A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of my favorite book series from when I was a kid, and I’m rereading through all thirteen books. Today I’m discussing the seventh book, The Vile Village. This post will contain spoilers for book seven and all the books preceding it, so if you do not want plot information given away then, in the words of Lemony Snicket, “you may prefer to do some other solemn and sacred thing, such as reading another [review] instead.”

The Vile Village is a turning point in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It falls in the exact middle of the thirteen-part series, and narratively speaking, it has one foot in the first half of the series and one foot in the second half. Just like all the previous books, the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live with a new guardian—in this case, an entire village standing in as a guardian, the Village of Fowl Devotees. VFD is governed by the Council of Elders, a group of old townspeople who have generated thousands of rules that must be strictly obeyed. And, the same as the last five books, Count Olaf shows up in disguise to steal the Baudelaires’ inheritance. The book ratchets up the stakes and the tension of all the previous books, in addition to having all the usual dark creativity, verbal gymnastics, and intriguing mysteries.

So, what separates this book from all the books of the first half?

Half and Half

Before I answer that question, I should first explain what I mean by “first half” and “second half.” This is a deeply ingrained framework in my head for understanding A Series of Unfortunate Events. The first half is books 1-6, and kind of book 7. The second half is books 8-13, and kind of book 7. The reason that book 7 doesn’t fall firmly into either category isn’t just because of the imperfect math—it’s because it shares characteristics with both halves. So hopefully I can take this opportunity both to highlight the transitional nature of The Vile Village and delineate the characteristics of the first and second half.

The Vile Village is part of the first half because it is fundamentally formulaic. Of course, the books of the second half have recurring motifs, and they still all have thirteen chapters, but in terms of story structure they are not nearly as formulaic as books 1-7. All of the first half books follow the formula of:

• Baudelaires arrive at new location with new guardian
• Count Olaf shows up (add “in disguise” for books 2-7)
• Baudelaires work to uncover Count Olaf and his scheme to steal their inheritance
• Baudelaires succeed in uncovering Count Olaf
• Count Olaf escapes
• Baudelaires are forced to leave their current location (although this part can occur earlier.)

All of the above bullet points occur in The Vile Village, however the overall story structure—the shape of the narrative arc—is still distinct from the first six books, and more similar to the following six.

For the most part, the story structure of the first half is Baudelaires get into trouble, Baudelaires get out of trouble. Their fortunes at the end of the book are no better or worse than those at the end, and the circumstances at the end of one book don’t necessarily lead to the circumstances at the beginning of another. A few of them could be read out of order. With the books of the second half, for the most part, the structure is the same—Baudelaires getting in and out of trouble—but by the end of the book, while they may have escaped the worst of it, they are in a worse situation than they were at the beginning—and The Vile Village probably shows the most drastic decline in fortunes of any of them. At the start of the book they are orphans and they live in a horrible village, but they’re at least provided food and shelter. At the end of the book they are on the lamb after being accused of murder with no one to take care of them but themselves. It’s a big change from the first half, where things return to the status quo. At the end of The Vile Village, there’s no going back.

I mentioned earlier in this series of posts that, looked at structurally, in terms of protagonists accomplishing their goals, these books have happy endings—the second half of the series, starting with book 7, really starts to challenge that idea.

Rule #961

Alright everyone, buckle up, things are about to get literary!

The Vile Village does a great job of ramping up the scope of the series, as well as the stakes. Even before the threat of execution comes up, right from the outset it does this with the premise: the Baudelaires aren’t going to be dealing with just one horrible guardians, or two, or an academy or a lumber mill, no. They’re going to be dealing with an entire town, a whole community of people who are horrible. And, in the same way that Handler has used past guardians to draw out the worst in teachers (see The Austere Academy) or in the grinding ennui of manual labor (see The Miserable Mill), he uses the Village of Fowl Devotees to portray the worst in society.

The major fixation of the book is mobs. VFD is a community that follows, to the letter, a litany of arbitrary rules, from Rule #141, which “states that all prisoners receive bread and water,” (178) to Rule #4,561 which “states that citizens are not allowed to use their mouths for recreation” (62) to Rule #961 which “states that the Council of Elders’ hot fudge sundaes cannot have more than fifteen pieces of nuts each.” (100) These rules are an exaggerated rendering of societal mores, and, appropriately, they are passed down from the eldest members of the society—the council of elders. Although some of the rules make sense, such as Rule #201, “no murdering” (165), others are either completely inane (see Rule #961), authoritarian in nature (“Rule #108 clearly states that the V.F.D. library cannot contain any books that break any of the other rules” [60]) or bent to the whims of what is fashionable in society—in this case, crows (“Rule #19, … clearly states that the only pens that are acceptable within the city limits are ones made from the feathers of crows.” [138])

And on that note, let’s talk about the crows. The villagers are all, as the name of their village suggests, devoted to crows. Many of their rules, which carry severe punishments, revolve around placating, or not harming, the enormous murder of crows which lives in VFD. They have a massive crow-shaped fountain. The elders all wear hats with crow statues on them. The crows are a point of obsession for the villagers, which could be a stand in for anything—religion, patriotism, pop culture—it’s a rendering of how a mob of people can fanaticize over one particular thing, taken to an extreme.

The crows are also a direct reflection of the townspeople. They move almost completely as one whole unit: