#v.f.d.

Beatrice's 200-page novel/letter to Lemony containing all of the many reasons why she can't marry him. The darkly elegant turn-of-the-century opera/ballet/high-society vibes of Lemony, Beatrice, Esme, Jerome, Kit, Jacques, and perhaps Olaf, all scheming and murdering and flirting in The Unnamed Big City.

Cab rides fraught with menace and apprehension, with Jacques whistling up in front as he drives. Beatrice narrating everything with a grief (and loquacity) similar to Lemony's, but looking toward the future rather than the past. Sometimes she writes "a word which here means" because Lemony says it so often. Food and fire as recurring themes. Beatrice might have an unnerving attraction to fire...and one instance of intentional fire-setting because she knows two instances would legally make her a pyromaniac.

Her uncertainty between Lemony and Bertrand, two very different men who are equally pretentious in different ways (and subtly fight over her in Clever Verbal Skirmishes, which she loves). The whole story taking place in the melodramatic atmosphere of the opera, perhaps divided into acts. Brief arias of soliloquy from Beatrice, letters from Lemony (!!!) and her friendship with the mysterious Duchess R of Winnipeg. GORGEOUS clothes on absolutely everyone.

Lemony and Beatrice bonding over their love of root beer floats, not to mention questioning the whole system of V.F.D. thinking violence is never acceptable and the world should always be quiet. I've always wondered why Beatrice chose Bertrand over Lemony, and if she really loved Lemony more. LEMONY COOKING FOR BEATRICE AT 2 AM IN HER APARTMENT AFTER A SHOW. Lemony crying on her shoulder at the bitterness of the world, disapproving of her preference for sweet milky tea. Bertrand symbolizing fire (candles, chandeliers in operas and restaurants), and Lemony symbolizing water (rain, the sea, lunch at Briny Beach, splashing with her in the fountain).

The fated tea party, the friendship turned simmering rivalry between Esme and Beatrice, the theft of the sugar bowl when Beatrice finally turns her back on Esme. Kit's subtle glances at Olaf, who's still young and kind and handsome and full of hope and mischief, even though he's a bit of a jerk. Kit believes in him. Everyone else just believes in Kit. Jacques flirting with anything in a skirt just because he likes making people blush and giggle.

The denouement is the grand opera where Beatrice's performance is followed by the death of Olaf's father and the breaking of the fellowship.

Notes in the margins written by Lemony and punctuated by tear stains.

At the end of the book, she quotes Robert Frost. "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire."

After the quotation, Lemony writes "She burned too bright for this world" from Wuthering Heights, which she loved.

Perhaps the overall meaning of the book could be that Beatrice (a name which here means "she who brings happiness") loves Lemony, and always will, because he symbolizes grief and lost love and wishing for the safe childhood that none of them ever had. But Lemony is the past, and Bertrand is the future. Beatrice has always been surrounded by people who wrote and spoke and sang of the beauty of grief, the glory of sadness. But Beatrice couldn't help holding a happiness as deep as grief. She loves dark stories and art as much as anyone (she's an opera singer, after all) but she's hungry for happiness.

And she had happiness with Lemony when he gave her food, when he hugged her and told her all the ways he would love her, when he played the accordion so well it made her cry. The manuscript is stained with her tears too. She needs to make people happy, and as much as Lemony loved her, she could never make him happy. He saw and adored her deep capacity for happiness, but he couldn't receive it. Like Dante, he admired Beatrice's glow from afar. Now he descends into the inferno, where his angel can't go with him.

The novel is perhaps named A Series of Fortunate Events. Because they all happened with him at her side. Although she has to leave him, she mourns for him, for his endless wandering on the run, and never regrets the time she spent with him. She finally learned to see herself as he always saw her--a beacon of light and warmth who held all the friends together, even as the times grew dark and the force of destiny worked on them all.

