The Vile Village
Encyclopedia
The Vile Village is the seventh novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events
A Series of Unfortunate Events
A Series of Unfortunate Events is a series of children's novels by Lemony Snicket which follows the turbulent lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire after their parents' death in an arsonous house fire...

by Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler . Snicket is the author of several children's books, serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events and appearing as a character within the series. Because of this, the name Lemony Snicket may refer to both a fictional...

. After escaping Olaf once again, the Baudelaire orphans are taken into the care of a whole village, only to find lots of rules and chores, evil seniors, and Count Olaf and his evil girlfriend lurking nearby.

This book is considered to be the "plot twist
Plot twist
A plot twist is a change in the expected direction or outcome of the plot of a film, television series, video game, novel, comic or other fictional work. It is a common practice in narration used to keep the interest of an audience, usually surprising them with a revelation...

" of the series, because the Baudelaires can no longer call on Mr. Poe for assistance after the events of this book, and they themselves are deemed "criminals". Also, after this point the Baudelaires are not assigned any legal guardians.

Plot

The book begins when the Baudelaires are in Mr. Poe's office, looking at The Daily Punctilio (a poorly written newspaper full of lies about the Quagmires and Count Olaf
Count Olaf
Count Olaf is the primary antagonist of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. In the series, Olaf is an actor and is known to have committed many crimes as a member of the fire-starting side of V.F.D. prior to the events of the first book in...

). Mr. Poe gives a brochure to the Baudelaire orphans about a new program allowing an entire village to serve as guardian
Legal guardian
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Usually, a person has the status of guardian because the ward is incapable of caring for his or her own interests due to infancy, incapacity, or disability...

, based on the saying "It takes a village to raise a child.". The children naturally choose V.F.D.
V.F.D.
V.F.D. is a secret organization within the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The purposes of the organization are never made clear, although the name of the organization is connected to various interpretations of the word "fire." V.F.D...

, an acronym which the two Quagmire triplets
Quagmire triplets
The Quagmires are a principal family in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. The unnamed Quagmire parents were members of the secret vigilante organization V.F.D...

 (before they were captured by Count Olaf), discovered is part of a fearsome secret somehow related to Count Olaf.

The children depart for the unknown V.F.D. by bus, and after a long, hot and dusty walk from the bus stop, they reach the town of V.F.D., which is filled with crow
Crow
Crows form the genus Corvus in the family Corvidae. Ranging in size from the relatively small pigeon-size jackdaws to the Common Raven of the Holarctic region and Thick-billed Raven of the highlands of Ethiopia, the 40 or so members of this genus occur on all temperate continents and several...

s. They become acquainted with the Council of Elders, who proclaim that the children will do all the chores for the entire village, but they will be living with Hector, the handyman.

Hector takes them to his home, where he shows them the house, the barn and the Nevermore Tree, where all the crows come to roost at night. The Baudelaires learn that V.F.D. stands for the Village of Fowl Devotees. Hector shows the Baudelaires the following couplet
Couplet
A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

, which he says was found at the base of Nevermore Tree:

For sapphires we are held in here,

Only you can end our fear.

The Baudelaires discover that Hector has been breaking the town rules by keeping a secret library and working on a hot-air mobile home in his barn, so that he can sail away from V.F.D. forever. They discuss the Quagmires and consider the fact that Isadora might be somehow sending the Baudelaires a plea for help in the poem. They also discover a new couplet under the tree, though they've kept the tree under surveillance the whole night, which reads:

Until dawn comes we cannot speak,

No words can come from this sad beak.

Two members of the Council of Elders come and report that Count Olaf has been captured, and the Baudelaires are to report immediately to the Town Hall. The Baudelaires discover that Count Olaf was not captured, but instead a man named Jacques, who also has one eyebrow and a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. The children insist that he is not Count Olaf, but the townspeople do not listen to them. The next day he is to be burned at the stake.

That night the Baudelaires construct a plan. Sunny keeps watch at Nevermore Tree to see where the poems are coming from. Klaus searches the rules of V.F.D. for something to help Jacques out of trouble. Violet helps finish Hector's hot-air balloon device, for it will be a useful escape device if Count Olaf comes after them.

Violet fixes the hot air balloon. Klaus discovers that a rule allows the accused to make a speech explaining himself. If a few people say something, mob psychology can make everyone demand the same thing and thus they can suggest that Jacques be freed. Sunny discovers that the crows are somehow delivering the couplets, and finds a new one:

The first thing you read contains the clue,

An initial way to speak to you.

When the children run to the uptown jail where Jacques is being held, they learn that he has "died" in the night. Olaf, masquerading as Detective Dupin, announces that Jacques has 'died' in the night, and accuses the Baudelaires of murdering "Count Olaf". He claims that Violet's hair ribbon and a lens from Klaus's glasses were found on the scene, and Sunny's teeth marks are on the body. The people ignore the fact that the orphans have solid alibis and the children are quickly locked up inside the Deluxe Cell. Detective Dupin tells them that one will make a great escape before the burning, making it possible for him to inherit the Baudelaire fortune, and he leaves them to decide who will survive.

