The Vile Village

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The Vile Village
Author Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler)
Illustrator Brett Helquist
Cover artist Brett Helquist
Country United States
Language English
Series A Series of Unfortunate Events
Genre(s) Fantasy novel
Publisher HarperCollins
Publication date May 2001
Published in
English
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 256 pp
ISBN ISBN
Preceded by The Ersatz Elevator
Followed by The Hostile Hospital

The Vile Village is the seventh novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. After escaping Olaf once again, the Baudelaire orphans are taken into the care of a whole village, only to find lots of rules and chores, evil seniors, and Count Olaf lurking by every crow.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

The book begins when the Baudelaires are in Mr. Poe's office, looking at The Daily Punctilio (a poorly written newspaper full of lies about the Quagmires and Count Olaf). Mr. Poe gives a brochure to the Baudelaire orphans about a new program allowing an entire village to serve as guardian, based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child.". The children naturally choose V.F.D., an acronym which the two Quagmire triplets discovered is part of a terrible secret somehow related to Count Olaf.

The children depart for the unknown V.F.D. by bus, and after a long, hot and dusty walk from the bus stop, they reach the town of V.F.D., which is covered in crows. They enter the town hall and become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaim that they will do all the chores for the entire village. Starting the next day, they are responsible for anything that anyone asks them to do. They also meet Officer Luciana, the new head of police. The children live with Hector, the handyman, who will feed them, clothe them, and help them do all the chores like cleaning the new Fowl Fountain. He is also responsible for teaching them all the rules of V.F.D, so they won't break any more of the town's rules. They also learn that the crows stay downtown in the morning, uptown in the afternoon, and at Nevermore Tree at night.

Hector takes them to his home, where he shows them the house, the barn and the Nevermore Tree, where all the crows come to roost at night. The Baudelaires learn that V.F.D. stands for the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector shows the Baudelaires the following couplet, which he says was found at the base of Nevermore Tree:

For sapphires we are held in here,
Only you can end our fear.

The Baudelaires discover that Hector has been breaking the town rules by keeping a secret library and working on a hot-air mobile home in his barn, so that he can sail away from V.F.D. forever. They begin to trust Hector. They discuss the Quagmires and consider the fact that they might be somehow sending the Baudelaires a plea for help in the poem. They also discover a new couplet under the tree, though they've kept the tree under surveillance the whole night.

The next day, the Baudelaires do the town's chores, while thinking about the latest poem dropped from the tree:

Until dawn comes we cannot speak,
No words can come from this sad beak.

Two members of the Council of Elders come and report that Count Olaf has been captured, and the Baudelaires are to report immediately to the Town Hall. The Baudelaires discover that it is not Count Olaf who has been captured, but instead a man named Jacques - a man who also has one eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. The children insist that this is not Count Olaf, but the townspeople do not listen to them. The next day he is to be burned at the stake.

That night the Baudelaires construct a plan. Sunny keeps watch at Nevermore Tree to see where the poems are coming from. Klaus reads up on the rules of V.F.D. and sees if a rule can get Jacques out of trouble. And Violet helps finish Hector's hot-air balloon device, for it will be a useful escape device if Count Olaf comes after them.

Violet fixes the remaining problems. Klaus discovers that a rule allows the accused to make a speech explaining himself. He also finds out that mob psychology can make people demand Jacques' freedom. If a few people say something, mob psychology can make everyone demand the same thing. Sunny discovers that the crows are somehow delivering the couplets, and finds a new one:

The first thing you read contains the clue,
An initial way to speak to you.

When the children run to the uptown jail where Jacques is being held, they learn that he has "died" in the night. Detective Dupin (the detective investigating the crime) walks out, and it is revealed that he is Count Olaf in disguise. Detective Dupin accuses the Baudelaires of murdering "Count Olaf". He claims that Violet's hair ribbon and a lens from Klaus's glasses were found on the scene, and Sunny's teeth marks are on the body. The people ignore the fact that the orphans have solid alibis and the children are quickly locked up inside the Deluxe Cell. Count Olaf tells them that one will make a great escape before the burning, making it possible for him to inherit the Baudelaire fortune, and he leaves them to decide who will survive.

