Sunny Baudelaire
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| Sunny Baudelaire | |
|---|---|
| A Series of Unfortunate Events character | |
| File:Sunny Baudelaire.jpg | |
| First appearance | The Bad Beginning |
| Last appearance | The End |
| Created by | Lemony Snicket |
| Portrayed by | Kara Hoffman Shelby Hoffman |
| In-universe information | |
| Gender | Female |
| Occupation | Orphan |
| Family | Violet Baudelaire (sister) Klaus Baudelaire (brother) Beatrice Baudelaire (mother, deceased) Bertrand Baudelaire (father, deceased) Beatrice Baudelaire II (adoptive sister) |
| Relatives | Count Olaf (third/fourth cousin four times removed/uncle) Monty Montgomery (cousin's brother-in-law, deceased) Josephine Anwhistle (second cousin's sister-in-law, deceased) (Among others, see also Baudelaire family) |
| Religion | Jewish[nb 1] |
Sunny Baudelaire /ˌboʊdəˈlɛər/ is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events series who appears in all thirteen novels. Sunny is the youngest of the three Baudelaire orphans, and is described as an infant through much of the series. Although Sunny cannot walk until the seventh book and largely speaks in an idiosyncratic form of baby talk, she repeatedly demonstrates advanced problem solving skills, motor dexterity, comprehension, moral reasoning, and intelligence. In the film she is portrayed by Kara and Shelby Hoffman.
Early in the series, Sunny is frequently noted for the size and strength of her teeth. While her siblings, Klaus and Violet, often use their respective talents of reading and inventing to solve their problems, Sunny is required on multiple occasions to use her teeth. As the books progress and Sunny grows out of infancy, she quickly develops an affinity for cooking, which often eclipses her biting in later books.
Biography
Sunny Baudelaire is a character in all of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. Although Sunny is very young, her cognitive abilities are unusually developed for her age, with her comprehension of their situations generally equaling that of Violet and Klaus. Sunny is very bright (she knows big words and seems to be smarter than most babies) and, in the later books, showed that she likes cooking.
The Bad Beginning
The book begins with Sunny Baudelaire and her siblings being orphaned when their parents die in a fire, leaving an enormous fortune behind them that the orphans will receive when Violet comes of age. They stay with Mr. Poe, his wife and two sons, Edgar and Albert, for a short while. After their stay, Mr. Poe decides they will stay with their distant cousin, Count Olaf. Before going in Count Olaf's filthy home, they meet a kind, middle-aged woman by the name of Justice Strauss, who is a judge. Count Olaf plans to get their fortune by having him marry Violet for real, in a play, kill off Klaus and Sunny, and then force Mr. Poe to give up the fortune. To accomplish this, he locks up Sunny in a bird cage and imprisons her hanging from the roof of a thirty-foot high tower. Sunny endures this for a whole day and night before Violet attempts climb the tower using a grappling hook to try and free her, but ends up captured by the hook-handed man, who also captures Klaus, so that Sunny must be rescued by Mr. Poe, who is so appalled at Count Olaf that he removes the Baudelaires from his care.
The Reptile Room
Sunny, Klaus, and Violet Baudelaire are sent to live with their new guardian, Uncle Monty, a friendly herpetologist whose home stores his beloved collection of reptiles. In an effort to protect the children, Uncle Monty intends to take the children to Peru in a week. Sunny becomes good friends with Montgomery's snake, the "Incredibly Deadly" Viper, whose name is a misnomer so that he can get back at his colleagues for repetitively making fun of his name. When Count Olaf shows up, disguised as Stephano, having murdered the real assistant to Montgomery, Gustav, Sunny is petrified, and Count Olaf threatens the children by saying he cut off one of Sunny's toes when they lived with him. Later when Count Olaf murders Uncle Montgomery, Sunny gets so angry with Count Olaf (and Mr. Poe, for refusing to believe them) that she feels she could do anything to stop Count Olaf, and she is instrumental in foiling his plan, which involves the viper pretending to bite and harm Sunny, but Mr. Poe knows nothing of the viper's friendliness so he thinks its attacking her, but when Count Olaf reveals his knowledge of snakes despite previously saying he knew nothing, the tables turn and Count Olaf flees with one of his henchmen.
The Wide Window
Sunny and her siblings are sent to Aunt Josephine. Josephine's husband was eaten by Lachrymose leeches. She has irrational fears of doorknobs, stoves, refrigerators, realtors and the telephone. Later, Captain Sham (Count Olaf) forced Aunt Josephine to fake her own death by jumping out of the Wide Window. Klaus reads a coded message found beside the window which, when deciphered, reads 'Curdled Cave'. Aunt Josephine then swims to Curdled Cave, where she is hiding from Captain Sham(Count Olaf). Sunny, Klaus, and Violet find her in the nick of time. Klaus tells Josephine that there will be realtors coming soon to look at the cave as it is for sale, and convinces her to leave. When they are sailing back to land,Aunt Josephine tells them that she ate a banana. The Lachrymose Leeches come and eat their boat because Aunt Josephine had eaten the banana and didn't wait an hour before going into the water. Violet constructs a flare of sorts and Count Olaf arrives, taking the kids, but pushing Aunt Josephine into the water for her correcting him of a grammatical error. Just as she exposed the hook-handed man in Uncle Montgomery's house, Sunny leaps up on the shore and bites off Count Olaf's false peg leg, revealing him as the true villain. Count Olaf runs away from Mr. Poe and vows that he will be back.
