“You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.”
Genre: Fiction
Lemony Snicket creates a unique personification of darkness in this children’s book that seems to argue against the idea that something evil lurks in the dark. Lazlo, the main and only human character in the book, is afraid of the dark. Most children can relate to this fear. Some children might keep the lights on when they go to sleep or stay curled up by the safety of their parents to keep the dark away, but Lazlo is a strange case because he says “hi” to it every morning in the hope that it will never visit him. Lazlo’s idea to stay safe from his fear is to treat it with kindness.
However, Lazlo’s plan is foiled when the dark comes to his room one night and speaks to him. He beckons him downstairs and into the basement, which is the place Lazlo designated as the darkness’ room. There is an ominous feeling in this section of the story because it makes the reader fear for Lazlo’s character. It looks as though he’s being lured by the dark, and that it intends to harm him. This fear is shown to be misplaced, though, when the dark leads him to a drawer with a lightbulb. The reason the dark visited him is then revealed: Lazlo’s light in his room went out, and the dark helped him find a new one.
Snicket cleverly portrays the fear of the dark from the eyes of a kind child whose gentle nature is rewarded with a returning act of kindness from the very source of his fear. There is a section as Lazlo enters the basement that explains the relevance of the dark in our lives, and how it exists all around us, such as behind the shower curtain or behind a window at night. Lazlo befriends the dark, in a sense, which shows that he doesn’t need to fear it.
The Grand Adventure 