Sunny Baudelaire
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| Sunny Baudelaire | |
|---|---|
| A Series of Unfortunate Events character | |
| File:Sunny Baudelaire.jpg | |
| First appearance | The Bad Beginning |
| Last appearance | The End |
| Created by | Lemony Snicket |
| Portrayed by | Kara and Shelby Hoffman (film) Melissa and Kaitlyn White (TV series) |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Family | Violet Baudelaire (sister) Klaus Baudelaire (brother) Beatrice Baudelaire (mother, deceased) Bertrand Baudelaire (father, deceased) Beatrice Baudelaire II (adoptive sister) |
| Relatives | Count Olaf (third/fourth cousin four times removed/uncle) Monty Montgomery (cousin's brother-in-law, deceased) Josephine Anwhistle (second cousin's sister-in-law; status unclear) See also Baudelaire family for more info. |
| Religion | Jewish[nb 1] |
Sunny Baudelaire /ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series who appears in all thirteen novels. Sunny is the youngest of the three Baudelaire orphans, and is described as an infant through much of the series. Although Sunny cannot walk until the end of the seventh book and speaks in an idiosyncratic form of baby talk, she repeatedly demonstrates advanced problem solving skills, motor dexterity, comprehension, moral reasoning, and intelligence, similar to Maggie Simpson but more sympathetic and less annoying due to her status as an orphan.
Early in the series, Sunny is frequently noted for the size and strength of her teeth. While her siblings, Klaus and Violet, often use their respective talents of reading and inventing to solve their problems, Sunny is required on multiple occasions to use her sharp teeth. As the books progress and Sunny grows out of infancy, she develops an affinity for cooking.
Biography
Sunny Baudelaire is a character in all of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Although very young, her cognitive abilities are unusually developed for her age, with her comprehension of their situations generally equaling that of Violet and Klaus.
The Bad Beginning
The book begins with Sunny Baudelaire and her siblings being orphaned when their parents die in a fire, leaving an enormous fortune behind them that the orphans will receive when Violet comes of age. They stay with Mr. Poe, his wife and two sons, Edgar and Albert, for a short while. After their stay, Mr. Poe decides they will stay with their distant cousin, Count Olaf. Before entering Count Olaf's filthy home, they meet a kind, middle-aged woman by the name of Justice Strauss, who is a judge. Count Olaf plans to get their fortune by having the judge marry him to Violet legally, while ostensibly appearing in a stage drama, then kill off Klaus and Sunny, and force Mr. Poe to turn over the fortune. To accomplish this, he locks up Sunny in a bird cage and imprisons her hanging from the roof of a thirty-foot high tower. Sunny endures this for a whole day and night before Violet attempts to climb the tower using a grappling hook to try and free her, but ends up captured by the hook-handed man, who also captures Klaus, so Sunny must be rescued by Mr. Poe, who is so appalled at Count Olaf that he removes the Baudelaires from his care.
The Reptile Room
Sunny, Klaus, and Violet Baudelaire are sent to live with their new guardian, Uncle Monty, a friendly herpetologist whose home stores his beloved collection of reptiles. In an effort to protect the children, Uncle Monty intends to take the children to Peru in a week. Sunny becomes good friends with Montgomery's snake, the "Incredibly Deadly" Viper, whose name is a misnomer so he can get back at his colleagues for repetitively making fun of his name.
When Count Olaf shows up, disguised as Stephano, having murdered the real assistant to Montgomery, Gustav, Sunny is petrified, and Count Olaf threatens the children by saying he cut off one of Sunny's toes when they lived with him. After Count Olaf murders Uncle Monty, Sunny gets so angry with Count Olaf (and Mr. Poe, for refusing to believe them) that she is instrumental in foiling his plan. The viper pretends to bite and harm Sunny, but Mr. Poe knows nothing of the viper's friendliness so he thinks it's attacking her. When Count Olaf reveals his knowledge of snakes despite having previously said he knew nothing, the tables turn and Olaf flees with one of his henchmen.
The Wide Window
Sunny and her siblings are sent to stay with their Aunt Josephine, a widow whose husband had been eaten by the Lachrymose leeches which inhabit the local lake. She has irrational fears of doorknobs, stoves, refrigerators, realtors and the telephone. Later, Count Olaf, who has taken on the persona of "Captain Sham" forced Aunt Josephine to fake her own death by jumping out of the Wide Window. Klaus reads a coded message found beside the window which, when deciphered, reads 'Curdled Cave'. Aunt Josephine swims to Curdled Cave to hide from "Captain Sham", where Sunny, Klaus, and Violet find her. Klaus persuades Josephine to leave the cave by telling her that there will be realtors coming soon to look at the cave as it is for sale. When they are sailing back to land, Aunt Josephine tells them that she ate a banana while in the cave, which will attract the Lachrymose Leeches. Violet constructs a flare and "Captain Sham" arrives, taking the children and pushing Aunt Josephine into the water for correcting his grammar. Sunny leaps up on the shore and bites off part of Sham's false peg leg, revealing he is Count Olaf, who runs away from Mr. Poe and vows he will be back. Aunt Josephine's body is never found, leading to suspicions that she may have survived.
