Again, you get even more of the whole "people aren't all bad or all good" thing. You meet almost every adult you've seen so far in the story, but they all fail the orphans in one way or another. You meet Kit Snicket, and learn more about the schism, and about Dewey and his decimal hotel. You also learn that the Baudelaire parents poisoned someone at an opera with poison darts, and that Olaf's parents were killed by poison darts. And at the end, when Klaus tries to open the secret door with Olaf, and Violet tries to help get the boat off the roof, you get to see a real human side of him for the first time. He's sad and uneducated, and was raised alone without his parents. And he "always wondered" how the orphans did what they did. And of course, ultimately the orphans end up killing a man and setting fire to the hotel. Good people can do bad things for good reasons, and vice versa.