Adult Narration in "The Wide Window"
... banker Mr. Poe has good intentions for the children but he disregards the children’s suspicion about Count Olaf even though their fears are perfectly well justified, and they are far more observant than he is. This affects the children in two ways because their Aunt will die, and again they will be without a proper guardian, because Mr. Poe did not heed their advice till it was to late and it re-enforces the attitude that children are seen but not heard. Aunt Josephine’s character however demands the more concentrated moral evaluation. She has agreed to be the legal guardian of the children, and in some ways she tries her best to fulfil her responsibilities but she is a coward. This is seen immediately when she does not come to get the children upon their arrival at the dock because she is afraid of anything to do with Lake Lachrymose, in the way that she is to scared to answer the telephone in case she is electrocuted and when she serves the children cold cucumber soup on chilly wintry days because she is scared to use the oven. Her life is full of fear, and her tentativeness makes her unfit to be the children’s guardian. Aunt Josephine does not see how her irrational fears hurt the children: “…The Baudelaires looked at one another in sadness and anger…” (PG 158) She also has this annoying habit of correcting the children’s grammatical mistakes even when they are facing far more pressing concerns: “…They understood that Aunt Josephine was more concerned with grammatical mistakes than with saving the lives of the three children…” (PG. 158) Aunt Josephine is unable to protect her children from danger because she is too concerned with her own irrational fears to be of any practical help when trouble comes. She even gives up the children for her own safety. The reader might expect Violet, Klaus and Sunny to lose all patience with the Aunt Josephine, however there is a reversal of roles and the children act more as adults than the adults in the story. They take care of themselves even when the adults think they cannot handle themselves: “…I’m not going to let small children sail around unaccompanied.” “…But if we hadn’t sailed unaccompanied,” Klaus pointed out, “we’d be in Count Olaf’s clutches by now…” (PG. 208-9) The children’s rational thinking is always completely ignored by the adults, they have control over the children but they never listen to them. Infact by the time Mr. Poe be...