The Miserable Mill
The Baudelaire orphans work at a lumber mill and are paid with coupons and chewing gum. The new foreman, Foreman Flacunto, keeps tripping Klaus up, and then sending him to the evil Dr. Orwell's eye surgery. Every time he returns, he has wide eyes and speaks in a dazed tone. However, the second time this occurs, Violet and Sunny go with him, and discover that Dr. Orwell's receptionist, Shirley, is actually Count Olaf. Ultimately, Sunny engages in a teeth-sword fight with Dr. Orwell after the evil doctor hy her brother Klaus. Soon after, Dr. Orwell died due to falling into the wood chopper. Also, Foreman Flacutono is unmasked to be one of Olaf's assistants- the bald man with the long nose (He wore a wig and a surgical mask). The two evil villains escaped by smashing a window in Charles' library and jumping through. The police were called after Mr. Poe had arrived, however, they were too late to stop them. Afterwards they leave the site.
The Austere Academy
Sunny works as a secretary in Vice Principal Nero's office where she is forced to staple papers, while Klaus and Violet are in school. At lunchtime on the first day, they meet mean, nasty, and spoiled Carmelita Spats as well as kind, smart and astute triplets Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, who soon become their best friends. Sunny, Klaus, and Violet experience S.O.R.E. which stands for Special Orphan Running Exercises, in which Olaf makes the orphans run constant laps around the school oval all night long in a plan to tire them out so that they fail their exams. S.O.R.E. is supposedly run by Coach Genghis (Olaf in disguise). The Quagmires help the Baudelaires by running for them giving them time to practice for their exams the next day. Olaf catches them and puts them in a long black automobile.
The Ersatz Elevator
In this book, Sunny, Violet,and Klaus Baudelaire go to live with Jerome and Esme Squalor. Jerome "does not want to argue", but Esme is concerned only with what's "in" and what's "out" (what's fashionable enough). Count Olaf, disguised as Gunther, an auctioneer, works together with Esme to try to auction off the Quagmires at the In Auction. Esme, now Count Olaf's girlfriend, pushes Sunny, Klaus and Violet down an empty elevator shaft and traps them on a net there. Sunny has to use her sharp teeth to climb back up to save the Baudelaires. They finally escape and go to the auction. Gunther is announcing Lot #47. Sunny, Violet, and Klaus think Isadora and Duncan are hidden in Lot #50, V.F.D., which turns out to be only Very Fancy Dolies. Isadora and Duncan Quagmire were really hidden in a red herring statue, Lot #48, that the hook-handed man bought, is now in Olaf's clutches.
The Vile Village
In this book, Sunny and her siblings go to the V.F.D (Village Of Fowl Devotees). Then they help Hector the handyman to clean the whole town. They also got some couplets from the Quagmires. After Detective Dupin (Count Olaf) frames the Baudelaires for murdering Jaques Snicket, they go to jail, escape and go to the fountain. They find a pathway inside the fountain and find the Quagmires. They escape the fountain but only the Quagmires escape thanks to Hector. No one knows where they have left to.
The Hostile Hospital
After hiding from the police, the Baudelaire orphans climb aboard the Volunteers Fighting Diseases (V.F.D) van, which carries them to Heimlich Hospital. Sunny and Klaus later disguise themselves as the two white faced women who in turn are disguised as doctors in order to stall Violet's surgery which was actually going to be used to kill her by removing her head by "accident".
The Carnivorous Carnival
After jumping out of the trunk of Count Olaf's black car, Violet and Klaus disguise themselves as a two-headed "freak" and Sunny disguises herself as Chabo the Wolf-Baby in order to sneak into a carnival to discover Count Olaf's next evil plan. In this book, it is revealed that Sunny has an interest and a talent in cooking when she adds cinnamon to the hot chocolates. Hugo, another "freak" who is a hunchback, has made for the Baudelaires. At the end of this book, Sunny is captured by Count Olaf and Esme Squalor and taken away.
The Slippery Slope
Sunny, now Olaf's prisoner, is forced to cook for Olaf's troupe. She uses her newly developed cooking skills to create delicious meals, using the frozen food stored in Count Olaf's car. Sunny secretly discovers the location of the last safe place and signals to her siblings using Verdant Flammable Devices to smoke salmon, which sends a thick cloud of green smoke in the sky. Violet and Klaus discover the third Quagmire triplet, Quigely Quagmire, who survived the fire. After rescuing Sunny the four children sled down a frozen waterfall, and lose Quigley due to harsh currents.
