The Wide Window

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, ableism, child abuse, and death by suicide.

Lemony Snicket, the narrator of The Wide Window, is the book’s in-universe author—a persona created for his pseudonym by Handler. Snicket functions not only as narrator but also as a character within the series with a backstory and point of view of his own. During the story, the reader learns that Snicket has led an adventurous life—he’s traveled widely and had several narrow escapes from danger in circumstances that are often as bizarre as the Baudelaires’ own story. He’s sympathetic to the Baudelaire children and distressed by the terrible events they encounter.

Handler allows the reader to get to know Snicket using the device of narrative intrusion. Throughout the story, Snicket interrupts the narrative to offer opinions, advice, and personal anecdotes. His voice is old-fashioned, formal, intellectual, and pessimistic, filled with dark, dry humor and dire analyses of the Baudelaires’ prospects. He explains the meanings of difficult vocabulary and concepts like “keeping things in perspective” (37). His definitions and explanations are often comically offbeat and sometimes even misleading because they are so specific to the situation at hand.