 |
This article or section has multiple issues. Please help improve the article or discuss these issues on the talk page.
|
| Klaus Baudelaire | |
|---|---|
| A Series of Unfortunate Events character | |
 |
|
| First appearance | The Bad Beginning |
| Portrayed by | Liam Aiken |
| Occupation | runaway youth |
| Family | (See Baudelaire family) |
Klaus Baudelaire (pronounced /ˈklaʊs ˌboʊd(ə)ˈlɛər/) is one of the main characters in the popular children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.
Klaus is the middle child of the Baudelaire orphans; he has an older sister named Violet and a younger sister named Sunny. He is twelve years old at the beginning of the series, and turns thirteen in The Vile Village. He is fourteen by the end of the series.
Contents |
Interests and skills
Klaus is an avid reader with a very eidetic memory. His favorite book is The Water Cycle Volume 196 and books dealing with wars. He remembers everything he reads, retaining information which often helps the Baudelaires to escape from situations that their enemy Count Olaf put them in. Also as a result of this, he speaks many languages. Klaus always seems to know the definition of words that the Baudelaires didn't know that leave others baffled, though there are certain words that even he does not know the meaning of, like in loco parentis, when mentioned in The Bad Beginning by Mr. Poe, and xenophobe when mentioned in the The Ersatz Elevator by Jerome Squalor. Prior to the demise of his parents, Klaus liked to visit the Akhmatova Bookstore, where his father used to take him as a special treat, to buy an atlas or a volume of the encyclopedia, and revisited it with Jerome Squalor in The Ersatz Elevator. While Violet is the inventor, Sunny is the biter (and later chef), Klaus is the researcher. The theme of children each having a particular skill that they are good at is also shown with other characters in the series. For example, with the Quagmire triplets, Isadora is a poet, Duncan is a journalist, and Quigley is a cartographer. In the The Austere Academy, Klaus and Isadora seem to be finding an interest in each other, but in the 11th book, The Grim Grotto Klaus receives his first kiss (and first heart break) from Fiona, a mycologist.
Biography
In the beginning of the series, his parents, Bertrand and Beatrice Baudelaire, died in a fire which destroyed their family home, leaving Klaus and his sisters orphaned. He, Violet, and Sunny, are sent to their new guardian, the villainous Count Olaf, who tries to seek and steal the enormous Baudelaire fortune from the orphans, using various nefarious schemes. Violet and Olaf almost get married in his play, The Marvelous Marriage, but Violet signs the marriage document with her left hand, and as she is right-handed, the ceremony is declared to be invalid. After this, Olaf and his associates go on the run as fugitives. Following from his disastrous stay with Count Olaf, Klaus, Violet and Sunny were moved to the house of Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, where Klaus was finally appreciated due to his researching talents, as Dr Montgomery required a researcher to research Peruvian snakes. Klaus spent time researching for the expedition, researching mainly on Peru and its human and snake inhabitants. Klaus admitted he was finally happy in the home of Dr Montgomery, a rare emotion for a Baudelaire to feel, but then he admitted that he wished his parents were still alive and his home still stood. Violet responded "I think we can miss them without being miserable all the time." Klaus thought back to a time when they had fooled around in their mansion, and then Count Olaf arrived, disguised as an Italian doctor named Stephano. Although Klaus felt responsible that he had not called the taxi driver to take Olaf away, knowing if he had done so he could have saved Dr Montgomer's life, he once again proved instrumental in defeating Count Olaf's plot, as he distracted Count Olaf from noticing Violet foiling his plan and revealed Olaf as an imposter.
Klaus did not have such a large role in The Wide Window, but he proved instrumental in deciphering a message Josephine Anwhistle had left in her alleged suicide note. Klaus' researching skills led the Baudelaires to Curdled Cave and therefore he became an expert navigator, guiding his siblings through a treacherous typhoon, and, because of his researching skills, it was essentially Klaus who led the Baudelaires to save Josephine.
