Personality
Although his primary responsibility in the books is to help the Baudelaires, the Baudelaires do not think he is helpful (Lemony Snicket describes him as being as helpful as a jar of mustard). His focus on his banking career seems to make him completely oblivious to the hardships and danger of the Baudelaires. Though the Baudelaires seem to be much more intelligent than Poe, he completely dismisses and ignores everything they say as "ramblings of little children". Some fans of the series believe that Poe is being deliberately unhelpful and ignorant - (that he is actually a villain or a member of V.F.D., although there is no evidence in the books to suggest this), this could also just be a result of his incompetence. In The Penultimate Peril, Justice Strauss at one point calls him "that idiotic banker." On many occasions he expresses a thought which is the exact opposite of what the Baudelaires are imagining, such as in The Vile Village when the Baudelaires comment that the death of Quigley does not change the birth identity of the Quagmires as triplets, while Mr. Poe says that the death of Quigley changes their birth identity, and in The Austere Academy when the Baudelaires interpret the term "cakesniffer" as an insult, while Poe interprets it as a "nice term that reminds him of pastry".
Read more about this topic: Arthur Poe
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