Miranda Caliban

[colette]

We have never discussed this character but I really want to know your opinion.

[Dante]

Hmm, this is really a character-based question, but since the character in question exists only within The End, I can accept that there's a point of ambiguity there, so I'll let it slide. As to the character herself, I'm ambivalent; like most of the characters in the last book, she is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and without understanding her life it's hard to make a judgement.

[Leanora Crowe]

Dante is exactly right. Also, Handler seems to be making the point in his books anyway that mankind is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, and that we all have bad in us. It's hard to call Miranda a "good person," considering the way she is so overprotective of Friday and the fact that she doesn't prepare Friday for what she's going to inevitably have to face when she gets older. At the same time, however, if you look at it from her perspective, she's just taking care of her daughter in the best way she knows how. Also, we don't know exactly what happened between her and her husband, so we can't make a final judgment there either. I suppose it's like Atticus Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

[Christmas Chief]

Those are great points, and I agree with them entirely. Miranda doesn't play too essential a part in the series itself, but there are certainly many implications about her life off the island. Without the details, it's difficult to determine whether her character leans one way or another. (Although I'll admit she struck me as a little sinister while I was reading The End.)

[Hermes]

The way she concealed what really happened with Friday's father is certainly distressing, but it's just an exaggeration of what most of the adults in the series do, trying to shelter their children. Even the Baudelaire parents (and probably the Quagmires) didn't tell their children enough about the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.