A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Reptile Room (2)

Condition: New, Hardcover

Author: Lemony Snicket

Illustrator: Brett Helquist

The Reptile Room is a children's novel and the second of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Having just escaped from the greedy and evil Count Olaf in the first book, the Baudelaire children are now taken to live with another relative, Dr. Montgomery. While the children find Dr. Montgomery to be a kind herpetologist, Count Olaf's final threat in the previous book continues to throw a shadow over their future.

Plot Summary

After being taken away from their horrible guardian previously (the guardian was Count Olaf, who tried to steal their fortune), the three Baudelaire children are taken by Mr. Poe to their new guardian, Uncle Monty, who lives on Lousy Lane. According to Mr. Poe, Dr. Montgomery is the Baudelaire's "late father's cousin's wife's brother".

Dr. Montgomery, or Uncle Monty as he prefers to be called, is a short, chubby man with a round red face. He is much friendlier than Count Olaf, and gives the children free rein of the house. Monty tells the children that they will be going on an expedition to Peru, once his new assistant, Stephano, arrives. He says that his old assistant, Gustav, had suddenly resigned (Gustav could possibly be Gustav Sebald).

The children are fascinated by the many snakes in the Reptile Room, a giant hall in which Monty's reptile collection is stored. They meet The Incredibly Deadly Viper, which Monty has only recently discovered. The snake's name is a misnomer since it is harmless; Monty intends to use it to play a practical joke on the Herpetologist Society in revenge for their ridiculing his name, Montgomery Montgomery. The three children are each given jobs in the Reptile Room: Violet is given the job of inventing traps for new snakes found in Peru, Klaus is told to read books on snakes to help advise Uncle Monty and Sunny's job is to bite ropes into usable pieces. She also befriends the Incredibly Deadly Viper.

When Stephano arrives, the children realize that he is Count Olaf in disguise. They try to warn Monty, but Olaf foils these attempts. Eventually, Monty does realize Stephano is evil, but believes Stephano to be an impostor sent to steal the Incredibly Deadly Viper. Monty explains this all to the astonished orphans and tears Stephano's ticket to Peru up, saying that Stephano will not be going on the trip with them. Olaf threatens the children privately later, hinting at some plot he has for them when they reach Peru. They tell him that Monty won't let him go with them and Olaf becomes furious. On the day they are to leave for Peru, they discover Monty's dead body in the Reptile Room. He has two tiny puncture holes under his eye, and Olaf claims that he has been bitten by a snake. This possibly could have been avoided if the Baudelaires hadn't told Olaf that Monty had torn up his ticket.

Olaf still intends to take the children to Peru, where he will more easily find a way to get his hands on their fortune. However, as they are leaving the estate, Olaf's car crashes into that of Mr. Poe. They return to the house, where Poe and Olaf discuss what to do with the children. The Baudelaires try to prove that it was Olaf who killed Monty.

Meanwhile, the children realize that they'll need evidence to expose Olaf's scheme. Klaus and Sunny stage a diversion in which the Incredibly Deadly Viper pretends to attack Sunny to allow Violet time to find and open Olaf's suitcase. Olaf blows his cover when he informs Mr. Poe that Sunny is not in danger as the viper is harmless; he had previously claimed he knew nothing about snakes. Violet shows up and presents Mr. Poe with the evidence (among other things, a powder puff and the syringe used to inject snake venom into Monty). Mr. Poe asks Olaf to display his ankle, where the tattoo of an eye should be. However, the eye is not there. The Baudelaires insist that he has covered it with makeup. Mr. Poe wipes the ankle with a handkerchief, revealing the eye.

Soon, the Baudelaires are going to be assigned to yet another guardian. They watch in horror as Monty's reptile collection is taken away by Bruce, who appears in the 10th book, "The Slippery Slope". They watch as the car containing the Incredibly Deadly Viper drives off into the night, and hope to have a good guardian soon.

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 Reptile Room (2)