The Grim Grotto
Sunny, Klaus, and Violet met up with Captain Widdershins in the Queequeg, and (along with the captains stepdaughter Fiona) embark on a journey to find the Sugar Bowl. In the process, a few spores from the deadly fungus Medusoid Mycelium infect Sunny, instantly poisoning her. The spores are so deadly that Sunny needs to be quarantined to a diving helmet. However, her siblings discover through research that the antidote is horseradish, and upon finding none in the kitchen of Queequeg, Violet and Klaus ask Sunny what the culinary equivalent is. With Sunny's intelligence in cooking, she managed to utter 'wasabi'. Luckily, they had found some wasabi while they were in the Grotto, and saved her just in time. After saving Sunny, Fiona goes on Olaf's side to find her father.The Baudelaires get a telegram to meet Quigley at Briny Beach, so they go.
The Penultimate Peril
Sunny disguises herself as a concierge, meeting Vice Principal Nero, Mr. Remora, and Ms. Bass in the progress who appeared in The Austere Academy. She is given a lock by Dewey Denouement, which she uses to lock the laundry door, so that no one can get to the sugar bowl. She later helps Count Olaf set fire to the hotel, to send a message to their friend Kit Snicket, telling her that the last safe place is safe no more.
The End
As left off from The Penultimate Peril, Sunny, Klaus, and Violet are stuck on a pirate boat with none other than Count Olaf. The boat is called "The Carmelita", but Count Olaf changes it to "The Olaf". The four of them eventually wash up on a coastal island after a bad storm. Count Olaf is abandoned right away. The islanders abandon them a few days later, and see the distraught and pregnant Kit Snicket. A little later, everyone is poisoned by the Medusoid Mycelium. But Sunny and her siblings diluted the poison by eating the hybrid apples containing horseradish from the apple tree. Kit's baby is born and survives, but Kit dies because she refused to eat the hybrid apples, in case they endangered her baby. She named the baby 'Beatrice'. Kit and Olaf die after reciting a poem called The Night has a Thousand Eyes together. A year later, Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and Beatrice leave. They get caught in the Great Unknown. All of the Baudelaire orphans and Beatrice survive.
As mentioned in The Hostile Hospital and The End, despite all of Lemony's research and hard work, he still does not know the current location, position and status of the Baudelaire children, though in The Beatrice Letters, the poster depicts the ship Beatrice destroyed and her whisk among the wreckage, the siblings disappearing into the Great Unknown. But The Beatrice Letters revealed that Sunny had been on the radio many times discussing her recipes, when she had grown up into a young woman, and so it was implied that she indeed survived.
Speaking
Though Sunny cannot speak fluently, her short sentences and baby babble can often be translated without help, however her siblings can always understand her and are usually quick to translate if someone cannot understand. Generally, when she uses nouns, it is clear what she is referring to. In the later books, such as The Slippery Slope, her baby noises are often allusions or subtextual meanings that relate to the plot as a whole, such as "Busheney!" which means "You're an evil man with no concern whatsoever for other people!"
In The Reptile Room, she says Ackroyd, meaning Roger, in reference to a novel written by Agatha Christie.
The words she uses usually come from historical or cultural origins: in The Slippery Slope she uses the term "Rosebud" to suggest using a sled to escape, in reference to the sled in Citizen Kane. In The End (chapter 6) she uses the term "Dreyfus" in reference to Alfred Dreyfus when accused of a crime. (Dreyfus was himself held on an island for a long period of time and his case caused a schism in French society.)
However, in the later books, Sunny begins to improve her speaking skills. In The Hostile Hospital, she says, "Sheer terror", and in The Slippery Slope she says, "I'm not a baby". However, her speaking skills never fully develop in the books, except in the mini-book chapter 14 in The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events) and in Book the Twelfth, she rarely responded to the people around her because she was afraid that her way of speaking was going to give away her true identity.
From time to time, she also still speaks in her "baby language", but the words or phrases she uses tend to come from other languages such as "quid pro quo" which said in The End. In Latin, it means this for that, or equal trade. In The Penultimate Peril it is shown that she is finally beginning to speak in full sentences, she says "The last safe place, is safe no more," which Snicket calls impressive for someone her age.
In the sort of epilogue The End called "Chapter 14" It is shown that Sunny seems to be speaking fluently in English in full sentences and actual words. She is also best at understanding what Beatrice Snicket, Kit's baby daughter, is saying because she has only come out of babyhood herself.
In the film, Sunny does speak her baby language, but speaks more in a wise-cracking and insulting way instead of an intelligent way, like calling Aunt Josephine the "mayor of Crazy Town", calling Count Olaf a "shmuck", and calling Mr. Poe dumb.
Disguises
Sunny's disguises include:
- Surgeon - The Hostile Hospital
- Chabo the Wolf Baby - The Carnivorous Carnival
- Scuba Diver (but she is curled up in a diving helmet)- The Grim Grotto
- Concierge - The Penultimate Peril
See also
Notes
- ^ In February 2007, Lemony Snicket stated that the Baudelaires are Jewish [1]
References
- ^ Nadine, Epstein (February 2007). "The Jewish Secrets of Lemony Snicket". Moment.
The Baudelaires are Jewish! I guess we would not know for sure but we would strongly suspect it.
| A Series of Unfortunate Events |
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| All the Wrong Questions | |||||||||
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