The Bad Beginning

Violet stays up late. She goes to the tower door and asks the guard, the fat person, if she can visit her sister and comfort her—in fact, she’s “casing the joint” (98) to improve her plan to rescue Sunny—but the guard shoos her away. Back at her bedroom, she uses the curtain rod and a wire from the back of the room’s framed eyeball painting to construct an X-shaped device. She then tears strips from the ugliest of the clothes she received at the Poe house and, using her knowledge of knots, ties them together into a rope of sorts and fastens them to the X-shaped device, which she plans to use as a grappling hook.

She steps out into the nighttime backyard. Shivering in her nightgown, she throws the hook high up at the tower. It clangs loudly and falls back down. No one inside responds. She tries again and misses again. On the third try, the hook falls back and hits her shoulder, cutting her. Bleeding, she throws the hook a fourth time, and it catches and holds.

Grabbing the rope, she begins to climb. Swinging in the breeze, she pulls herself up until her hand, reaching up along the rope, touches the cage where

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