Perhaps it was really Beatrice who symbolized fire all the time, not Bertrand. Lemony was water, and water smothers fire and dims its light. But Bertrand might symbolize air. Bertrand might be a fresh breath of air on Mount Fraught, liking the outdoors more than Lemony, making mischievous jokes with Olaf, slurping loudly from a straw while Lemony does a Dramatic Philosophical Monologue, meeting her on windy streets with newspapers (articles written by Lemony) blowing around their feet. Bertrand pining in the background as Lemony kisses Beatrice's hand. She feels more alive and awake with Bertrand. Water reflects fire, but air feeds it.

The whole novel contains foreshadowing of all the unfortunate events to come, some of the references quite clever and amusing even as they break your heart. But one comes away from the book with a sense that though Beatrice was always doomed to die...she LIVED. The book must be warm and full of life, contrasting the books about her children in a world that is often too cold and too quiet. The world is too quiet without her. But it's not a sad ending. Because she left a legacy of warmth and hope and love. Lemony wrote the children's stories for her sake, because he loved her and remembered her.

He loved her for her fiery happiness, even as she loved him for his grief and vulnerability. In the scene where Lemony confesses his love for Beatrice, a moth flies into the candle on the table between them, symbolic of Lemony wishing his heart out to be with her warmth, even as it doomed him to exile in a cold and quiet world.

But even this is not the end. Because someday, after Beatrice and Lemony have had their say, young Beatrice Baudelaire II will drop a note through the ceiling of Lemony's office, and the old Beatrice somehow gave Lemony a child to love and take care of, in a strange and roundabout way.

Someone: What does that-

Lemony Snicket: *appearing out of thin air* The acronym V.F.D. can stand for a great number of mysterious places and things. For example, it can refer to a secret organization fighting fires. However, it can also stand for a village standing in the middle of the Hinderlands. It can be a silly phrased devised by a group of silly people who prefer heart-shaped balloons to the usage of new medical technology. There is a great plethora of things that V.F.D. could stand for (a word here which means a great number of myserious places and things) that it is almost impossible to say what this particular V.F.D. stands for.

I seriously believe that Lemony is someone who has read a lot about the history of the very secret organization to which he belongs. Is there a passage in the book “Should not You Be in School?” (SYBIS) that explains much about the past and the future of V.F.D, and I would like to explain my theory here.

Lemony - "We believe in an aristocracy"

Moxie: "Doesn't mean people who are rich and powerful?"

Lemony: "Not that kind of aristocracy. Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nation and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet... We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We're had different names through history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we're called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us disappear. It won't matter. People like us always slip though the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is wide-open world." 

So, if Lemony says that for many, many years there is an organization that fights evil, I believe that. This organization has changed its name over the years. But an important Lemony phrase is this:

"all attempts to organize us fail."

To organize means "to set up an administrative structure for". (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/organize)

Lemony's claim is that the original group of people was not exactly an "organization" ... It was a set of volunteers who simply did good and fought against evil, based on personal ideological principles shared by several others around the world. When these volunteers happened to meet, they came to understand each other and fight evil together. This is very different from the VFD we see in ATWQ. In ATWQ, VFD is a well-structured organization in which there are reports, assessments, teachers, training schools, specific missions and so on. Thus, the VFD to which Lemony is a part, is different from the idea that Lemony really admires.

If you stop to think, Lemony suggests that during human history there was always the following cycle:

1 - Individual noble individuals try to fight evil alone.

2. Individual noble people realize that there are others who share similar principles, and so begin to communicate.

3 - Noble and individual people create a way to identify each other. And so they create a name for this group.

4 - This group begins to realize that there are advantages in creating procedures, raising funds, recruiting new participants. Then a secret organization is born.

5 - This organization works well for a time, until disagreements arise, usually involving money, use of weapons, marriage and how to care for children.

6 - The organization passes through a Great Schism.

7 - The members of the formed organizations stop to fight evil and begin to fight each other.

8 - The distrust is so great, that the organization is undone.

9 - Each noble person individually tries to fight evil alone.

And the cycle begins again.