Count Olaf

Count Olaf
First appearance	The Bad Beginning
Last appearance	The End
Created by	Lemony Snicket (aka Daniel Handler)
Portrayed by	Jim Carrey
Information
Aliases	Count Omar Al Funcoot Stephano Captain Julio Sham Shirley T. Sinoit-Pécer Coach Genghis Gunther Detective Dupin Mattathias Kit Snicket
Gender	Male
Age	Adult, Middle-Aged (deceased)
Occupation	Actor, Arsonist
Address	Count Olaf's House

Count Olaf is the main villain from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series. He has a wheezy voice, shiny eyes, one long eyebrow, and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. He was also a member of V.F.D. prior to the schism that separated it.

Fictional character biography

Early life

Count Olaf's criminal youth is referenced several times over the course of the series, most obviously in The Unauthorized Autobiography, in which a letter written from Sally Sebald contains a picture of the young boy who was to play Young Rölf in Zombies in the Snow, a film directed by her brother Gustav Sebald. She says that she thinks his name might be Omar (a name that many confuse with Olaf throughout the series).

"Omar".

In The Carnivorous Carnival Olaf says that his acting career began when he was approached by Gustav Sebald (then a "young director") because he was the "most handsome fellow at school"^[1], which would make it a very old movie, since Count Olaf himself (disguised as Stephano) watches the film in theater with the Baudelaires and Dr. Montgomery. In The Bad Beginning, Count Olaf says that when he was a child he loved raspberries. Violet remarks that she cannot picture Olaf as a child — all his features seem to be those of an adult. At the end of The Carnivorous Carnival, when he notices a map of the Mortmain Mountains in Madame Lulu's tent, Olaf makes reference to a coded stain spilt on the Valley of Four Drafts, stating that he was taught to use such stains to mark secret locations when he was a young boy.^[2]. Another mysterious reference to Count Olaf's childhood is mentioned in The Penultimate Peril. In Chapter One, Kit mentions that she was able to smuggle a box of poison darts to the Baudelaire parents before Esmé Squalor caught her. Through a few subtle hints, it becomes apparent that Lemony Snicket was present as well. Later in the book, when Olaf is confronting the Baudelaires and Dewey Denouement, he dares the Baudelaires to ask Dewey what happened that night at the theatre, implying that the Baudelaire parents, Dewey, and the Snickets were there for some sort of sinister purpose. Finally, in Chapter 12, Olaf reveals that poison darts were the reason he became an orphan himself, implying that the Baudelaire parents may have murdered his own parents. In The Beatrice Letters, a young Snicket writes to Beatrice about someone he only identifies as 'O'; "The only other student in [Code Class] that I know is O., who is nothing but an annoyance. As I write this he is filling his notebook with anagrams of obscene words. I'm tempted to tell him there is no such thing as a 'wet viper perm' (thought to be an anagram of 'Preemptive War', although this is never confirmed) but after the incident with the bottle of ink and the root beer float, I think its better to spend my time inside 'My Silence Knot' whenever that nitwit raises his ugly, one-eyebrowed head." and "The brightest star cannot shine through a cloud of dark smoke, and O is the darkest of clouds I have seen in our skies. One day the world will know of his treachery and deceit, of his crimes and hygiene, but that's far too late for us." It is hinted throughout the series that Olaf had something to do with the schism that separated V.F.D. He was involved with the organization for many years and knows many, if not all, the secrets surrounding the organization that the Bauldelaire children seek to know. He is also responsible for numerous fires and deaths of V.F.D. and plans on gaining control of all the fortunes of the members in thirst of revenge and greed. While never directly stated, it is hinted in the last two volumes that Olaf had a very troubling past and this may be the reason for his bitterness at the world.

