Fighting Fire with Fire

Fire is a recurring part of "The Slippery Slope." The Baudelaire children lost their home and their parents to fire, and Count Olaf and the others in his organization enjoy burning things down. Fire also seems to have something to do with the VFD, the secret organization that the Baudelaire's parents seem to have belonged to, and from which Olaf and others split. According to Quigley Quagmire, VFD may stand for Volunteer Fire Department, organizations that fight fires.

The reference to fires in the name of the VFD is probably not literal. To put out a fire can also be a figurative phrase that means to stop some potentially dangerous situation from getting worse. Fire is also used as an image in the figurative phrase to "fight fire with fire," which means that when a person is attacked, he uses the same attack methods on...