Count Olaf almost succeeded in his evil plans in The Miserable Mill, when he ordered Georgina Orwell to hypnotize Klaus and use him as a puppet to gain the Baudelaire fortune. Klaus was unhypnotized twice, when nearby people uttered the word "inordinate," the counter-attack on this event of hypnosis. Count Olaf - or at least, the bald man - was able to control Klaus through uttering the word "lucky," and at one point Klaus, hypnotized, performed a dreadful incident: he broke Charles' leg during an incident at the Lumbermill. Klaus felt guilty afterwards, but Charles kindly told him it wasn't his fault. Months later, Charles still knew it was Count Olaf who was responsible for the accidents, and not Klaus. Also in The Miserable Mill, Klaus saved Charles from being sliced into human boards by the bald man by developing an uncanny knack for inventions.
In The Austere Academy, Klaus and his sisters were forced to run hundreds of laps each night, during Count Olaf's scheme. Olaf's scheme was to force the Baudelaires to run each night and to make them succumb to exhaustion so that they would not attend classes and when they were eventually expelled, Count Olaf would get the Baudelaires and their fortune. The research in this book was done by Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, but just as they discovered a horrifying secret about V.F.D. Count Olaf abducted them. Out of his siblings, Klaus was the only one to run forth and attempt to rescue the Quagmires, which was remarkable due to his relative exhaustion from running for ten nights. In The Ersatz Elevator, Klaus finally overcame his fear of Count Olaf in order to search for the Quagmire triplets throghout 667 Dark Avenue, and, once again, was instrumental in discovering Count Olaf's plot when he discovered that the elevator was ersatz. Klaus and his sisters overcame their fear of the elevator's darkness when they descended into its depths to discover the Quagmires. In The Vile Village, Klaus and his sisters received messages from a terrified Duncan and Isadora, and although Klaus misdeciphered the word/hint "initial" as meaning "first," he corrects himself by saying "I've never been so wrong in my life," and finds out the location of the Quagmires by saying "If you look at the first letter of each line, we'll see where the triplets are hidden." He and his sisters rescue the Quagmires, but when the plan goes horribly wrong, thanks to Esme Squalor and only the Quagmires escape, the Baudelaires leave the Village of Fowl Devotees, and during their stay at Heimlich Hospital, Violet is captured by Count Olaf. This is probably Klaus' biggest role in the series, as he discovers Count Olaf is going to perform a cranioectomy on Violet, and he goes to extreme lengths to save his sister, such as disguising himself as one of the White-Faced Women in Count Olsf's troupe.
During their stay at Caligari Carnival, Klaus and Violet almost find out what V.F.D. stands for, but are interrupted by Count Olaf.
At the very end of the series it is possible that he and his siblings died in a shipwreck of the Beatrice in Chapter Foreteen in the last book of the series. Alternatively, as evidenced by the question mark depicted in the last image of The End and Chapter Fourteen, he may have disappeared through the Great Unknown.
Disguises
A recurring theme in the series is the Baudelaire children's disguises. At the end of The Vile Village, they are falsely accused of murder. From this point on, they have no more guardians, and are on the run from the police. While running from the police, Klaus assumes the following disguises:
- In The Hostile Hospital, Klaus disguises himself as a doctor, and is taken to be one of The White Faced Women, associates of Count Olaf.
- In The Carnivorous Carnival, Klaus and Violet dress as a two-headed freak (Beverly and Elliot).
- In The Slippery Slope, Klaus poses both as a Snow Scout and as a Volunteer, although later in the series he does become a volunteer.
- In The Grim Grotto, Klaus wears a diving suit with a picture of Herman Melville on the front.
- In The Penultimate Peril, Klaus disguises himself as a concierge at the Hotel Denouement
Film adaptation
In the movie Klaus doesn't wear glasses unless he is reading, whereas in the book he always wears glasses. He is also shown to be more self-asserting in the movie than in the books, with a somewhat more pessimistic outlook on the Baudelaires' situation. He overcomes this when Sunny is trapped in a bird cage on the top of the tower and he says to himself "There's always something", Violet's philosophy. It is suggested that Klaus is afraid of heights, when he is climbing the rope to save Sunny. Klaus was portrayed in the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events by Liam Aiken. His clothes are different, as he wears a blue sweater with a tan button-downed shirt with only part of the collar shown.
Appearances
- The Bad Beginning
- The Reptile Room
- The Wide Window
- The Miserable Mill
- The Austere Academy
- The Ersatz Elevator
- The Vile Village
- The Hostile Hospital
- The Carnivorous Carnival
- The Slippery Slope
- The Grim Grotto
- The Penultimate Peril
- The End
See also
|
||||||||||||||||||||
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
