Trust In Lemony Snicket's 'Grim Grotto'

Trust is disputed by some to be the most fragile feature of life. Trust can take an eternity to gain but only moments to lose. Trust would come to play a major role in the eleventh installation of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Like the past books in this series ‘’ The Grim Grotto’’ was written by Lemony Snicket and illustrated by Brett Helquist. Although most readers recognize him by the name of Lemony Snicket, a more attentive reader might also recognize the author by his real name, Daniel Handler. The matter pertaining ‘’Mr. Snicket’s’’ real name, some dispute, is a little-known secret. This can be compared to all the secrets the main characters of this story, the Baudelaire children, would be uncovering in this part of their lives. The

This book, like the ones before it, starts off with the Baudelaire children yet again in another desperate situation. The three children managed to contact the secret organization known as V.F.D, or, at least, one member, known as Captain Widdershins, and his crew of two. As soon as the children arrived at the Captain’s submarine, Captain Widdershins gives the three children an array of tasks to complete around the submarine, which were specifically fitted to fit the engineering talents of Violet, literary interpretation skills of Klaus, and Sunny’s newly found gift for culinary arts. Better yet, the tasks the three children were to complete would be in straight coherence with finding the sugar bowl, which was a prized possession of great power that both Count Olaf and The V.F.D organization were keen on finding. In search for the sugar bowl, the three children and Fiona journey to a cave where the mysterious sugar bowl is said to be located. While in the cave, Sunny becomes infected by a poisonous

This foreshadowing helps the reader connect with the Baudelaires as it creates something I call the Dora effect, as the only thing you can do is scream and watch as the Baudelaire’s are met with troubles that you knew they would face. This is much like in the famous kids show Dora, where the main character foreshadows events and takes a ridiculously long amount of time revealing an answer to a question, causing the audience to often scream or simply just watch in awe as Dora reveals her answer. The show also brings me to my next point, because often when you are finished screaming astonishingly awful things at Dora, you are left feeling guilty and plainly regret everything you just said. This is much like in the Grim Grotto, where the author succeeds at making you feel guilty and inclines you to finish the story’s content to gain assurance that the children meet a safe fate. Although regretful to say, the foreshadowing the author placed in his book also contributes to me experiencing a high level of anger. This is due to the author constantly making following events seemingly obvious which in turn made some parts of the story unnecessarily dull as you would already know its