While they are locked up, Klaus realizes that it is his 13th birthday. At that time Officer Luciana comes in and brings them water and bread. Violet uses the bread and water to allow them to escape: they soak the bread in the water and squeeze it against the soft mortar, allowing the water to run down the bench into the pitcher. At daybreak, Hector comes and tells them that if they break out, he has the hot-air balloon ready. He also gives them the daily couplet:

Inside these letters the eye will see,

Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.

They break free of the jail using the wooden bench as a battering ram and reread the poems.
For sapphires we are held in here.
Only you can end our fear.

Until dawn comes we cannot speak.
No words can come from this sad beak.

The first thing you read contains the clue.
An initial way to speak to you.

Inside these letters the eye will see.
Nearby are your friends and V.F.D.


The Baudelaires figure out a number of things: The sapphires refer to the Quagmires' fortune. The Quagmires cannot speak until dawn as the crows do not arrive uptown until then. The initial way to speak to them is not V.F.D., but the first letter in each verse, which spells out 'fountain'. They rush over to Fowl Fountain and manage to open the beak, revealing the damp Quagmires.

At this point they flee the mob coming to burn them and make a run for Hector's house. As they go, the Quagmires explain that Count Olaf locked them in the tower of his house. Then he had his associates build the fountain. The Quagmires tied the couplet to the crows' feet every morning. They try to tell the Baudelaires that the man who died - Jacques Snicket - is the brother of Lemony Snicket, but the mob catches sight of them and they have to run. They reach Hector's house and the Quagmires climb a rope ladder to get in the hot-air mobile home. Officer Luciana shoots at the rope ladder with a harpoon gun so the Baudelaires can't get up. The Quagmires throw their notebooks down to the orphans, but the notebooks are scattered when Officer Luciana hits them.

The book ends with Count Olaf and Officer Luciana, who is revealed to be Esme Squalor
Esmé Squalor
Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor is the secondary antagonist of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. She is Count Olaf's girlfriend. Prior to the events of the series she was a professional stage actress and member of V.F.D. Esmé is distinguished...

, escaping on a motorcycle, and the Baudelaires fleeing, rather than waiting for the police, as the Daily Punctilio has written an article that they killed Jacques.

Foreshadows

  • On the last picture, there is a newspaper with the words Last Chance on it, foreshadowing The Hostile Hospital
    The Hostile Hospital
    The Hostile Hospital is the eighth novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.-Plot and summary:The book begins where the previous one left off, with the three Baudelaire children escaping the Village of Fowl Devotees...

    .
  • The harpoon gun also foreshadows the last two books.

Cultural references and literary allusions

  • The Nevermore Tree is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe
    Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

    's "The Raven
    The Raven
    "The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...

    ," in which a raven
    Raven
    Raven is the common name given to several larger-bodied members of the genus Corvus—but in Europe and North America the Common Raven is normally implied...

     repeats the word 'Nevermore'.

  • At the start of the novel Mr. Poe receives a phone call from Mr. Fagin
    Fagin
    Fagin is a fictional character who appears as an antagonist of the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, referred to in the preface of the novel as a "receiver of stolen goods", but referred to more frequently within the actual story as the "merry old gentleman" or simply the "Jew".-Character:Born...

    , a character from Charles Dickens
    Charles Dickens
    Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

    ' novel Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist
    Oliver Twist; or, The Parish Boy's Progress is the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse and then is placed with an undertaker. He escapes and travels to...

    . Fagin tells Poe that he won't accept the children because they are trouble makers, which is ironic because in Oliver Twist, Fagin runs a gang of pickpockets.

  • The alias that Olaf uses, Detective Dupin, may be a reference to C. Auguste Dupin, a fictional detective character created by Edgar Allan Poe.

  • Five of Sunny's utterances, Pipit
    Pipit
    The pipits are a cosmopolitan genus, Anthus, of small passerine birds with medium to long tails. Along with the wagtails and longclaws, the pipits make up the family Motacillidae...

    , Grebe
    Grebe
    A grebe is a member of the Podicipediformes order, a widely distributed order of freshwater diving birds, some of which visit the sea when migrating and in winter...

    , Merganser, Towhee
    Towhee
    A towhee is any one of a number of species of birds in the genus Pipilo or Melozone within the family Emberizidae ....

     and Vireo
    Vireo
    The vireos are a group of small to medium-sized passerine birds restricted to the New World. They are typically dull-plumaged and greenish in color, the smaller species resembling wood warblers apart from their heavier bills...

    , are the names of birds.

  • One of the towns on the brochure for "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child" is named Ophelia, perhaps referencing Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet
    Hamlet
    The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

    ; Mr. Poe dislikes the bank in this town, perhaps because Ophelia's father is the originator of the saying "Neither a borrower nor a lender be."

  • Officer Luciana, Esmé's disguised name, is probably a reference to a character in Catch-22
    Catch-22
    Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century...

