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I recently experienced a passive moment myself, sitting in a chair as a shoe salesperson forced my feet into a series of ugly and uncomfortable positions, when all the while I wanted a bright red pair of shoes with strange buckles that nobody on earth was going to buy for me.
although I have since discovered that Klaus was wrong, and that the scraps of paper blowing past the Baudelaires were from another publication that would have been of enormous help had they stopped to collect the pieces.
Except Sunny because she can’t wear one! I guess she’ll drown! No—she can curl up inside a diving helmet! Aye! The helmets have a tiny door on the neck just for such a purpose!
Foreshadow
For a long time the Baudelaires had felt as if their lives were a damaged Frisbee, tossed from person to person and from place to place without ever really being appreciated or fitting in.
The Baudelaires pictured a group of mushrooms suddenly springing up under their feet, and felt a bit queasy, as if they already knew of the dreadful encounter they would soon have with this terrible fungus.
It is often difficult to admit that someone you love is not perfect, or to consider aspects of a person that are less than admirable.
“Gregor was growing those mushrooms,” he said, “to use on enemies of V.F.D.”
“but Kit Snicket thought that using poisonous mushrooms was equally villainous. They were working on a way to weaken the poison, in a factory on Lousy Lane. But the writer of this letter still thought that Volatile Fungus Deportation was too dangerous, and she warned Gregor that if he wasn’t careful, the mycelium would poison the entire research center.”
as if the poisonous fungus had decided to implement an alternate strategy, a phrase which here means “would terrorize the Baudelaires in another way.”
Only Violet felt as if their friendship were more volatile, as if Fiona fit her like the wrong glove, or as if their friendship had a tiny flaw—a flaw that might turn into a schism.
foreshadow
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world.
You should know that the Daily Punctilio doesn’t tell the whole story, Baudelaires.
“People aren’t either wicked or noble,” the hook-handed man said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”
It is awful to contemplate this sort of life, in which one would always be forced into motion by a variety of mysterious and powerful forces, never staying anywhere for long, never finding a safe place one could call home,
and he was wrong to abandon the Queequeg, no matter what he heard from the woman who came to fetch him.
