A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Ersatz Elevator (6)

Condition: New, Hardcover

Author: Lemony Snicket

Illustrator: Brett Helquist

The Ersatz Elevator is the sixth novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym of Lemony Snicket. The Baudelaires are sent to live with the wealthy Esmé and Jerome Squalor.

Plot Summary

The Baudelaire children (Violet the inventor, Klaus the scholar, and Sunny the biter) walk with Mr. Poe to their new home on 667 Dark Avenue. It is literally dark, due to the fact that there are giant trees blocking out sunlight. This is apparently because "light" is out of fashion, while "dark" is in. The children and Mr. Poe find their way through the gloom with help from the doorman. Mr. Poe does not go with them to meet their new guardians, because he is leaving on an expedition to find the Quagmire triplets. When the Baudelaires enter the apartment building, they find that elevators are "out" which means they have to climb the long way up to the penthouse. When they get to the top, Jerome Squalor welcomes the children to their new home. He offers them "aqueous martinis", which is simply water with an olive in it served in a fancy glass, and introduces them to his wife Esmé Squalor. She is a very "in" person and the city's sixth most important financial adviser. She is obsessed with what is "in" and "out", and explains that orphans are currently "in". Esmé presents the children with "in" pinstriped suits, overriding Jerome's suggestion that the children be allowed to choose their own clothing. Jerome generally seems to avoid arguments with Esmé, constantly following her instructions. Esmé describes that the children and Jerome will have dinner at Café Salmonella, because she will be busy privately discussing arrangements for an auction with trendy auctioneer Gunther.

The Baudelaires immediately recognize Gunther as Count Olaf, despite his attempt to disguise his eyebrow with a monocle and high boots to cover up the tattoo of an eye on his ankle. Despite their protestations, Jerome takes the children to the restaurant. Jerome believes the children are being xenophobic and dismisses their suspicions of Gunther.

The children are left alone in the penthouse the next day when Esmé and Jerome head off to pick up crates of the new "in" drink. They search the penthouse for Gunther but find nothing. The orphans go listen for him at the doors of other apartments, to no avail.

Klaus notices that there is one elevator on each floor except for the top floor which has two. The children investigate and find that the extra elevator is a fake, "ersatz" and consists of nothing but an empty shaft. They climb down the shaft, using a self-constructed rope of Violet's design, to find that the two Quagmire triplets are trapped in a cage at the bottom of the shaft. The Quagmires say that Count Olaf, disguised as Gunther, is planning to smuggle them out of the city by hiding them in an object at the "In" auction, which one of his associates will bid on. The Baudelaires return to the penthouse to find tools with which they can free the Quagmires, but when they return the children find that Olaf has spirited the Quagmires away already. They return, dispirited, to the penthouse.

Series Summary

The series follows the adventures of three siblings, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, after their parents were killed in a fire at the family mansion. In The Bad Beginning, they briefly live with a friend of their parents, Mr. Poe, who is the person in charge of the Baudelaire fortune after the Baudelaire parents' deaths, before being sent to live with Count Olaf, whom Mr. Poe describes as either the siblings' "third cousin four times removed, or their fourth cousin three times removed". The siblings discover that he intends to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune, which awaits Violet, the eldest child, when she turns eighteen. In the first seven books, Olaf, each time in different disguises, follows the children wherever they go so he can get closer to the orphans and steal their fortune. Their roles switch in the eighth through twelfth books, in which the orphans adopt disguises while on the run from the police after being framed by Count Olaf, disguised as Detective Dupin, for the murder of Count Omar (really Jacques Snicket). The Baudelaires routinely try to get help from Mr. Poe, but Poe is always either busy with work, oblivious to the danger Olaf poses, unaware that the disguised Olaf is not who he claims to be or simply thinks the Baudelaires are lying.

Each of the three siblings has a distinctive skill that often helps them during their adventures. Violet is always inventing new things to help them, Klaus is always finding out new information by reading books, and Sunny has extremely sharp teeth that can bite almost anything in two. [4] In later books, Sunny learns how to cook, as she begins to grow to the normal size for her teeth so cooking becomes her primary skill. Sunny originally spoke in single word utterances which are often a variety of incomplete sentences and some short word sentences as well. Their meaning is either disguised by being spelled phonetically (e.g., 'surchmi' in The Slippery Slope), backwards (e.g., 'edasurc' [crusade] in The Carnivorous Carnival) through cultural references (Sunny says: 'Matahari', followed by a definition of 'If I stay, I can spy on them and find out.'), or being written in other languages (e.g., Shalom or Sayonara), but eventually she begins to speak more in complete English sentences, her first possibly being "I'm not a baby" in The Slippery Slope, or "Like me" in The Vile Village.

Lemony Snicket, the author of the stories and the pseudonym of Daniel Handler, is actually a character himself on the periphery of the stories. He follows the Baudelaires, researching and recording their exploits. Bruce Butt noted in 2002 that in each book a letter from Snicket to his editor is included, presented as exciting updates on Snicket's research into the Baudelaire orphans, which Butt considered to be "the slyest aspect of the way this series has been ingeniously promoted". Over the course of the series, the Baudelaires learn some vague information about Snicket and possibly meet him briefly in The Wide Window and The Penultimate Peril.

1. The Bad Beginning
2. The Reptile Room
3. The Wide Window
4. The Miserable Mill
5. The Austere Academy
6. The Ersatz Elevator
7. The Vile Village
8. The Hostile Hospital
9. The Carnivorous Carnival
10. The Slippery Slope
11. The Grim Grotto
12. The Penultimate Peril
13. The End

A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Ersatz Elevator (6)