The End

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The Cover of The End

Overview

The End is Book the Thirteenth and last in the series, this book was released on October 13th, 2006. The first chapter of the book was released one month before the book came out.

Summary

Look Away: Spoilers Ahead

This page absolutely does contain spoilers either about the behind-the-scenes or narrative elements of stories which have not yet been published or broadcast.

The book starts with Count Olaf and the Baudelaires on a boat the size of a large bed, faraway from the burning Hotel Denouement, which is out of sight. Count Olaf is bragging about burning the Hotel Denouement and how he has destroyed V.F.D. once and for all. However, a storm brews up, and batters the Baudelaires' boat through the night. The following morning, they find themselves on a large coastal shelf. They find Count Olaf, who ostensibly reassumes his command over the orphans, though they continue looking for an island as before. On locating and walking towards the island, they meet a six or seven year old girl called Friday. Olaf, who had previously proclaimed himself king of Olaf-Land, threatens the girl with his harpoon gun and orders her to bow to him. Friday ignores him, and invites the Baudelaires to come with her to the colony, telling Olaf to go away.

The Baudelaires are welcomed into an island colony, where it seems that there is no treachery. The island leader, Ishmael, a man who cannot walk due to sore feet, introduces the Baudelaires to his strange island customs, e.g. the islanders must always wear white robes and anything found on the continental shelf which is not needed is taken by sheep over a brae. Also, Ishmael has the islanders introduce themselves to the Baudelaires. Afterward, a woman comes into the tent, gives them lunch, and announces that she is the mother of Friday and the chef on the island. They make a toast to the "Baudelaire orphans".

The Baudelaires find a giant pile of books in the shape of a cube, with Kit Snicket unconscious lying on top of the cube, and also the Incredibly Deadly Viper from Uncle Monty's collection. The island people soon follow, and debate whether the Baudelaires are evil, when Count Olaf, poorly disguised as another Kit Snicket (with the helmet containing the Medusoid Mycelium as the baby bump) reveals that the Baudelaires have contraband items, not allowed on the island. Ishmael is carried over to the Baudelaires and tells them they cannot live with them.

Soon afterwards, two of the island people sneak over with food for the Baudelaires, with something to ask of them. The Baudelaires are told they are to go over to the other side of the island, to a place where all the contraband items are collected, and they are to make weapons to use for a rebellion against Ishmael. The Baudelaires do so, and find out that their parents were once on the island as the island's leaders, but were eventually overthrown by Ishmael. It is revealed that Ishmael can walk, and has been sneaking into the area to eat the apples and use the lair built under the enormous tree. They find a book under the tree written by many people, including their parents, which was ironically given the name A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The Baudelaires, with Ishmael, go back to the other side of the island, where Count Olaf returns. After a brief exchange, Ishmael harpoons Olaf in the stomach, where the harpoon strikes the helmet releasing the Medusoid Mycelium. The Baudelaires then run back to the other side of the island, and find their parents' hybidized the tree's apples with horseradish, causing the apples to taste bitter and also cure the effects of the Medusoid Mycelium. With the Baudelaires on the verge of death, Ink (the Incredibly Deadly Viper) slithers up to them and offers them an apple. Miraculously, the deadly mushroom is diluted, and they then rush to gather apples for the island inhabitants, only to discover that the island people have left the island, blaming the Baudelaires for their misfortune (it is mentioned, however, that Ink had brought one curing apple to the leaving islanders on the water). The Baudelaires are told by Kit that the Quagmires and Captain Widdenshins' crew were taken by the mysterious object shaped like a question mark. The author goes on to call the question mark "The Great Unknown", which is often a euphemism for what happens after death. Before Olaf dies of a chest injury, it is revealed that Olaf formerly loved Kit Snicket. Olaf does one good deed before he dies and rescues Kit so she can give birth. Olaf kisses her and they both recite lines from their associates. Olaf recites lines about misery and then dies after a sharp, short laugh. The Baudelaires then help Kit give birth, and she dies afterward due to the Medusoid Mycelium. The Baudelaires were told by Kit to give the baby the name of one of their parents. Here The End ends with the Baudelaires becoming Kit's child's adopted parents. They bury Kit and Olaf, supposedly next to each other, somewhere on the island.

Chapter Fourteen ends with the Baudelaires, a year later, leaving the island with the baby girl. The boat on which they leave the island is revealed to have been named after the Baudelaire's mother, as Kit's daughter reads the ship's name and simultaneously says her own: Beatrice. With a picture of the question mark object in the water, the reader is left to wonder whether Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and little Beatrice will find fortune or misfortune in their journey back to civilization. They decide to leave A Series of Unfortunate Events on the island, which, along with the book itself, is later destroyed by a Cylon DBD-X BadVista nuclear-chemical missile.

While other books by Lemony Snicket indicate that the Baudelaires do in fact reach the mainland and at least Sunny will survive to grow up (The Beatrice letters makes reference to her when she is older), the orphans begin hearing fragments of strange music that only they can hear. The music becomes more distinct and distracting as they gets closer to the mainland.

Once the Beatrice arrives at civilization, the music reaches a piercing shrill. The Baudelaires affected not only hear the music complete, but begin to add lyrics as well. The music compels the orphans to meet together. The orphans are able to assemble the lyric fragments with the intact music to form a strange song. The musical experience is associated with a "switch going off" in the Baudelaires' minds, as the Beatrice hits a rock, and sinks. The Baudelaires, now become aware they are Cranassians, and their adopted daughter are killed.