Guardian of the Baudelaires

In the beginning of the series, the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with Count Olaf, their closest living relative, after a mysterious fire destroys their home and kills their parents. Olaf's involvement in the fire was long suspected by the Baudelaires. When they finally confronted him and accused of him of starting the fire, Olaf did not seem surprised by the accusation but asked them "Is that what you think?" Wheather this is a denial of involvement in the event or means something else is unknown. Olaf was an actor and had an entire group of similarly evil associates who he refers to as his "theatre troupe". He wrote his own plays, under the pseudonym "Al Funcoot" (an anagram of "Count Olaf"). During the time the Baudelaires lived with him, the children immediately saw Olaf as a short tempered and violent man. Olaf provided them with one filthy room and forced them to do difficult chores (such as making them chop wood solely for his own entertainment) as he schemed to seize control over their fortune. Olaf once hit Klaus hard for talking back to him, and picked up Sunny for saying "No". Later, Olaf had the children participate in a play in which Violet plays a woman who gets married to a character played by Olaf. The children learned that Olaf was using the play to disguise the fact that the marriage will be legally binding and that he will have control over the fortune once the wedding ceremony is complete. To insure that the children cooperate with the plan, Olaf kidnapped Sunny and had her tied up, put in a cage, and hung outside his tower window, threatening to murder her if the children refused to cooperate. The plan to marry Violet Baudelaire to gain the inheritance went awry. Violet managed to thwart Olaf's plan by signing the marriage with her left hand instead of her right, which as she was right-handed, was the required one to make it legally binding. Olaf was exposed as a criminal and fled, but not before Olaf promised to Violet that he would get his hands on her fortune no matter what. The children were sent to different relatives, with Olaf following in pursuit.

Plots

Olaf's plans became more dangerous and murderous in nature as the books progressed. Many of them included the murder of the children's guardians, such as Uncle Monty and Aunt Josephine. Olaf's plans always were for the goal of abducting the children through elaborate methods. In each of books 2-8 and 13, Olaf wears a new disguise that usually fools everyone but the Baudelaires:

• Stephano (stā-fä'nō/steɪ-fɑ-nəu), an assistant herpetologist with a long beard and no eyebrows
• Captain Julio Sham, a sailor with an eye-patch and a wooden leg
• Shirley T. Sinoit-Pécer, an optometrist's receptionist
• Coach Genghis, a gym teacher with a turban, covering his one eyebrow, and expensive looking running shoes, covering his tattoo of an eye on his ankle.
• Gunther (go͞ont'er/guːnɾŗ click here to hear), a pinstripe suit-wearing auctioneer. He pretends to come from another country so people believe that he doesn't speak fluent English. Olaf constantly says "please" after and in the middle of every sentence. He wears horse riding boots to cover up his tattoo.
• Detective Dupin, a 'famous' detective obsessed with what's cool, including ridiculous sunglasses which cover up his one eyebrow.
• Mattathias (mă'tə-thī'əs/ˌmætəˈθaɪəs), Heimlich Hospital's new Human Resources director. His presence is only known from a voice over the intercom.
• Kit Snicket, his only disguise based on another character in the books. He used a wig of seaweed, Esmé Squalor's fire-imitating dress, and a helmet filled with Medusoid Mycelium stuffed under the dress to simulate Snicket's pregnancy. This is also the only disguise which failed to fool the other characters.

In the earlier books, Olaf only showed that he wanted the children's fortune, but later on, it is revealed that he sought the Quagmire sapphires. As the books progress, Olaf's plans extend further as he seeks the Snicket file, and the sugar bowl, although is repeatedly shown to have a greater interest in the Baudelaire's fortune than in any of these other treasures. By the tenth book, Olaf also developes plans to gain control of numerous other fortunes from children whose parents are V.F.D. members by burning down their homes and murdering all their parents. Olaf then plans to recruit the children as new "associates" or more appropriately, prisoners, and help him destroy what's left of V.F.D. Olaf's other main goal is to destroy V.F.D in order to eliminate the last evidence of his plans so that he may execute any other scheme he wants to without the worry of the authorities. In The Penultimate Peril, Olaf finally shows signs of hesitation at committing crimes and murder. In this volume, he was about to kill one of the Denouement triplets when the Baudelaires begged him to stop and be a noble person. Olaf whispered, "What else can I do?" This gave rise to speculation that Olaf was not entirely evil, but feels obligated to continue his deeds as he has already gone too far from being noble. He is able to flee the burning Hotel Denouement by boarding the boat (then called the Carmelita) with the three Baudelaires.

