Roald Dahl

## Biographical Information

### Personal:

Roald Dahl was born on September 13th, 1916 in Llandaff, Wales. He is of Norwegian descent and his family consists of his parents, Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg, and his four sisters. His father died from pneumonia in 1920 at the age of 57 shortly after Roald's sister, Astri, had died from a burst appendix. Roald attended Llandaff Cathedral School for a short time before he moved to Repton, a prestigious private school. Not wanting to attend college, Roald decides to travel after. Dahl went on a trip to Newfoundland after graduating from Repton in 1932. He then went to work for the Shell Oil Company in Tanzania, where he stayed until 1939. Roald marries Patricia Neal in 1953 and together they have 5 children. They were divorced after thirty years of marriage and several misfortunes such as the death of his seven year old daughter and the tragic accident with his four month old son.

### Historical:

Roald Dahl enlisted in the Royal Air Force at the age of 23, and served in World War II. He suffered a plane crash accident which led to injuries to his skull, nose and hip. Shortly after his recovery Roald left to Washington, D.C where he became a World War II spy. In 1960, Roald helped develop the Wade-Dahl-Till valve. This stemmed from the injuries that his son sustained in the head from an accident. It wasn't until after this that Roald Dahl began his journey as an author and screen writer.

## Themes

### Child Narration:

Throughout his work, Dahl enjoys his stories being told through a child perspective. His purpose is to reflect that child's feelings and emotions in hopes of the reader connecting more with the text. Some examples with child narrators are *Matilda* and *Danny, The Champion of the World*. In these books we see how the children are independent and make choices that contradict the adults' demands in the story. As readers, we gain insight into what the children's true desires are. His hopes were to have children use their creativity to imagine endless possibilities and gain encouragement to follow their dreams.

### Dark Humor:

In several of his works, Roald uses very descriptive scenes and includes meticulous details when describing the characters' appearance. He uses the following description in his book *The Witches, "balding, red-spotted heads, their disgusting, toe-less feet".* Although many would consider this too gory for children, Roald claims he knows childrens' interests fairly well. One of the many things he can relate to is their sense of humor to which he also includes in his work in order to alleviate some of the dark descriptions. In his book, *The BFG,* which stands for big, friendly giant he uses names such as Child Chewer or Blood Bottler.

### Adult Villians:

The antagonists in most of Dahl's books are adults. Dahl rarely gives the evil role to children, whether they are grown witches, parents, aunts, and grandmothers. There is no clear cause for Dahl's behavior, but others speculate that it was influenced by his personal experiences with adults at his boarding school. Dahl made an effort to represent all children as good, but there was need to incorporate evil to contrast the good. Miss Honey and the BFG are two of the lovely grownups who appear in his books. Dahl's mother, whom he admired, is said to be reflected in these gentle adults.

## Style

Dahl sees the world through the eyes of a child and writes stories that are incredibly goofy and entertaining for kids to read. Dahl's writing style is what some might call amusing, and he uses unusual adjectives in his pieces. He adds to a whole new collection of constructed words whose meanings are derived from their sounds. Rhyme, rhythm, and humor are commonly found in Dahl's works. By depicting children who are disobedient, ungrateful, rude, etc., Dahl strives to teach children lessons and the consequences that come from their actions; vice versa with kind, respectful characters. To create human like animals, Dahl used the technique of personification. These creatures have their own minds and can communicate just like we do.

## Bibliography

There are a total of 39 books written by Roald Dahl directly, 7 anthologies, and 5 screenplays. The list of titles and descriptions of each text can be found in the following link: https://www.roalddahl.com/global/roald-dahl-titles#

Below are a couple of popular titles and the awards they received:

* 1972:  ***Charlie and the Chocolate Factory*** won the New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Award
* 1979:  ***Danny the Champion of the World*** won the California Young Reader Medal
* 1982:  ***The BFG*** won the Federation of Children's Book Groups Award, and ***James and the Giant Peach*** the Massachusetts Children's Award
* 1983:  ***The Witches*** won the New York Times Outstanding Books Award, Federation of Children's Book Groups Award, and Whitbread Award
* 1998:  ***Matilda*** was voted "Nation's Favorite Children's Book" in BBC Bookworm Poll
* 2000:  ***Charlie and the Chocolate Factory*** receives the Millennium Children's Book Award[1]

## Criticism

Although some of Dahl's titles such as Matilda, BFG, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are some of the most popular children's books, there are some things to note. Below are some of the many things people have to say about Roald Dahl's work:

* "Despite Dahl publicly admitting he was anti-Semitic in an interview shortly before his death at age 74, in addition to a number of reports of his alleged misogyny and racism, for a long time it seemed that the immense popularity of his books, and their accompanying adaptations, overshadowed concerns regarding his reputed prejudices." -TIME
* "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Oompa Loompas were originally depicted as small black pygmies with warlike cries. Female characters tend to be either warm or wicked with nothing in between, while Revolting Rhymes brands Cinderella, that fairytale girl-next-door, “a dirty slut”. -BBC
* "In the decades since its publication, James and the Giant Peach has been lambasted for its racism (remember that bit where the Grasshopper declares “I’d rather be fried alive and eaten by a Mexican”?), profanity (‘ass’ appears at least three times), references to drugs and drink (all that snuff and whiskey), and sexual innuendo (a scene in which a spider licks her lips got readers in Wisconsin hot under the collar), not to mention its alleged promotion of disobedience and – wait for it – communism." -BBC

## Additional Information

### Fun Facts

* It wasn't until he had his own children that Dahl began writing for children.

* Because he couldn't type, he wrote all of his books with a pencil on yellow paper.

* He adores chocolate, but neither chocolate cake nor chocolate ice cream appeal to him.

* In a little cottage at the foot of his yard, he composed all of the children's novels. No one was permitted to enter.

* Dahl's favorite subject in school was never writing.

* In his writings, Dahl is known for inventing gibberish words. Dahl introduced 238 new words in his book The BFG.

* Dahl created the screenplay for the 1967 James Bond film "You Only Live Twice."

* Roald Dahl despised the 1971 picture Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, needed less emphasis on Wonka.

### More about Dahl

https://www.roalddahl.com/global/rdsc-and-family-notice

## References

* https://www.roalddahl.com/home/teachers
* https://time.com/5937507/roald-dahl-anti-semitism/
* https://www.famousauthors.org/roald-dahl
* https://authorstudyofcharka.weebly.com/books-by-roald.html
* http://www.onceuponabookcase.co.uk/2013/09/roald-dahl-day-dahls-favourite-themes.html
* https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20160912-the-dark-side-of-roald-dahl