The Miserable Mill
The Baudelaire orphans work at a lumber mill and are paid with coupons and chewing gum. The new foreman, Foreman Flacunto, keeps tripping Klaus up, and then sending him to the evil Dr. Orwell's eye surgery. Every time he returns, he has wide eyes and speaks in a dazed tone. However, the second time this occurs, Violet and Sunny go with him, and discover that Dr. Orwell's homely receptionist, Shirley, is actually Count Olaf. Ultimately, Sunny engages in a teeth-sword fight with Dr. Orwell, during which Orwell dies by falling into the wood chopper. Flacutono is revealed to be one of Olaf's assistants — the bald man with the long nose. (He was wearing a wig and a surgical mask.) The two villains escaped by smashing a window in Charles' library and jumping through. The police were called after Mr. Poe had arrived, but were too late to stop them. Afterwards they leave the site.
The Austere Academy
Sunny works as a secretary in Vice Principal Nero's office where she is forced to staple papers, while Klaus and Violet are in school. At lunchtime on the first day, they meet mean, nasty, and spoiled Carmelita Spats as well as the kind, smart and astute siblings Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, who soon become their best friends. Sunny, Klaus, and Violet experience S.O.R.E. which stands for Special Orphan Running Exercises, in which Olaf makes the orphans run laps around the school track all night long to exhaust them so they will fail their exams. The Quagmires help the Baudelaires by running for them, giving them time to practice for their exams the next day.
The Ersatz Elevator
In this book, Sunny, Violet,and Klaus Baudelaire go to live with Jerome and Esmé Squalor. Jerome "does not want to argue", but Esmé is concerned only with what's "in" and what's "out" (i.e. what's in fashion). Count Olaf, disguised as Gunther, an auctioneer, works together with Esmé to try to auction off the Quagmires at the In Auction. Esmé, now Olaf's girlfriend, pushes Sunny, Klaus and Violet down an empty elevator shaft and traps them on a net there. Sunny has to use her sharp teeth to climb back up to save her siblings. They finally escape and go to the auction. Gunther is announcing Lot #47. Sunny, Violet, and Klaus think Isadora and Duncan are hidden in Lot #50, V.F.D., which turns out to be only Very Fancy Doilies. Isadora and Duncan Quagmire were really hidden in a red herring statue, Lot #48, that the hook-handed man bought, is now in Olaf's clutches.
The Vile Village
In this book, Sunny and her siblings go to the V.F.D (Village Of Fowl Devotees). Then they help Hector the handyman to clean the whole town. They also got some couplets from the Quagmires. After Detective Dupin (Count Olaf) and Officer Luciana (Esmé) frame the Baudelaires for murdering Jaques Snicket, they go to jail, escape and go to the fountain. They find a pathway inside the fountain and find the Quagmires. They escape the fountain but only the Quagmires escape with the kindly handyman Hector, with whom the Baudelaires stayed while in the village. No one knows how or where Hector and the Quagmires wind up.
The Hostile Hospital
After hiding from the police, the Baudelaire orphans climb aboard the Volunteers Fighting Diseases (V.F.D) van, which carries them to Heimlich Hospital. Sunny and Klaus later disguise themselves as the two white faced women, who, in turn, are disguised as doctors to stall Violet's surgery which was actually going to be used to kill her by removing her head by "accident".
The Carnivorous Carnival
After jumping out of the trunk of Count Olaf's black car, Violet and Klaus disguise themselves as a two-headed "freak" and Sunny disguises herself as Chabo the Wolf-Baby in order to sneak into a carnival to discover Count Olaf's next evil plan. In this book, it is revealed that Sunny has an interest and a talent in cooking when she adds cinnamon to the hot chocolates. Hugo, another "freak" who is a hunchback, has made for the Baudelaires. At the end of this book, Sunny is captured by Count Olaf and Esmé Squalor and taken away.
The Slippery Slope
Sunny, now Olaf's prisoner, is forced to cook for Olaf's troupe. She uses her newly developed cooking skills to create delicious meals, using frozen food stored in Olaf's car. She secretly discovers the location of the last safe place and signals to her siblings using Verdant Flammable Devices to smoke salmon, which sends a thick cloud of green smoke in the sky. Violet and Klaus discover the third Quagmire triplet, Quigely Quagmire, who survived the fire. After rescuing Sunny the four children sled down a frozen waterfall, and lose Quigley due to harsh currents.
The Grim Grotto
Sunny, Klaus, and Violet meet up with Captain Widdershins in the Queequeg, and (along with the captain's stepdaughter Fiona) embark on a journey to find the Sugar Bowl. In the process, a few spores from the deadly fungus Medusoid Mycelium infect Sunny, instantly poisoning her. The spores are so deadly that she needed to be quarantined to a diving helmet. However, her siblings discover through research that the antidote is horseradish. Finding none in the kitchen at Queequeg, Violet and Klaus ask Sunny what the culinary equivalent is. With Sunny's knowledge of cooking, she managed to utter "wasabi". Luckily, they had found some wasabi in the Grotto, and save Sunny just in time. Fiona goes on Olaf's side to find her father. The Baudelaires get a telegram to meet Quigley at Briny Beach, so they go.
