The Bad Beginning

Count Olaf’s decrepit home contains an omnipresent design theme: Everywhere inside, emblazoned on its walls, are depictions of eyes. The front door has one that stares outward, the Count sports an eyeball tattoo on his ankle, and his office walls are covered in eyeball sketches. A framed picture of an eye watches over the Baudelaire children in their bedroom.

This motif suggests that the Count is intensely paranoid and wants to dominate all those who visit or live there. Spying on others is a way of controlling them, and Olaf wants to impress upon the Baudelaires that he’s in charge and that they cannot escape his awareness or control. Though the eyeballs clearly were there long before the children arrived, they suit the Count’s needs as tools of enforcement and intimidation. The eyes symbolize oppression and Count Olaf’s never-ending, ever-present wickedness. They are, however, balanced by authorial omniscience. Due to the framing device of narrator Lemony Snicket, there is a sense that Count Olaf is not the only one watching over the children.