Count Olaf

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Count Olaf
A Series of Unfortunate Events character
Count Olaf, as drawn by Brett Helquist
Gender	Male
Hair color	Grey
Age	"Old enough to know better" according to Snicket. (Deceased)
Film actor	Jim Carrey
First appearance	The Bad Beginning
V.F.D. alliance	Villain side of the schism

Count Olaf is the main villain from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series. He is filthy, cruel, and unscrupulous. He has a wheezy voice, shiny eyes, one long eyebrow, and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. He was also a member of V.F.D. prior to the schism that separated it.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Character History
2 Book-related notes
3 The film
4 External link

[edit] Character History

[edit] Early life

'Omar'.

Count Olaf's youth is mentioned a few times over the course of the series, the most obvious being the reference in The Unauthorized Autobiography. In that book, there is a letter written by Sally Sebald that contains a picture of a young boy who was to play Young Rölf in Zombies in the Snow. She says that she thinks his name might be Omar (which is a name that many confuse with Count Olaf). This implies that Count Olaf was in Zombies in the Snow, which would make it a very old movie, for Count Olaf himself, disguised as Stephano, watched that movie with the Baudelaires and Montgomery Montgomery.

In The Bad Beginning, Count Olaf says that when he was a child he loved raspberries. Soon after Violet says she cannot picture Olaf as a child — all his features seem to be those of an adult.

In The Carnivorous Carnival, Olaf also speaks of his childhood a few times. In Chapter 2, when Olaf converses with Madame Lulu, he claims that as a child, he was always the "most handsome fellow at school". Whether this is true or another example of Olaf's arrogance is unknown. At the end of the book, in Chapter 12, when he notices the map of the Mortmain Mountains the Baudelaires have discovered, he also notices the coded stain and states he was taught to use them on maps to mark a secret location since he was just a child.

Another mysterious reference to Count Olaf's childhood is mentioned in The Penultimate Peril. In Chapter One, Kit mentions that she was able to smuggle a box of poison darts to the Baudelaire parents before Esmé Squalor caught her. Through a few subtle hints, we can gather that Lemony Snicket was present as well. Later in the book, when Olaf is confronting the Baudelaires and Dewey Denouement, he dares the Baudelaires to ask Dewey what happened that night at the theatre, implying that the Baudelaire parents, Dewey, and the Snickets were there for some sort of sinister purpose. Finally, in Chapter 12, Olaf reveals that poison darts were the reason he became an orphan himself, implying that the Baudelaire parents may have murdered his own parents.

In The Beatrice Letters, a young Snicket writes to Beatrice about someone he only identifies as 'O'; "The only other student in [Code Class] that I know is O., who is nothing but an annoyance. As I write this he is filling his notebook with anagrams of obscene words. I'm tempted to tell him there is no such thing as a 'wet viper perm', (a possible anagram for "preemptive war") but after the incident with the bottle of ink and the root beer float, I think its better to spend my time inside 'My Silence Knot' whenever that nitwit raises his ugly, one-eyebrowed head." and "The brightest star cannot shine through a cloud of dark smoke, and O. is the darkest of clouds I have seen in our skies. One day the world will know of his treachery and deceit, of his crimes and hygiene, but that's far too late for us."

[edit] As the Baudelaires' Guardian

In the beginning of the series, the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with Count Olaf, their closest living relative, after a mysterious fire destroys their home and kills their parents. Olaf's involvement, if any, in the fire was long suspected by the Baudelaires. When they finally confronted him and accused of him of starting the fire, Olaf told them that they "knew nothing".

Olaf was an actor. He had an entire group of similarly evil associates who he refers to as his "theatre troupe". He wrote his own plays, under the pseudonym "Al Funcoot" (an anagram of "Count Olaf").

During the time the Baudelaires lived with him, the children immediately saw Olaf as a short tempered and violent man. Olaf provided them with one filthy room and forced them to do difficult chores (such as making them chop wood solely for his own entertainment) as he schemed to seize control over their fortune. Olaf once hit Klaus hard for talking back to him, and picked up Sunny for saying "No".

Later, Olaf had the children participate in a play in which Violet plays a woman who gets married to a character played by Olaf. The children learned that Olaf was using the play to disguise the fact that the marriage will be legally binding and that he will have control over the fortune once the wedding ceremony is complete. To insure that the children cooperate with the plan, Olaf kidnapped Sunny and had her tied up, put in a cage, and hung outside his tower window, threatening to murder her if the children refused to cooperate.

The outrageous plan to marry Violet Baudelaire to gain the inheritance went awry. Violet managed to thwart Olaf's plan by signing the marriage with her left hand instead of her right, which as she was right-handed, was the required one to make it legally binding. Olaf was exposed as a criminal and fled, but not before Olaf promised to Violet that he would get his hands on her fortune no matter what. The children were sent to different relatives, with Olaf following in pursuit.

[edit] Olaf's Plots

Olaf's plans became more dangerous and murderous in nature as the books progressed. Many of them included the murder of the children's guardians, such as their loving Uncle Monty, or their skittish Aunt Josephine. Olaf's plans were particularly complicated, but always went towards the goal and abducting the children through elaborate methods.

