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In the children's books series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, the initials V.F.D. represent, among other things, a mysterious organization. more...

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History

V.F.D. was first mentioned by Aunt Josephine in The Wide Window. She said there are people who start fires and people who put them out. There are references to V.F.D. in each book following The Austere Academy, although many of them are apparent only in retrospect. It is first mentioned explicitly by Duncan and Isadora Quagmire in The Austere Academy, who do not get the opportunity to explain it. The theme becomes increasingly prominent in subsequent volumes as the Baudelaire orphans investigate the initials' true meaning, and it appears to figure centrally in their parents' deaths and the schemes of their enemy, Count Olaf. It eventually transpires that it is the name of an organization, and the Slippery Slope suggests that V.F.D. stands for Volunteer Fire Department, among other things. However, Snicket confirms the the standing as Volunteer Fire Department in the thirteenth book. It should be noted that while Volunteer Fire Department connotes a group that actively puts out fires, it can be read to mean a group that actively starts fires, thus maintaining the ambiguity of the series.

In the books, the protagonists (Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire) discover that their parents were members of this secret organization, as were all the guardians they were placed with after their parents died and various other people encountered during the books. At some point, the V.F.D. underwent a serious schism. When exactly this occurred is unknown, but it appears that a line has been drawn between those who stop fires and those who start them. In the tenth book, The Slippery Slope, Quigley Quagmire says he believes V.F.D. stands for "Volunteer Fire Department".

Codes

The organization makes use of many codes, most notably the Sebald Code. Other codes used include:

Mozart's 14th Symphony, whistled; Verse Fluctuation Declaration, where coded words of poems are replaced; Verbal Fridge Dialogue, using the contents of a refrigerator to encode documents; Various coded phrases, including "The world is quiet here", "I didn't realize this was a sad occasion", "Well, young lady, have you been good to your mother?", "The question is, has she been good to me?",and "If there's nothing out there, then what was that noise?";

Eye Symbol

V.F.D.'s symbol is the human eye, especially one containing the organization's initials hidden in its design. To the Baudelaire children, the eye is also a symbol of Count Olaf, their first guardian, who had a tattoo of an eye on his ankle and whose home was decorated with eye designs. Jacques Snicket also had this tattoo. For this, as well as for his resemblance to the Count, he was sentenced to be burned at the stake in Olaf's place, before he was murdered by the Count himself in The Vile Village. Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography indicates that all members of V.F.D. shared this tattoo prior to the schism.

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