Who burned down the Baudelaire mansion?
The series ended on an island but its bad beginning is still rife with controversy, confusion and contempt. As of today, we have no idea how the Baudelaire fire happened, or who escaped it, or why it was so important. In one of the most infuriating and frustrating pieces of dialogues Daniel Handler has ever written, we, the readers, are denied any answer to this mystery:
Klaus knelt down beside his sister, and stared into the villain’s shiny eyes. “You’re the one who made us orphans in the first place,” he said, uttering out loud for the first time a secret all three Baudelaires had kept in their hearts for almost as long as they could remember. Olaf closed his eyes for a moment, grimacing in pain, and then stared slowly at each of the three children in turn. “Is that what you think?” he said finally. “We know it,” Sunny said. “You don’t know anything,” Count Olaf said. “You three children are the same as when I first laid eyes on you. You think you can triumph in this world with nothing more than a keen mind, a pile of books, and the occasional gourmet meal.” He poured one last gulp of cordial into his poisoned mouth before throwing the seashell into the sand. “You’re just like your parents,” he said, and from the shore the children heard Kit Snicket moan. [Lemony Snicket - The End, Chapter Thirteenth]
There are about a million different ways to interpret Olaf’s reaction:
- Someone else was actually responsible for burning down the mansion.
- A group of several people (including Olaf) burned down the mansion for different reasons.
- Olaf did burn down the mansion but the Baudelaire parents’ death had nothing to do with the fire, as at least one of them escaped the fire.
- Olaf was coerced into killing the Baudelaire parents and was only an accomplice to the murder
- Olaf feels that Bertrand and Beatrice are responsible for their own death and that they essentially brought it upon themselves
- Klaus is more or less right but Olaf just enjoys not leaving the Baudelaire orphans any closure or certainty on this topic as a final “screw you” to his enemies.
The ambiguity of the universe and the inability to acquire perfect knowledge are major themes throughout the series, and Olaf’s ambiguous response is a testament. Nevertheless, there seems to be a kind of poignant sincerity in Olaf’s flippant dismissal. This is a dying man who has nothing left to lose; why would he lie? If a drama-queen has to make a final speech, said drama-queen uses it to send a deeply personal message. And the message here is that Klaus is… not wrong, exactly, but that his understanding of his parents’ death is biased and simplistic. Let’s take some time to examine Olaf’s point of view on the day of the Baudelaire fire.
Simply put: what the hell happened?