In each of books 2-8 and 13, Olaf wears a new disguise that fools everyone but the Baudelaires:

Stephano (stā-fä’-nō/steɪ-fɑ-nəu), an assistant herpetologist with a long beard and no eyebrows
Captain Julio Sham, a sailor with an eye-patch and a wooden leg
Shirley T. Sinoit-Pécer, an optometrist's receptionist
Coach Genghis, a gym teacher with a turban, covering his one eyebrow and expensive looking running shoes, covering his tatoo of an eye on his ankle.
Gunther (go͞onter/guːnɾŗ click here to hear), a pinstripe suit-wearing auctioneer. He pretends to come from another country so people believe that he doesn't speak fluent English. Olaf is constantly saying "please" after and in the middle of every sentence.
Detective Dupin, a 'famous' investigator obsessed with what's cool, including ridiculous sunglasses which cover up his one eyebrow.
Mattathias (mă’-tə-thī’-əs/mæ\tə\θaɪ\əs), Heimlich Hospital's new HR director. His presence is only known from a scratchy voice over the intercom. Nobody has ever seen him before. He accuses the Baudelare 'murderers' or setting fire to the hotel.
Kit Snicket, Olaf's only disguise based on another character in the books, using a wig of seaweed and Esmé Squalor's fire-imitating dress as well as a helmet filled with Medusoid Mycelium stuffed under the dress to simulate Snicket's pregnancy. This is also the only disguise which failed to fool everybody he met.

In the earlier books, Olaf seemed to want only the children's fortune, but later on, it is revealed that he also sought the Quagmire sapphires, the Snicket File, and the sugar bowl, although is repeatedly shown to have a greater interest in the Baudelaire's fortune than in any of these other treasures. Olaf also wants dozens of other fortunes from the children whose parents are in V.F.D. Olaf seeks to destroy this secret organization in order to eliminate the last evidence of his plans. The Baudelaires presumably have evidence that could incriminate him, but their guardians don't believe them. Thus, Count Olaf gets away every time.

In The Penultimate Peril, Olaf was about to kill one of the Denouement triplets when the Baudelaires begged him to stop and be a noble person. Olaf whispered, "What else can I do?" This gave rise to speculation that Olaf was not entirely evil, but forced into his life by his past and by others. He is able to flee the burning Hotel Denouement by boarding the boat (then called the Carmelita) with the three Baudelaires.

[edit] Olaf's End

In "The End", Olaf was rejected (due to his obviously unkind behavior) by Friday, one of the inhabitants of a remote island where he was marooned with the Baudelaire orphans after a vicious storm. After a pregnant Kit Snicket was also stranded in another storm, Olaf attempts to disguise himself as her, using a round diving helmet filled with Medusoid Mycelium (a poisonous fungus whose spores cause death within the hour of exposure) to make his stomach bulge as though he were pregnant. Later, the island's leader, Ishmael, fires a harpoon at Olaf only for it to hit the encased Mycelium against his stomach and causing it to burst so that its deadly spores are released into the air, contaminating all of the islanders as well as Olaf himself. Too depressed to go on living, Olaf at first refuses to take a specially produced apple (which is mixed with horseradish, the cure for the Mycelium), saying that he has lost everything important to him. However, upon finding out that Kit Snicket is going into labor, he eats the healing apple and carries her to where she can better-perform childbirth, thus performing (what Violet calls) one good deed in his life (during which he surprisingly kisses Kit on the lips). Despite being cured of the lethal Mycelium fungus, Olaf is revealed to have been more severely injured by the harpoon than originally assumed. Lying down on the beach without medical assistance from the Baudelaires who are helping Kit to give birth, Count Olaf dies. Along with Kit, he is buried on the island and his grave is occasionally visited by the Baudelaires.

[edit] Book-related notes

It is heavily implied before his death that he had previously loved Kit, and had told her he'd kiss her one last time before his death. Although Olaf heals himself before the fungus can kill him, he finally dies from a harpoon wound which had earlier injured him in the stomach. His last words quote Philip Larkin's short poem "This Be The Verse" - "Man hands on misery to man./It deepens like a coastal shelf./Get out as early as you can,/and don't have any kids yourself."

Olaf's involvement in the Baudelaires' mansion fire is long suspected by the Baudelaires throughout the series, although it is unclear if he was ever truly responsible; when finally confronted with this at the end of the series, Olaf tells the Baudelaires that they know nothing.

In an interview with author Daniel Handler [1], the interviewer asked about how in the last couple of books the line between the good people and more treacherous ones seemed to have become a bit blurred. Handler responded with "It's sad isn't it? I think the Baudelaires are getting older, and one of the sad facts about getting older is that you've always thought of yourself and people you know as righteous and true and the people you dislike as evil. The older you get the more muddy that water becomes."

[edit] The film

Jim Carrey as Count Olaf in the 2004 film.

Count Olaf was portrayed by actor Jim Carrey in the film adaptation of the books, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Similar to the darker material from the novels, Count Olaf's character was toned down for the film. Rather than being a sinister and amoral sociopath with a penchant for black humor (as in the books), Count Olaf appears as a bumbling, arrogant fool.

A big change in the film was the strong suggestion of Olaf's responsibility for the Baudelaire fire. Whereas Olaf's role in the Baudelaires' parents' deaths is uncertain at best in the books, the implications of his involvement are far stronger in the movie. At the climax of the film, we see that Count Olaf has a giant spyglass pointed at the smoking ruins of the Baudelaire mansion, presumably through which it was set alight.