Death

In The End, Olaf was rejected (due to his unkind behavior) by Friday, one of the inhabitants of a remote island, which he'd named "Olaf-land" after himself, where he was marooned with the Baudelaire orphans after a vicious storm. After a pregnant Kit Snicket was also stranded in another storm, Olaf attempts to disguise himself as her, using a round diving helmet filled with Medusoid Mycelium (a poisonous fungus whose spores cause death within the hour of exposure) to make his stomach bulge as though he were pregnant. Later, the island's leader, Ishmael, fires a harpoon at Olaf only for it to hit the encased Mycelium against his stomach and causing it to burst so that its deadly spores are released into the air, contaminating all of the islanders as well as Olaf himself. Too depressed to go on living, Olaf at first refuses to take a specially produced apple (which is mixed with horseradish, the cure for the Mycelium), saying that he has lost everything important to him. However, upon finding out that Kit Snicket is going into labor, he eats the healing apple and carries her to where she can better-perform childbirth, thus performing what Violet calls the one good deed in his life (during which he surprisingly kisses Kit on the lips). Despite being cured of the lethal Mycelium fungus, Olaf is revealed to have been more severely injured by the harpoon than originally assumed. Lying down on the beach without medical assistance from the Baudelaires who are helping Kit to give birth, Count Olaf dies. Along with Kit, he is buried on the island and his grave is occasionally visited by the Baudelaires.

Book-related notes

It is heavily implied before his death that he had previously loved Kit, and had told her he'd kiss her one last time before his death. Although Olaf heals himself before the fungus can kill him, he finally dies from a harpoon wound which had earlier injured him in the stomach. His last words quote Philip Larkin's short poem "This Be The Verse" - "Man hands on misery to man./It deepens like a coastal shelf./Get out as early as you can,/and don't have any kids yourself." Olaf's involvement in the Baudelaires' mansion fire is long suspected by the Baudelaires throughout the series, although it is unclear if he was ever truly responsible; when finally confronted with this at the end of the series, Olaf tells the Baudelaires that they know nothing. In an interview with author Daniel Handler,^[3] the interviewer asked about how in the last couple of books the line between the good people and more treacherous ones seemed to have become a bit blurred. Handler responded with "It's sad isn't it? I think the Baudelaires are getting older, and one of the sad facts about getting older is that you've always thought of yourself and people you know as righteous and true and the people you dislike as evil. The older you get the more muddy that water becomes."

The film

Jim Carrey as Count Olaf in the 2004 film.

Count Olaf was portrayed by actor Jim Carrey in the film adaptation of the books, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Handler states in the DVD commentary that Jim Carrey's physical appearance of Olaf was spot-on. Similar to the darker material from the novels, Count Olaf's character was toned down for the film. Rather than being a sinister and amoral sociopath with a penchant for black humor (as in the books), Count Olaf appears as a melodramatic, arrogant fool. A big change in the film was the strong suggestion of Olaf's responsibility for the Baudelaire fire. Whereas Olaf's role in the Baudelaires' parents' deaths is uncertain at best in the books, the implications of his involvement are far stronger in the movie. At the climax of the film, a giant spyglass possessed by Count Olaf is pointed at the smoking ruins of the Baudelaire mansion, presumably through which it was set alight.

Sources

External links

• Count Olaf at the Internet Movie Database
• CountOlaf.com, a promotional site for the film.