The Penultimate Peril
Sunny disguises herself as a concierge, meeting Vice Principal Nero, Mr. Remora, and Ms. Bass in the progress who appeared in The Austere Academy. She is given a lock by Dewey Denouement, which she uses to lock the laundry door, so that no one can get to the sugar bowl. She later helps Count Olaf set fire to the hotel, to send a message to their friend Kit Snicket, telling her that the last safe place is safe no more.
The End
As left off from The Penultimate Peril, Sunny, Klaus, and Violet are stuck on a pirate boat with none other than Count Olaf. The boat is called "The Carmelita", but Count Olaf changes it to "The Olaf". The four of them eventually wash up on a coastal island after a bad storm. Count Olaf is abandoned right away. The islanders abandon them a few days later, and see the distraught and pregnant Kit Snicket. A little later, everyone is poisoned by the Medusoid Mycelium. But Sunny and her siblings diluted the poison by eating the hybrid apples containing horseradish from the apple tree. Kit's baby is born and survives, but Kit dies because she refused to eat the hybrid apples, in case they endangered her baby. She named the baby "Beatrice". Kit and Olaf die after reciting a poem called The Night has a Thousand Eyes together. A year later, Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and Beatrice leave on a ship called Beatrice (which was the Baudelaire siblings' mother's forename), which is shipwrecked, leaving their fate unclear.
As mentioned in The Hostile Hospital and The End, despite all of Lemony's research and hard work, he still does not know the current location, position and status of the Baudelaire children, although in The Beatrice Letters, the poster depicts the Beatrice as destroyed and her whisk among the wreckage, the siblings disappearing into the Great Unknown. But The Beatrice Letters revealed that Sunny had been on the radio many times discussing her recipes, when she had grown up into a young woman, and so it is clearly implied that she survived.
Speaking
Sunny's short sentences and baby babble are always understood by her siblings, who are usually quick to translate for others. Generally, when she uses nouns, it is clear what she is referring to. In the later books, such as The Slippery Slope, her baby noises often have allusions or subtextual meanings that relate to the plot as a whole, such as the politically motivated "Busheney!", which means "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people!"
The words she uses usually come from historical or cultural origins: in The Slippery Slope she uses the term "Rosebud" to suggest using a sled to escape, in reference to the sled in Citizen Kane. In The End (chapter 6) she uses the term "Dreyfus" in reference to Alfred Dreyfus when accused of a crime. (Dreyfus was himself held on an island for a long period of time and his case caused a schism in French society). In The Reptile Room, she says "Ackroyd", referring to Agatha Christie's murder mystery The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
In later books, Sunny's speech begins to improve. In The Hostile Hospital, she says "Sheer terror", and in The Slippery Slope she says, "I'm not a baby". However, her speaking skills never fully develop in the books, except in the mini-book chapter 14 in The End. In The Penultimate Peril, she rarely responded to the people around her because she was afraid that her way of speaking would give away her true identity. From time to time, she still speaks in her "baby language", but the words or phrases she uses tend to come from other languages such as "quid pro quo" in The End. In The Penultimate Peril it is shown that she is finally beginning to speak in full sentences, she says "The last safe place, is safe no more," which Snicket calls impressive for someone her age.
In the sort of epilogue The End called "Chapter 14" It is shown that Sunny seems to be speaking fluently in English in full sentences and actual words. She best understands what Beatrice Snicket, Kit's baby daughter, is saying, for understandable reasons. In the film, Sunny does speak her baby language, but speaks more in a wise-cracking and insulting way instead of an intelligent way, like calling Aunt Josephine the "mayor of Crazy Town", calling Count Olaf a "shmuck", and calling Mr. Poe dumb.
Disguises
Sunny's disguises include:
- Surgeon - The Hostile Hospital
- Chabo the Wolf Baby - The Carnivorous Carnival
- Scuba Diver (but she is curled up in a diving helmet)- The Grim Grotto
- Concierge - The Penultimate Peril
See also
Notes
- ^ In February 2007, Lemony Snicket stated that the Baudelaires are Jewish.[1]
References
- ^ Epstein, Nadine (February 2007). "The Jewish Secrets of Lemony Snicket". Moment. Archived from the original on December 19, 2007. Retrieved March 9, 2013.
The Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it.
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- Articles to be merged from December 2015
- A Series of Unfortunate Events characters
- Child characters in literature
- Child characters in film
- Fictional chefs
- Fictional American Jews
- Fictional orphans
- Fictional outlaws
- Fictional characters introduced in 1999
- Fictional adoptees
- Fictional victims of child abuse
- Comedy film characters
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