Klaus Baudelaire
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| Klaus Baudelaire | |
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| First appearance | The Bad Beginning |
| Last appearance | The End |
| Created by | Daniel Handler |
| Portrayed by | Liam Aiken |
| Information | |
| Aliases | Klyde Baudelaire |
| Gender | Male |
| Age | 12 at beginning of series, 14 at end of series |
| Relatives | Mr. and Mrs. Baudelaire Violet Baudelaire Sunny Baudelaire |
Klaus Baudelaire is one of the main characters in the popular children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. His first name is possibly derived from Claus von Bülow.
Klaus is the middle child of the Baudelaire orphans; he has an older sister named Violet and a younger sister named Sunny. He is twelve years old at the beginning of the series, and turns thirteen in The Vile Village. He is fourteen by the end of the series.
Klaus despises parsley soda, after having to drink it at 667 Dark Avenue while under the care of Jerome and Esmé Squalor, and states in The Hostile Hospital that needles make him nervous. It is stated in The Grim Grotto that he finds the Water Cycle to be Dull.
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[edit] Interests and skills
Klaus is an avid reader with an eidetic memory. His favorite book is The Complete History of Absolutely Everything, Volume 127 - Cauldron to Caution. He remembers everything he reads, retaining information which often helps the Baudelaires to escape from dangerous situations. Also as a result of this, he speaks many languages. Klaus always seems to know the definition of words that leave others baffled, though there are certain words that even he does not know the meaning of, like in loco parentis, when mentioned in The Bad Beginning by Mr. Poe, and xenophobe when mentioned in the The Ersatz Elevator by Jerome Squalor. Prior to the demise of his parents, Klaus liked to visit the Akhmatova Bookstore, where his father used to take him as a special treat, to buy an atlas or a volume of the encyclopedia, and revisited it with Jerome Squalor in The Ersatz Elevator. While Violet is the inventor, Sunny is the biter (and later chef), Klaus is the researcher. The theme of children each having a particular skill that they are good at is also shown with other characters in the series. For example, with the Quagmire triplets, Isadora is a poet, Duncan is a journalist, and Quigley is a cartographer. The Baudelaires' volatile friend Fiona is a mycologist.
[edit] Biography
In the beginning of the series, Klaus loses his parents, Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire, in a fire which consumes the family home. He, Violet, and Sunny, are sent to their new guardian, the villainous Count Olaf, who tries to steal the enormous Baudelaire fortune from the orphans, using various nefarious schemes. Violet and Olaf almost get married in his play, The Marvelous Marriage, but Violet signs the marriage document with her left hand, and as she is right-handed, the ceremony is declared to be invalid. After this, Olaf and his associates go on the run as fugitives.
His later guardians include the kind Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, Josephene Anwhistle, and Sir. In the fourth book he worked at Lucky Smells Lumbermill and got paid in coupons, which was later revealed to be illegal.
In The Austere Academy, Klaus and his siblings meet Duncan and Isadora Quagmire when they are sent to a boarding school; Prufrock Preparatory School. A friendship develops between Klaus and Isadora , from whom Klaus learns the usefulness of a case book. In book eleven, The Grim Grotto, Fiona kisses Klaus before joining Count Olaf. What will become of these relationships is unknown (probably nothing, since both Isadora and Fiona were swallowed by The Great Unknown). Both Fiona and Isadora have obvious elements of romantic interest in him, with Isadora constantly patting his hand and Fiona kissing him as well as having their being accused of flirting being referred to as his personal life.
In The Hostile Hospital, Klaus decodes anagrams (using alphabet soup) in order to save Violet, and in The Wide Window and The Vile Village, he finds secret messages in letters from Aunt Josephine and the Quagmires.
As mentioned in The Hostile Hospital and The End, despite all of Lemony Snicket's research and hard work, he still does not know the current location, position and status of the Baudelaire children, so it is not known what happened to Klaus; however, in the Reptile Room, it is said that Klaus would spend a lot of time thinking about his present situation many years later, so it is implied that he had survived.
[edit] Disguises
A recurring theme in the series is the Baudelaire children's disguises. At the end of The Vile Village, they are falsely accused of murder. From this point on, they have no more guardians, and are on the run from the police. While running from the police, Klaus assumes the following disguises:
- In The Hostile Hospital, Klaus disguises himself as a doctor, and is taken to be one of The White Faced Women, associates of Count Olaf.
- In The Carnivorous Carnival, Klaus and Violet dress as a two-headed freak.
- In The Slippery Slope, Klaus poses both as a Snow Scout and as a Volunteer, although later in the series he does become a volunteer.
- In The Penultimate Peril, Klaus disguises himself as a hotel concierge.
[edit] Film adaptation
Klaus was portrayed in the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events by Liam Aiken. However, in the film, Klaus doesn't wear glasses unless he is reading. He is also shown to be more self-asserting in the movie than in the books, with a somewhat more pessimistic outlook on the Baudelaire's situation. He overcomes this when Sunny is trapped in a bird cage on the top of the tower and he says to himself "There's always something", Violet's philosophy. Klaus is always about the numbers, something that stayed with the movie from the book.
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