    , a novel by Joseph Heller
    Joseph Heller
    Joseph Heller was a US satirical novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His best known work is Catch-22, a novel about US servicemen during World War II...

    , who tears up an address and can never find it again, just as Esmé tears the Quagmire notebooks and they are never fully reassembled.

  • Ogden Nash
    Ogden Nash
    Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...

     is mentioned in the book, a poet who wrote couplets.

  • Mr. Lesko, a town resident, has the same last name as the author Matthew Lesko
    Matthew Lesko
    Matthew Lesko is an American author, self-proclaimed federal grant researcher, and infomercial personality. He has authored over 20 reference books telling people how to get "free" money from the United States government...

     who offered to teach how to get free things. Mr. Lesko says in this book that he is fine with getting his chores done for him but not having to parent the Baudelaires (he wants free laborers).

  • The initial unnerving nature of the crows in the city may refer to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds
    The Birds (film)
    The Birds is a 1963 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock based on the 1952 short story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier. It depicts Bodega Bay, California which is, suddenly and for unexplained reasons, the subject of a series of widespread and violent bird attacks over the course of a few...

    .

  • Sunny uses the word "Scylla
    Scylla
    In Greek mythology, Scylla was a monster that lived on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite its counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait were within an arrow's range of each other—so close that sailors attempting to avoid Charybdis would pass too close to Scylla and vice...

    " to explain that it would be better to live with regret on Hector's flying mobile home than to be burned to death at the stake. This is a reference to one of a pair of sea monsters in Homer
    Homer
    In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

    's Odyssey
    Odyssey
    The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

    . The two monsters live so close together that it is virtually impossible to avoid both, and so Odysseus
    Odysseus
    Odysseus or Ulysses was a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in the Epic Cycle....

     chose to head towards Scylla (the less dangerous of the two). Interestingly, Scylla and Charybdis were also mentioned in The Ersatz Elevator
    The Ersatz Elevator
    The Ersatz Elevator is the sixth novel in the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym of Lemony Snicket. The Baudelaires are sent to live with the wealthy Esmé and Jerome Squalor.-Plot summary:...

    , although Klaus incorrectly claims that Heracles
    Heracles
    Heracles ,born Alcaeus or Alcides , was a divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus...

     encountered them and escaped "by turning them both into whirlpools".

  • Hector quotes Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland. "'Curiouser and curiouser,' he said, quoting one of the Baudelaires' favorite books."

Translations

  • Brazilian Portuguese:
    Portuguese language
    Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

     "" (The Sinister City of Crows), Cia. das Letras, 2003, ISBN 85-359-0392-5
  • Finnish
    Finnish language
    Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...

    : "" (A Useless Village), WSOY, 2004, ISBN 951-0-29450-0
  • Greek
    Greek language
    Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

    : "Το Αχρείο Χωριό"
  • Korean
    Korean language
    Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...

    : "" (Evil Town), Munhakdongnae Publishing Co, Ltd., 2008, ISBN 978-89-546-0615-8
  • Russian:
    Russian language
    Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

     "" (Ugly Town), Azbuka, 2005, ISBN 5-352-01025-2

See also

  • Violet Baudelaire
    Violet Baudelaire
    Violet Baudelaire is one of the main characters in the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket and appears in all thirteen books. She is the oldest of the Baudelaire orphans at 14 years old, and often helps her 12-year-old brother Klaus and her baby sister Sunny...

  • Klaus Baudelaire
    Klaus Baudelaire
    Klaus Baudelaire is one of the main characters in the children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket who appears in all thirteen novels. Klaus is the middle child of the Baudelaire orphans; he has an older sister named Violet and a younger sister named Sunny...

  • Sunny Baudelaire
    Sunny Baudelaire
    Sunny Baudelaire is one of the protagonists of Lemony Snicket's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events. Sunny is the youngest of the three Baudelaire orphans, and is described as an infant through much of the series...

  • Count Olaf
    Count Olaf
    Count Olaf is the primary antagonist of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. In the series, Olaf is an actor and is known to have committed many crimes as a member of the fire-starting side of V.F.D. prior to the events of the first book in...

  • Lemony Snicket
    Lemony Snicket
    Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler . Snicket is the author of several children's books, serving as the narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events and appearing as a character within the series. Because of this, the name Lemony Snicket may refer to both a fictional...

  • Arthur Poe
    Arthur Poe
    Arthur Poe is a fictional character in the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. Poe is a banker in charge of the Baudelaire and Quagmire fortunes and the Baudelaire orphans' guardianship...

  • Esmé Squalor
    Esmé Squalor
    Esmé Gigi Geniveve Squalor is the secondary antagonist of the children's novel series A Series of Unfortunate Events by American author Lemony Snicket. She is Count Olaf's girlfriend. Prior to the events of the series she was a professional stage actress and member of V.F.D. Esmé is distinguished...

  • Village of Fowl Devotees
  • V.F.D.
    V.F.D.
    V.F.D. is a secret organization within the book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The purposes of the organization are never made clear, although the name of the organization is connected to various interpretations of the word "fire." V.F.D...

  • Hector from book 7


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