If you find yourself drawn to clever, inventively lingual, sharp-toothed, barely mobile characters, then today’s post is for you. I of course loved all three of Lemony Snicket’s brave-hearted, resourceful Baudelaire orphans pretty much from the start, but as the series went on, Sunny grew into my decided favorite, so today is about the most accomplished baby ever to grace the page.
The beginning of the series finds the youngest Baudelaire only able to make slight contributions to her and her siblings’ ongoing quest to evade the nefarious Count Olaf. While Violet can invent useful tools and Klaus’s research frequently comes in handy, Sunny’s only bankable skill is biting. It’s called upon more often than you’d think – from snipping pieces of rope into specific lengths to posing as a sideshow wolf-baby – but still, it’s a far less tangible asset. Furthermore, while she crawls, she can’t walk yet and needs to be carried long distances, and her small size makes her prime kidnapping material.
That’s all right, though, because like Violet and Klaus, Sunny grows up a lot over the course of the thirteen books. Despite the limitations mentioned above, the Baudelaires’ constantly-worsening situation never cuts her any slack, and she doesn’t ask for it. At different points in the series, she manages to work in a lumber mill, an office, and a hotel, she poses as a doctor, and she accompanies her siblings on a deep-sea diving mission (inside a helmet.) She develops a growing interest in and talent for cooking, and Violet and Klaus start deferring to her culinary expertise; she has a particular knack for concocting workable meals from scanty and disparate ingredients.
Clearly, she has a can-do spirit and knows how to pull her weight. She doesn’t expect to coast and let her siblings do all the heavy lifting, physically or mentally. She does whatever legwork her ever-growing abilities allow, and she takes an active part in the reasoning and planning. When she disagrees with her siblings’ assessment of a predicament, she says so and makes suggestions of her own.
And this leads naturally into my favorite thing about Sunny: her language. Throughout the books, she uses baby talk that, until the final few books, only Violet, Klaus, and a few remarkable individuals can understand. Snicket helpfully translates in the narration, revealing an insightful, self-assured girl right off the bat. She notices helpful clues, she comforts her siblings in dark moments, and she stands up to threatening villains. At first, the actual sounds coming out of her mouth are pure babble, but her linguistic skills are always evolving, and as the books continue, she starts to incorporate a sophisticated array of literary and cultural references, impressive vocabulary, and foreign-language words. Comparing her dialogue with Snicket’s translations makes for one of the series’ best recurring jokes. Here are a few choice examples:
Amnesi! = You’re forgetting something!
Brummel = In my opinion, you desperately need a bath, and your clothing is a shambles.
Goo goo = I’m going to pretend I’m a helpless baby, instead of answering your question.
Scalia = It doesn’t seem like the literal interpretation makes any sense.
Unfeasi! = To make a hot meal without any electricity, I’d need a fire, and expecting a baby to start a fire all by herself on top of a snowy mountain is cruelly impossible and impossibly cruel.
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