If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle.
this is the first paragraph of the book “the bad beginning” by daniel handler, otherwise known as lemony snicket – but we’ll save that for the next article topic. this book is the first in a 14-book children’s series known as “a series of unfortunate events,” which outlines the lives of the three baudelaire orphans and an unruly man’s chase after their parents’ life savings.
readers have a tendency to hold out hope for their characters, clinging to any little bit of redemption they can claw out of the pages. i’m guilty of it, and you probably are too. we scratch and scrape at every detail, looking for something or someone or some way to help, and when we can’t, we give up. we wish our characters the best of luck, and stand in the sidelines from then on, watching them make bad decisions over and over again, with no investment to the characters’ well-being. daniel handler does not give us this option, and it’s one of my favorite literary tactics i’ve ever seen.
in other books and series, there’s a dwindling hope from the beginning – the expectation that something will work out until it doesn’t. once that trust is broken, it’s never rebuilt.
I am sorry to tell you that this story begins with the Baudelaire orphans traveling along this most displeasing road, and that from this moment on, the story only gets worse. Of all the people in the world who have miserable lives – and, as I’m sure you know, there are quite a few – the Baudelaire youngsters take the cake, a phrase which here means that more horrible things have happened to them than just about anybody.
this is the first paragraph of “the reptile room,” the second book in the series. similar in tone to the first paragraph of “the bad beginning,” handler uses the constant push and pull of luring the reader into holding out hope, then crushing their spirits yet again.
this consistency holds out through the entirety of the series, and i definitely think this is the best literary device i’ve seen used to keep readers hooked.
