The Slippery Slope
In the tenth installment of the Series of Unfortunate Events, the Baudelaire Orphans must rescue Sunny from Count
Olaf while trying to unravel the growing number of mysteries and clues that surround the death of their parents and their
own lives.
The plot of The Slippery Slope is similar in feel to the last several books in the series - with a primary
plot line that seemingly gets the Baudelaire Orphans one step closer to solving the mystery of their parent's death -
the main emphasis in this book is rescuing Sunny from the "clutches" of Count Olaf, who is employing Sunny in demeaning tasks
and making her sleep in a covered casserole dish. One major devlopment for the series is the discovery of Quigley Quagmire,
the third of the Quagmire Triplets, who is alive and with the Baudelaire Orphans for much of this tenth book.
An identifying aspect of all Series Books is the traits of the Baudelaire Orphans. They are not dynamically round
characters, fully developed and known to readers, but they have identifying characteristics that make them interesting, quirky,
and even heroic. Violet is the inventor in the family - she consistently saves the day through ingenious inventions
and a quick mind. Klaus is the reader - he's smart, thoughtful, and well read. Sunny, though she is the baby,
has a knack for using her teeth and also has her own unique vocabulary - which her sister and brother understand flawlessly.
The Series has emphasized in the latest books that Sunny is growing, and with her growth, as developed skills in the culinary
arts. The traits of all the Baudelarie siblings border on the absurd yet they are presented in a clever enough way to
endear the reader to them. In the following exerpt, Count Olaf is harassing Sunny to make a hot meal:
"Hurry up, bigmouth," he growled at Sunny. "I need a nice hot meal to
take the chill out of the morning."
"Unfeasi!" Sunny cried. By "unfeasi" she meant "To make a hot meal without
any electricity, I'd need a fire, and expecting a baby to start a fire all by herself on top of a snow mountain is cruelly
impossible and impossibly cruel," but Olaf merely frowned.
As is characteristic with Sunny's vocabulary, the words she tries to use are often either part of a real word or perhaps
the French equivalent of the appropriate English word. This is typical of Handler's humor throughout the novels:
it works on numerous levels and has distinct appeal to adults as well as children.
The children are the smart ones in the books - if anyone saves the day it will be a child. Adults in the novels,
according to Bethune, only come in two varities: "well-meaning but ineffectual, or evil and slightly more capable" (2000).
Part of the appeal of the novels could be the power it gives to children. In the Series Books, children are guarenteed
to experience the lives of a group of children whose own lives are assuredly worse than their own might be. There are
different levels of delight in reading about a group of kids who are smarter than the adults in their lives. Handler
doesn't write down to kids. He also doesn't shy away from a raw portrayel of evil - readers got to know Count
Olaf, afterall, when he tried to marry Violet, who was only fourteen.
The Series Books continue to build upon the previous one in a climb to the end of the Series: Book 13. Though never
guaranteed a happy or even a resolved ending, fans of the book will hold out to see the series completed in all of its eccentric,
unfortunate (and yet enjoyable) ways.
Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Tenth: The Slippery Slope. New York:
HarperCollinsPublishers, 2003. ISBN0064410137.
