Mission
Responding to a query on the series' website, Lemony Snicket stated that the sugar bowl contains "a tiny document concerning the nature of V.F.D." The first discussion of this nature appears in The Carnivorous Carnival. V.F.D. member Olivia Caliban tells the Baudelaire orphans: "The world is a harum-scarum place. They say that long ago it was simple and quiet, but that might be a legend." Although no specific mission statement is ever ascribed to V.F.D., the organization's purpose is defined on multiple occasions. Perhaps the most frequently cited tenet of V.F.D. is nobleness; according to Quigley Quagmire, all members of V.F.D. share "noble ideals".
In The Slippery Slope, Snicket lays out three charges which may be seen as the foundation of the organization: "integrity, the prevention of fire, and being well-read." Snicket reiterates these aims in describing V.F.D.'s members as "all the kind, brave, and well-read people in the world"; as those who have chosen "a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is challenging and noble"; and as those who "feel that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to a world full of schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things." The organization's promotion of bravery is affirmed in The Grim Grotto, where V.F.D. is described as awarding citations for bravery. In The Penultimate Peril, Snicket quotes Edith Wharton in describing the organization's goals: "One can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."
Multiple anecdotes in the series attest to the importance of polymathy to the organization. As Captain Widdershins states:
V.F.D. isn't just a fire department. Aye—it started that way. But the volunteers were interested in every such thing! I was one of the first to sign up for Voluntary Fish Domestication. That was one of the missions of Anwhistle Aquatics. Aye! I spent four long years training salmon to swim upstream and search for forest fires.
All members of V.F.D. are placed in a rigorous training program in which they are taught a wide range of classical subjects in the arts and sciences. V.F.D. is further described as seeking to "unlock mysteries" and preempt villainy. In The Grim Grotto, Widdershins states that V.F.D. is about "justice and liberty and an opportunity to make the world quiet and safe." Kit Snicket likens the aims of Martin Luther King, Jr., to those of V.F.D., suggesting that because of his efforts he might be considered an honorary member.
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Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)
“Every Age has its own peculiar faith.... Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory.”
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)