The Wide Window

“Your Aunt Josephine—she’s not really your aunt, of course; she’s your second cousin’s sister-in-law, but asked that you call her Aunt Josephine—your Aunt Josephine lost her husband recently.”

The repeated use of the phrase “your Aunt Josephine” underscores the humor in the complicated and distant relationship between Josephine and the Baudelaires. The repetition also reinforces Mr. Poe’s inattention—he knows next to nothing about Josephine, yet he sends the three traumatized children to live with a stranger.

“‘Grun!’ Sunny shrieked, which meant something like ‘I object to your calling it baby talk!’”

Snicket frequently breaks into the narrative to offer translations for Sunny’s babbling, which add to the story’s humorous tone, as his “translations” of Sunny’s words portray her as having improbably advanced ideas. This example is particularly playful in tone, as Sunny is allegedly using baby talk to protest her language being characterized as baby talk.

“‘Aunt Josephine obviously worked very hard to prepare this room for us,’ Violet said sadly. ‘She seems to be a good-hearted person. We shouldn’t complain, even to ourselves.’”

Violet’s attempt to think positively despite the challenges of their situation evidences her empathy and demonstrates how rarely the Baudelaires have been shown kindness since their parents’ deaths. The Baudelaires’ determined optimism points to the novel’s thematic interest in Bearing Up Under the Burden of Grief and Loss.

“He was smiling eagerly down at her as if she were a brightly wrapped birthday present that he couldn’t wait to rip open.”

The simile comparing Violet to a birthday present and Olaf to someone about to rip the present open stresses Violet’s innocent charm juxtaposed with Olaf’s capacity for ruthless destruction. This deceptively light and playful simile stresses the real danger that Olaf represents to the Baudelaire children.

“As they walked up the hill in silence, the children looked down at Lake Lachrymose and felt the chill of doom fall over their hearts. It made the three siblings feel cold and lost, as if they were not simply looking at the shadowy lake but had been dropped into the middle of its depths.”

Handler employs several literary techniques to build a sense of foreboding. Diction like “doom,” “lost,” “shadowy,” and “depths” contributes to the gothic atmosphere, as do the repeated sensory descriptions of coldness. Since Olaf has, just minutes before, offered to take the children out on the lake in his boat, the simile comparing their feelings to being “dropped into the middle of [the lake’s] depths” foreshadows the terrible events to come.

“Mr. Poe told me that Count Olaf had […] one eyebrow over his eyes. Captain Sham […] only has one eye.”

Josephine’s absurd logic centers her own obsession with grammar rather than a common-sense understanding of the world. Because Poe’s warning uses the plural word “eyes,” she believes she cannot apply the warning to a man who seems to have only one “eye.” The scene emphasizes the degree to which Josephine’s fears have left her disconnected from reality.

“It’s always impossible to convince Mr. Poe of anything, and Aunt Josephine doesn’t believe us even though she saw Count Olaf with her own eyes.”

Here, the hopelessness of the children’s situation stems not from their own failures but from the shortcomings of the adults around them, pointing to The Resilience and Resourcefulness of Children in the Face of Adult Failures. Here, Violet explicitly points out the similarities in the ways Poe and Josephine both let them down by dismissing the Baudelaires’ accurate observations and deductions in favor of their own biases and flawed thinking.

“I wish now that I had the power to go back in time and speak to these three sobbing children. If I could, I could tell the Baudelaires that like earthquakes and puppet shows, their tears were occurring not only without warning but without good reason.”

Snicket’s intrusion at the end of Chapter 5 indicates he understands the difficulty of bearing up under the burden of grief and loss, underscoring him as both narrator and character in the story. As a kind person, he wishes that he could ease this burden for the children. Snicket’s simile comparing their grief to earthquakes and puppet shows is typical of his opinionated voice and the book’s dark humor.

“I am sitting in my room, in the middle of the night, writing down this story and looking out my window at the graveyard behind my home.”

Snicket’s metafictional commentary about the situation in which he is writing The Wide Window includes exaggeratedly morbid details: He is writing in the middle of the night, staring at a graveyard. This kind of exaggeration pokes fun at the conventions of gothic fiction and is common in mock-gothic works.

“‘Well, Mr. Poe said he had to go over some details,’ Klaus said. ‘Perhaps that will take a long time.’

‘I got ahold of Captain Sham,’ Mr. Poe said, coming back into the kitchen.”

The juxtaposition of Poe’s immediate return with Klaus’s expressed hope for a delay is an example of the book’s dark humor. It makes the point that fate is conspiring against the Baudelaires—their simplest of hopes are immediately dashed again and again.

“Mr. Poe took his white handkerchief out of his pocket and coughed into it at great length and with great gusto, a word which here means ‘in a way which produced a great deal of phlegm.’”

Mr. Poe’s constant sneezing and coughing into a white handkerchief characterizes him as weak: The white handkerchief is a common symbol of surrender, and he seems always to be on the verge of succumbing to an illness. The repetition of “great” creates a comic rhythm in this passage—a tone reinforced by the gross-out humor of the detail of phlegm—adding to the sense that Mr. Poe is being poked fun at.

“If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.”

Snicket’s intrusion into Chapter 7 exemplifies the faux-educational tone of his commentary. Few people actually need to be told that ingesting things they are allergic to is a bad idea—and even fewer would consider putting a cat into their mouths. Snicket’s advice functions more as a joke than as genuine advice, and the ridiculous image it creates adds to the text’s humorous tone.

“He glanced at his meal, and the Baudelaires could see he was not too eager to leave the restaurant and care for sick children.”