While they are locked up, Klaus realizes that it is his 13th birthday. At that time Officer Luciana comes in and brings them water and bread. Violet, after some hard thinking, comes up with a way to escape. Violet explains that the mortar between the bricks can be softened. By tilting the bench and pouring the water onto the bread, the bread will act like a sponge. They squeeze the bread against the brick wall at the top of the tilted bench, and the excess water runs down the bench and into the water pitcher placed at the bottom. They do this all night and into the morning. Hector comes and tells them that if they break out, he has the hot-air balloon ready. He also gives them the daily couplet:

Inside these letters the eye will see,
Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.

They break free of the jail using the wooden bench as a battering ram and reread the poems.

For sapphires we are held in here.
Only you can end our fear.
Until dawn comes we cannot speak.
No words can come from this sad beak.
The first thing you read contains the clue.
An initial way to speak to you.
Inside these letters the eye will see.
Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.

The Baudelaires have already realized the sapphires refer to the Quagmires. They know that they are uptown, since it says they cannot speak until dawn, as the crows stay uptown at morning. And finally they figure out that the initial one to speak to them is not V.F.D., but the first letter in each verse. It spells out FOUNTAIN. They rush over to Fowl Fountain and manage to open the beak, revealing the damp Quagmires.

At this point they flee the mob coming to burn them and make a run for Hector's house. As they go, the Quagmires explain that Count Olaf locked them in the tower of his house. Then he had his associates build the fountain. The Quagmires tied the couplet to the crows' feet every morning. They try to tell the Baudelaires that the man who died - Jacques Snicket - is the brother of Lemony Snicket, but the mob catches sight of them and they have to run. They reach Hector's and the Quagmires climb a rope ladder to get in the hot-air mobile home. Then Officer Luciana arrives with a harpoon gun, possibly foreshadowing the Penultimate Peril, and shoots at the rope ladder so the Baudelaires can't get up. The Quagmires throw their notebooks down to the orphans, but Officer Luciana hits them—along with a crow. Then Detective Dupin (accidentally) reveals himself as Count Olaf by removing his sunglasses.

The book ends with Count Olaf (unmasked) and Officer Luciana (Esmé Squalor) getting away on a motorcycle, but not before revealing that they are dating. Sunny gets up and walks for the first time while the Baudelaires try to gather as many of the Quagmires' notebook pages as possible. The Daily Punctilio has already published an (incorrect) article about the Baudelaires murdering a man and breaking out of jail. Although the citizens of V.F.D. are still convinced of the children's guilt, they must first tend to the crow injured by Esmé's harpoon gun. The Baudelaires decide to run away from the police, and to take care of themselves.

[edit] Literary allusions

  • At the start of the novel Mr Poe receives a phone call from Mr. Fagin, a character from Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. Fagin tells Poe that he won't accept the children because they are trouble makers, this is ironic because in Oliver Twist, Fagin runs a gang of pickpockets.
  • The alias that Olaf uses, Detective Dupin, may be a reference to C. Auguste Dupin, a fictional detective character created by Edgar Allan Poe.
  • One of the towns on the brochure for "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" is named Ophelia, perhaps referencing Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet; Mr. Poe dislikes the bank in this town, perhaps because Ophelia's father is the originator of the saying "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."
  • Officer Luciana, Esmé's disguised name, is probably a reference to a character in Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller, who tears up an address and can never find it again, just as Esmé tears the Quagmire notebooks and they are never fully reassembled.
  • Ogden Nash is mentioned in the book, a poet who wrote couplets.
  • Mr. Lesko, a town resident, has the same last name as the author Matthew Lesko who offered to teach how to get free things. Mr. Lesko says in this book that he is fine with getting his chores done for him but not having to parent the Baudelaires (he wants free laborers).
  • The initial unnerving nature of the crows in the city may refer to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

[edit] Plot notes

  • On the last page was a picture, showing a newspaper with the words Last Chance on it, foreshadowing the Last Chance General Store in The Hostile Hospital.
  • This book is considered to be the "plot twist" of the series, because the Baudelaires can no longer call on Mr. Poe for assistance after the events of this book.

[edit] Translations

v • d • e
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
Novels
Other media
Accompanying materials
Characters
Elements
V.F.D.