Summary:
Reviews the first in A Series of Unfortunate Events, A Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket. Describes how the three Baudelaire orphans learn of their parents' death and begin their battle against Count Olaf, a horrible, greedy man who tries to steal their fortune.
In the Bad Beginning, the three Baudelaire orphans are on the beach, their parents sent them their as sort of a vacation but they had to be home by dinner. They saw Mr Poe, a very close friend to the Baudelaire family and the executor of their parents' will. Mr Poe tells them about the enormous fire that killed their parents. They are to live with Mr Poe for the time being until they move in with a relative. Mr Poe's wife buys the children horrible itchy clothing and they have to live in their house with the weird smelling odor.
They Baudelaires move in with Count Olaf, a horribley greedy, dirty man. He orders them every morning to do meaningless chores, and when his theatre troupe comes over for dinner he orders them to make dinner. When they make a puttanesca sauce Olaf yells and says he told them to make roast beef,them Klaus says something and Olaf slaps him across the face, leaving a bruise. Olaf tells them the next day that they are to be in a play and Violet is to marry Olaf in the play. The Baudelaire's go to Justice Strauss's house and into her enormous library and read about inheritance law.
One of Olaf's troupe members comes to get them and Klaus grabs a book on Nuptual law. He stays up all night reading it. In the morning he tells Olaf that he has figured out his plan and that he is going to tell his sisters. But when he went up to their room Sunny was no where to be found. Olaf took them outside and showed them that she was dangling from the tower in a bird cage and that if Violet wasn't going to marry him that Sunny would fall 30 feet to her death. In the play Violet says "I do" in front of a judge but when she signed the papers she signing it not in her own hand but in her left hand. Olaf thinks he is married to her and says that there is no need to go on with the play because he has already married Violet. But what he does not know is that she signed the paper in her left hand and is not married to him, Violet tells Mr. Poe who is very hysterical right now and he arrests Olaf, but one of his troupe members shuts all the lights off and Olaf gets away. Mr. Poe took them back to his house to live until he finds them a new relative to live with.
This is the complete article, containing 433 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
