The Reptile Room

Throughout A Series of Unfortunate Events, disguises and pseudonyms symbolize the deceptive nature of appearances and the difficulty of grasping reality. For example, in The Reptile Room, Count Olaf alters his appearance and adopts the name “Stephano,” posing as the new assistant for the Baudelaires’ new guardian, Dr. Montgomery. Additionally, Count Olaf’s minions use disguises and pseudonyms throughout the series in similar ways, such as when one minion poses as “Dr. Lucafont” to examine Uncle Monty’s corpse in The Reptile Room. Although the Baudelaire children aren’t usually fooled by Count Olaf’s disguises for long, adults generally are. The adults’ lack of awareness often highlights the children’s uncommon levels of intelligence and resourcefulness. However, the children cannot always recognize the minions’ disguises and false identities as easily as they can those of Count Olaf. This demonstrates that there are limits to the accuracy of everyone’s perception of reality, including those who are highly intelligent and rational. In The Reptile Room, the Baudelaires become frustrated with Mr. Poe’s inability to decipher appearances from reality, but they ultimately use his limitation to their advantage when Sunny distracts the adults with the Incredibly Deadly Viper, which is named with a misnomer, long enough for Violet to locate evidence that Stephano is really Count Olaf and a murderer.

Names and nicknames are occasionally also used to different effect, such as with Uncle Monty and Mr. Poe. Mr. Poe’s name is an allusion to the gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe and signals the reader to expect gothic themes and tropes from this series as well. Uncle Monty’s name is Montgomery Montgomery, foreshadowing how Uncle Monty turns out to be silly and informal. He also insists the children call him “Uncle Monty” instead of “Dr. Montgomery,” showing how he is not pompous and conceited like Count Olaf, who isn’t exactly a real “count.”