#0554

The two card sylladex: inventory of dumbasses.

Hello, @thesensiblesloth!

I am not a licensed profesional when it comes to mental health issues, so I’d refrain from diagnosing any character from the series. Especially in a series where so many character descriptions can be so… vague, often deliberately because Handler wants us to interpret the characters’ behaviour through our own lens rather than his.

The scientific principlesof the convergence and refraction of light are very confusing, and quitefrankly I can’t make head or tail of them, even when my friend Dr. Lorenzexplains them to me. But they made perfect sense to Violet. Instantly, shethought of a story her father had told her, long ago, when she was justbeginning to be interested in science. When her father was a boy, he’d had adreadful cousin who liked to burn ants, starting a fire by focusing the lightof the sun with her magnifying glass. Burning ants, of course, is an abhorrenthobby-the word “abhorrent” here means “what Count Olaf used todo when he was about your age”-but remembering the story made Violet seethat she could use the lens of the spying glass to focus the light of the moonand make a fire.

[…]

Her father’s ant-burningcousin sounded like a dreadful person, but if she had suddenly appeared on thesailboat Violet would have given her a big grateful hug.[The Wide Window, Chapter Eleven — Lemony Snicket]

Given that Olaf is a semi-professional liar, it’s even harder to interpret the discrepancy between his lies and his truths. For example he frequently derides people of culture even though he clearly is one of them. His spelling is atrocious and he has some gaps in his education, but he clearly appreciates literature enough to remember poems and even wrote plays under the alias of Al Funcoot. It’s clear he puts on a persona for most of the books but where that persona ends and begins is difficult to attest.

I briefly wondered whether Olaf could classify as a victim of childhood trauma but the datation of parents’ murder is a topic of contention. We don’t know for sure if it happened somewhere during his childhood, teenagehood or adulthood. He is clearly showing delusions of grandeur near the end of the series (particularly as he lands on the island in “The End”) but that’s more of a symptom than a disorder. From the point of view of the Baudelaire orphans, he’d probably be categorized as a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a psychopath, a sadist or any popular adjective which glossy magazines like to label on people they don’t like.

In reality, Olaf is probably “just” a victim of child abuse who grew up to become a traumatized asshole. He probably went through something similar to what the Baudelaire orphans and he has deluded himself into thinking that putting others through what he suffered is a form of justice. But I don’t think Daniel Handler ever intended him to fit any mental disorder. He has a history of addressing mental health issues into his works and when he does it’s usually more overt. Josephine Anwhistle shows signs of hypervigilance, Hector could qualify as social anxiety… But with Olaf it’s less clear.