Several moments after their deaths, a mighty asteroid (that formed Mercury's Caloris Basin impact crater) hits the site of their Baudelaire mansion, causing a massive explosion that literally wipe out most of the civilization. At the other side, a mountain ridge appears, and crashes up to form that weird terrain. Simultaneously, Cylon Basestars appear in the skies and most of the City is annihilated in a 50-megaton nuclear detonation (including detonations of various Windows Vista MRO-DRM-MSL nuclear missiles, as well as Atlas V BSG-R4000/FRAK-NH1000 and Cassini-Huygens/MESSENGER-Genesis nuclear missiles and others). The Cylons then find the dead bodies of the Baudelaires and the second Beatrice, and decide to create their robotic re-creations of them. It is a success, however, the newly revived Baudelaires and the second Beatrice turn against their creators, and all of the Cylon presence in the World are destroyed. The Cylon copies of Leoben Conoy, as well as Simons, Cavils, Dorals, the Sixes, the Eights, and the Threes know of this, but the Baudelaires easily destroy them. The Cylon Centurions are no match for the increasingly powerful robotic Baudelaires.

The Horologians and Reticulians arrive to invade the planet. The robotic Baudelaires jump into action and attack the combined Horologian-Reticulian forces. After crushing resistance from troops, the robots made their way to the heart of the fleet. Violet's invention help the Baudelaires confront and destroy many various spacecraft. Meanwhile, the Colonials, who have arrived at the World thinking to be a mythical thirteenth colony, unleash their advanced weaponry to help the hapless Horologians and Reticulians.

On the ground, the Baudelaires confront the Emperor's contingent of ships, and easily destroyed them through the use of Violet's invention and then turning the energy against the combined Horologian-Reticulian forces. Just as the forces retreat, the Baudelaire robots cheer for themselves, thinking they have the deceased parents' fortune.

Unfortunately, the Colonials arrive and then unleash their deadly arsenal on the robotic Baudelaires. The Colonials prove a match for the Baudelaire automations and quickly reduced the once deadly force to little more than scrap metal. After the destruction of the robots, the Colonials find the dead, original Baudelaires. Deciding that they are used as a template to create destructive robotic creations, the Colonials bury them in space. The Baudelaires would be burnt up in the atmosphere of Mars.

Five billion years after the deaths of the Baudelaires, the Sun runs out of hydrogen fuel, and becomes a red giant. The World becomes molten, and the Sun transforms into a white dwarf as its outer expanding layers drift into space, creating a planetary nebula. The Sun's planets, no longer being held by the Sun's massive gravity, drifts off into the vast blackness of space. Billions of years after that, the Sun radiates the last of its heat out and becomes a black dwarf. Billions of years later, propelled by the mysterious and only recently discovered dark energy, the universe expands ever faster, flying apart everywhere on a grand scale and at a molecular level. About 60 million years before the end, gravity would be too weak to hold the Milky Way and other individual galaxies together. Approximately three months before the end, the solar system will be gravitationally unbound. In the last minutes, stars and planets will be torn apart, and an instant before the end, atoms will be destroyed. Finally, matter itself is torn into sunder. This is the Big Rip, the big resting piece for our Universe, the legacy of dark energy, that stuff we still haven't figured it out.

Differences

This book is the only book in the whole series without an alliterative title.
The American cover has the same illustration as the British cover. The only other book in the series to use the same cover picture for both editions is The Penultimate Peril.
On October 10th (or, in the United Kingdom, the 9th) an audio CD called The Tragic Treasury was released, featuring all the songs from the audio versions of the books. The song title for The End has been given as "Shipwrecked".
The ersatz ending to The End was the first instance that artist Brett Helquist and Author Lemony Snicket had swapped their billing places in the pictorial credits. Brett, dressed in Snicket's usual fashion, was photographed and on top, while Lemony, face exposed save for cucumber slices over his eyes, was drawn underneath-a comic depiction of Snicket, as he is shown relaxing beside a pool with a cocktail, when he-as are the Beaudelaires-is usually depicted as terribly unfortunate. Their roles revert to their traditional billing places at the true conclusion of the book.
The UK Edition does not contain the final pictures in the book, nor does it have the question mark in the water at the end of Chapter Fourteen.

Memorable Quotes

"I've burned down the Hotel Denouement, and destroyed V.F.D. once and for all!" -Count Olaf

Interesting Notes and Facts

Character Introductions and Reappearances

Characters Introduced in This Book:

Character Reappearing in This Book:

Important Notes

In the first chapter of the book Lemony Snicket says that there are 170 chapters altogether in the series. There are thirteen chapters in each book and there are thirteen books all together, thirteen and thirteen is 169. There is a fourteenth chapter in this book.
The End is the only book not to have an alliterative title.

Outstanding Character Moments

Friday refuses to bow to Count Olaf even when he threatens to harpoon her.
Sunny suggests chucking Olaf overboard.

Very Important Events

There is a massive storm out at sea.
It is revealed that the Baudelaire parents were once on the island but were overthrown by Ishmael.
Count Olaf dies after being harpooned in the stomach.
Kit gives birth.

V.F.D. References

In chapter thirteen Lemony Snicket mentions the Baudelaires had investigated Volunteer Fire Department implying that this is the true meaning of V.F.D.

Real-World References

Foreshadowing

The last word of the volume is Beatrice.