Pedagogy and Other Unfortunate Events: Cheerful Nihilism in Popular Children’s Books

Teaching the difference between right and wrong has long been a pedagogical function ascribed to and demonstrated in children's books. Childhood itself is dominated by educational institutions, practices and theories; even the process of ageing is regulated by a child's schooling. Children's authors, perhaps as a consequence, often focus attention upon school, situating an articulation and dissemination of values within the educational sphere. Children's authors, however, sometimes reject imposed value constructions, creating nihilistic discourses with which to mock and rebuff pedagogical aims and practices. Lemony Snicket, for example, sends his unfortunate protagonists, the Baudelaire orphans, to boarding school in the fifth book of A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Austere Academy (2000). The orphans' initial impression of the 'pointless' (2000, p.4) physical exercises endured by the students is confirmed by their observation that the Prufrock Preparatory School's motto is 'Memento Mori,' or 'Remember you will die' (2000, p.13). Lemony Snicket, like J.K. Rowling and Eoin Colfer, sees nothing incongruous in the simultaneous experiences of education and death, oblivion or general meaninglessness. This paper examines nihilistic discourses elaborating pedagogy as explored in popular, contemporary children's narratives, analysing movements between pessimism and optimism or, in fact, what can be interpreted as cheerful nihilism.