Constructing the Characters in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events

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A movie isn’t a movie without characters. Characters are used to tell us the story and get messages across to the audience, but how are characters constructed? In lemony Snicket's a series of unfortunate events, violet is constructed to be an emotionally strong inventor, Klaus is constructed to be a bookish intelligent teenager with intelligence well beyond his age, sunny is constructed to be a baby who loves to bite things whose name shows her intelligence and count Olaf is constructed to be a self-centred, evil man that is a very bad actor. Each of these characters are constructed using a mixture of symbolism, written, audio and technical codes.

Violet is the eldest of the three Baudelaire children. She is the child who must put her feelings to one side and be there for her younger two siblings. Her name itself symbolises her personality. Violet is a colour that is full of life, and the flower is a beautiful one (symbolic code). Violet is perceived to be an inventor, as the narrator announces at the start of the film that whenever her hair is tied back, she is bound to be inventing something (audio code). People express their feelings in different ways. Instead of crying about the death of her parents, she creates a sanctuary, a shelter from danger, fear and hardship (technical and symbolic code). In doing this, she shows that she is emotionally strong, and is taking the role of the carer for her two younger siblings.

Klaus is the middle child, a hard position in the family because he would be torn between taking the role as leader and stepping down and letting violet watch out for him. Klaus remembers everything he reads in books (audio code), and he reads a lot, so this makes him very smart. Whenever he comes face to face wi...

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...es to force violet to marry him (audio, technical and written codes). This is a desperate action taken by an incredibly selfish man with no conscience or feelings of guilt. We know he is a very bad actor, as when he is performing in front of his friends; they fall asleep watching him, showing us just how boring he really is (audio and technical). These examples show just how selfish Count Olaf really is, and how far he is willing to go to get his hands on some more money.

The film Lemony Snicket's a series of unfortunate events uses symbolic, audio, written and technical codes to construct the character of violet to be a smart inventor, Klaus to be a book loving teenager, Sunny to be a baby who loves to bite things and Count Olaf to be a selfish, evil, greedy uncle who only wanted to be the carer of the children to get his hands on that enormous fortune they have.

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