A Series of Unfortunate Events

The Vile Village (7)

Condition: New, Hardcover

Author: Lemony Snicket

Illustrator: Brett Helquist

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. The orphans had also had direct contact with their parents in this volume. Their parents' conversation with the "orphans" will solve many previous unsolved mysteries.

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 (before they were captured by Count Olaf), 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 filled with crows. They become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaim that the children will do all the chores for the entire village, but they will be living with Hector, the handyman.

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 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, which reads:

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, 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 searches the rules of V.F.D. for something to help 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 hot air balloon. Klaus discovers that a rule allows the accused to make a speech explaining himself. If a few people say something, mob psychology can make everyone demand the same thing and thus they can suggest that Jacques be freed. 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. Olaf, masquerading as Detective Dupin, announces that Jacques has 'died' in the night, and 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 uses the bread and water to allow them to escape: they soak the bread in the water and squeeze it against the soft mortar, allowing the water to run down the bench into the pitcher. At daybreak, 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 figure out a number of things: The sapphires refer to the Quagmires' fortune. The Quagmires cannot speak until dawn as the crows do not arrive uptown until then. The initial way to speak to them is not V.F.D., but the first letter in each verse, which 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. Officer Luciana shoots at the rope ladder with a harpoon gun so the Baudelaires can't get up. The Quagmires throw their notebooks down to the orphans, but the notebooks are scattered when Officer Luciana hits them. The book ends with Count Olaf (unmasked) and Officer Luciana (Esmé Squalor) escaping on a motorcycle, and the Baudelaires fleeing, rather than waiting for the police, as the Daily Punctilio has written an article that they killed Jacques.

NOTE: The Quagmires' missing brother; Quigley, is not dead. Read the Slippery Slope for more information.

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 Vile Village (7)