Poe’s reaction here epitomizes his tendency as a character to always chooses what is convenient and comfortable for himself rather than what is best for the Baudelaires. Moments like this make it clear that the children are, in effect, on their own—supporting the theme of The Resilience and Resourcefulness of Children in the Face of Adult Failures.

“Normally, of course, one should hang up one’s coat on a hook or in a closet, but itchy hives are very irritating and tend to make one abandon such matters.”

Snicket’s commentary as the children return to Josephine’s to try to decode the note illustrates his old-fashioned perspective. Formal diction and syntax like “one should” and “tend to make one abandon such matters” convey an outmoded sensibility—a humorous nod to the origins of gothic fiction.

“I have been told that the children hugged each other even more tightly as they heard the rough and earsplitting noise of their home breaking loose from the side of the hill. But I cannot tell you how it felt to watch the whole building fall down, down, down, and hit the dark and stormy waters of the lake below.”

Handler emphasizes the climactic moment of the house crumbling into the lake through the children’s reactions, Snicket’s own reaction, and by the language Snicket uses to narrate the event. Snicket creates a vivid image of the sound and the sight of the house toppling into the dark lake, repeating the word “down” three times to stress how far the house travels as it plunges down the cliffside. He explains that he has personally witnessed many strange and tragic things—but even so, he cannot claim to understand how terrible this moment is for the Baudelaires. The image of the three children clinging to one another further reinforces this point.

“Walking into Captain Sham’s Sailboat Rentals in order to find Aunt Josephine would feel like walking into a lion’s den in order to escape from a lion.”

The simile comparing Olaf’s business to a lion’s den casts Olaf in the role of a predator, emphasizing how defenseless the three children really are and evidences their bravery and determination to evade him. Their courage in the face of near constant danger throughout the narrative reinforces the novel’s thematic interest in The Necessity of Confronting One’s Fears.

“Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances.”

Klaus is shocked at the idea of stealing a sailboat, but Violet points out that they have no choice, under the circumstances. Snicket’s intrusion to explain Violet’s moral reasoning helps to define the book’s overall approach to morality: Even good people like the Baudelaires sometimes commit morally gray actions—but their ability to weigh their actions in light of the larger good underscores the novel’s endorsement of logic and reason as heroic qualities.

“In front of the cave there was a sign saying it was for sale, and the orphans could not imagine who would want to buy such a phantasmagorical—the word ‘phantasmagorical’ here means ‘all the creepy, scary words you can think of put together’—place.”

The ridiculous detail of the frightening cave being listed for sale supports the text’s mock-gothic tone. Snicket’s syntax and use of the diction “phantasmagorical” reinforce this tone. The word “phantasmagorical” is comically old-fashioned and unusual in the context of a children’s novel, and Snicket juxtaposes this with a hyperbolic definition stressing its terrors. That he interrupts the flow of his sentence with a long definition before providing the single, final word of the sentence adds a humorous rhythm to the sentence.

“They understood that Aunt Josephine had been a terrible guardian, in leaving the children all by themselves in great danger.”

Klaus asks pointed questions about Josephine’s choice to save herself without regard for the children’s safety, and she responds by correcting his grammar, leading to a moment of clarity for the Baudelaire children: Aunt Josephine will always place her own fears above their safety and her love of grammar above their peace of mind. They realize that she will never be the kind of adult presence they need in their lives and that they will have to save themselves.

“‘Yes,’ Violet said. She wasn’t sure they were perfectly safe, not at all, but it seemed best to tell Aunt Josephine they were perfectly safe. ‘We’re perfectly safe,’ she said.”

Although Violet’s reassurance is effectively a lie, she sees keeping Josephine calm as the greater good. This illustrates her pragmatic nature. Comic repetition—here, the phrase “perfectly safe” is repeated three times—is a technique that Handler employs throughout the text.

“‘Nobody’s going to throw you overboard,’ Violet said impatiently, although I’m sorry to tell you that Violet was wrong about that.”

Snicket’s knowing intrusion, after Violet assures Josephine that the children have no intention of throwing her overboard in order to save themselves from the leeches’ attack, foreshadows Josephine’s death at Olaf’s hands. Olaf will, in fact, throw Josephine overboard. Snicket’s comment is darkly humorous because of the specific wording Violet chooses here—she says, “Nobody’s going to throw you overboard,” when she might well have said “We’re not going to throw you overboard.” The latter statement would be more accurate, but of course Violet has no way of knowing what Olaf will do in the book’s very next chapter.

“‘She’s not dead yet,’ Captain Sham said, in a terrible voice, and took a step toward her.

‘Oh no,’ she said. Her eyes were wide with fear. ‘Don’t throw me overboard,’ she pleaded.”

This passage illustrates Handler’s use of dark humor, where two call-back jokes are juxtaposed against Sham’s obvious intention to murder Josephine. In Chapter 5, Snicket foreshadows this moment by saying that Josephine is not dead: “Not yet” (81). This is echoed in Sham’s comment here, “She’s not dead yet.” In Chapter 11, Josephine begs the children not to throw her overboard. This request is unintentionally comical, since the children would never think of doing such a thing—but when she uses the same words here, in Chapter 12, the moment is deadly serious.

“And the worst of it was, Aunt Josephine’s fear had made her a bad guardian […] But despite all of Aunt Josephine’s faults, the orphans still cared about her.”

After Olaf shoves Josephine from the boat, the children’s thoughts explicitly tie Josephine’s fears to her failures as a guardian, reinforcing the book’s thematic arguments about the necessity of confronting one’s fears. That the children are saddened by her death despite only knowing her a short time and having been failed by her again and again helps to characterize them as innately empathetic and kind.