), is hell-bent in eliminating (murdering) the children so he can collect the family fortune (lots).
They narrowly escape his clutches until he appears again in disguise at their next miserable domicile, which is the next book in the series.
They are the paradigms of patient suffering and resourceful survival technique. At this point in the series, during the last week of December, no one knows how the eventual resolution will occur.
After they escaped being eaten alive by gigantic leeches and enduring a type of slave labor lumber mill and another nine “series of unfortunate events,” I am hoping that they will live forever in another English manse with full staff and a long-forgotten relative who loves them more than life itself.
The series is now added to the ever-growing repertory of children-triumphing-over-evil stories, which Harry Potter and his Hogwarts companions initiated.
The triumph of the Baudelaires over evil is spun out in a journey venue. They are dragged from one rotten place to another where the awaiting villains are “worser.”
They are not exactly like Ulysses, but their odyssey is just as daunting and much more fun to read about and listen to. Just when you thought things could not get worse—sure enough—things got “worser.”
We shall all have to wait until book number 13 to find out how the Baudelaires will be ransomed and how their kingdom will be restored.
Until then, they surely will have more wanderings. They will confront more dashed hopes. They wait to be saved.
For just about four weeks now, we’ve been singing about the world’s waiting and our waiting. The big difference is that we know what we are waiting for. We will sing about that also this coming weekend.
Morning Star with diamond fire,
shine in radiance through our night.
Urgent now with hope’s desire
Yearning peoples seek your light.
Mary Louise Bringle
“Come, Dear Christ, Your World Awaits”
in Joy and Wonder, Love and Longing
GIA Publications, Inc., G-5884
You can reach Fred Moleck via email at fmoleck@earthlink.net