The Ersatz Elevator is the sixth installment in A Series of Unfortunate Events, coming after The Austere Academy and before The Vile Village. The series follows the trials and tribulations of the three Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, orphaned after their family home and parents perished in a fire. In the series’ opening installment, The Bad Beginning, the children are assigned to a caseworker who is tasked with finding them a new home. In keeping with the bumbling nature of adults in Snicket’s fictional world, this results in the children being put in terrible situations. Their first placement is with Count Olaf, a dastardly villain who wants to steal the Baudelaire fortune when Violet comes of age. The children escape Count Olaf by the end of the book, but he remains the main antagonist for the series, tracking the children to one bad home after another.

The A Series of Unfortunate Events books are written in a darkly humorous tone that includes satire and societal commentary. Snicket writes in a postmodern style, characterized by an unreliable narrator and thematic use of political issues of the time.