Are the Baudelaires overly moralistic?

[doetwin]

Apr 11, 2015 4:03:52 GMT -5 gliquey said:

Considering they recently set a large, busy hotel on fire with very little justification, I think trapping a mass murderer in a birdcage should be the least of the Baudelaire's moral concerns. By TVV, I can understand that they don't want Olaf burned at the stake - especially at the hands of such awful people - but by TE, I'm finding it harder to agree with their thoughts about Olaf. I would have pushed him overboard.

+ 1,000. They endangered the lives of hundreds of innocent people(and probably killed several of them) just to send a signal to Kit, Hector, the Widdershins's, and the Quagmires. First of all, there may have been other ways to send a signal, but even if there weren't, worst-case scenario is that they show up to the hotel and find out the meeting has been cancelled then and there. As it turns out, Kit was taking by the storm and the others were by taken by the Great Unknown, so they wouldn't have been able to go to Hotel Denouement even if they had thought it was safe, so the fire was completely pointless. I understand that the Baudelaires had no way of knowing this, but this was definitely a situation where there were many alternatives.

Now that said, it was Sunny, not Violet or Klaus, who wanted to burn down the hotel. In TPP, Sunny couldn't have been any older than 2, and a 2-year-old has not yet developed the cognition to understand how wrong it is to do what Sunny suggested. Had Violet or Klaus had the idea to start a fire, it would have been inexcusable.