Boy: Tales of Childhood

“The loss of an arm, he used to say, caused him only one serious inconvenience. He found it impossible to cut the top off a boiled egg.”

Harald’s use of humor belies the distressing account of the mismanagement of his broken arm, which was excruciatingly pulled apart and led to amputation. His use of humor is stylistically similar to Roald Dahl’s own use of dark, dry humor in distressing moments.

“He was a tremendous diary-writer. I still have one of his many notebooks from the Great War of 1914-18. Every single day during those five war years he would write several pages of comment and observation about the events of the time.”

Roald inherited or was strongly influenced by his father, Harald’s, discipline for writing consistently and documenting the events of his life and the world around him.

“I can remember oh so vividly how the two of us used to go racing at enormous tricycle speeds down the middle of the road and then, most glorious of all, when we came to a corner, we would lean to one side and take it on two wheels.”

Dahl quickly admits that he has no memory of his kindergarten teachers, but instead recounts, with wonderful and detailed imagery, the joy of racing his sister on his tricycle. Dahl admits in the foreword that he is not interested in providing a chronological record of his life but details those moments that were most salient to him at the ages he describes.

“The boy was going down the slope, and as he flashed by he started backpedaling very quickly so that the free-wheeling mechanism of his bike made a loud whirring sound. At the same time, he took his hands off his handlebars and folded them casually across his chest. I stopped dead and stared after him. How wonderful he was! How swift and brave and graceful in his long trousers with bicycle clips around them and his scarlet school cap at a jaunty angle on his head!”

Dahl captures his restlessness as a younger boy who longs to be older. The older boy he admires—whose trousers suggest his age, since younger boys wear shorts—represents the joy and confidence of being older, composed, and nonchalant.

“A Bootlace, in case you haven’t had the pleasure of handling one, is not round. It’s like a flat black tape about half an inch wide. You buy it rolled up in a coil, and in those days it used to be so long that when you unrolled it and held one end at arm’s length above your head, the other end touched the ground.”

Dahl describes, in great detail, the tactile experience of handling and eating the delicacies available at Mrs. Pratchett’s sweetshop. He captures the mentality of a child of Dahl’s age at the time of the event, when pleasures are simple and candy is incredibly exciting. This loving description of candy is similar in tone to his description of Willy Wonka’s treats in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

“But by far the most loathsome thing about Mrs. Pratchett was the filth that clung around her. Her apron was gray and greasy. Her blouse had bits of breakfast all over it, toast-crumbs and tea stains and splotches of dried egg-yolk. It was her hands, however, that disturbed us the most. They were disgusting. They were black with dirt and grime.”

The sweetshop is humorously guarded by the gatekeeper Mrs. Pratchett, who is characterized as terrifying and revolting. Dahl, using his typically hyperbolic and humorous style, paints Mrs. Pratchett as repugnant and loathsome to the children, making sure her appearance reflects her personality.

“Suddenly it swung open and through it, like the angel of death, strode Mr. Coombes, huge and bulky in his tweed suit and black gown.”

Adversarial adults in Dahl’s world are rendered terrifying through imagery and metaphors. The descriptive language conveys the extent of Dahl’s fear, as a young boy, of these cruel and malevolent authority figures who tower over the children and use their size to intimidate them.

“Whether or not the wily Mr. Coombes had chalked the cane beforehand and had thus made an aiming mark on my gray flannel shorts after the first stroke, I do not know.”

As is typical of Dahl’s style, the trauma of the caning anecdote is belied somewhat with humorous remarks. This digression contrasts with the brutality of the act being described.

“It felt, I promise you, as though someone had laid a red-hot poker against my flesh and was pressing down on it hard.”

Dahl strongly condemns the use of corporal punishment on children. His vivid memory of the details of the episodes when he is caned illustrate the distressing and lasting impression these punishments left upon his psyche.

“They don’t beat small children like that where I come from […] I won’t allow it.”

Dahl’s mother, Sofie Dahl, is a constant and caring advocate for her son throughout her life. The two are extremely close. When she learns that her son was beaten at school, she decides to remove him from the school.

“Unless you have sailed down the Oslofjord like this yourself on a tranquil summer’s day, you cannot possibly imagine what it is like. It is impossible to describe the sensation of absolute peace and beauty that surrounds you.”

Dahl’s summer holidays, spent in Norway, are presented as idyllic. They are a salve to the hardships of school. These anecdotes also reveal how important Dahl’s Norwegian ancestry and family relationships are to his sense of self.

“The tiny blade flashed in the bright light and disappeared into my mouth. It went high up into the roof of my mouth, and the hand that held the blade gave four or five very quick little twists and the next moment, out of my mouth and into the basin came tumbling a whole mass of flesh and blood.”

Dahl explores the medical standards in the 1920s, when he was a boy. He is retrospectively astounded at the nonchalance with which his adenoids were removed, a fairly major operation that was conducted with no advance warning, anesthetic, or pain relief, and from which he and his mother simply walked home.

“He shook me by the hand and as he did so he gave me the kind of flashing grin a shark might give to a small fish just before he gobbles it up.”

Dahl employs a humorous metaphor to characterize his fear of the Headmaster. His image of the administrator as a predator turns out to be accurate; the Headmaster beats Dahl after an alleged infraction.

“The Headmaster moved away to another group and I was left standing there beside my brand new trunk and my brand new tuck-box. I began to cry.”

Dahl recalls his days at boarding school with little fondness; he was incredibly homesick, and the adults entrusted to care for him treat him with cruelty rather than compassion.

“From that very first Sunday at St Peter’s until the day my mother died thirty-two years later, I wrote to her once a week, sometimes more often, whenever I was away from home.”

Dahl and his mother, Sofie, correspond regularly. This speaks to the extremely close bond between the two of them and Dahl’s commitment to writing.

“Then she went over to where the wretched Tweedie lay and very carefully she dropped these little soap flakes into his open mouth.”

Dahl condemns the cruelty of the vindictive adults who populated all of his exclusive public schools. The Matron disciplines Tweedie, an eight-year-old child, for snoring by shaving soap into his mouth. He wakes up terrified and distressed.

“She received two full half-hour lessons in driving from the man who delivered the car, and in that enlightened year of 1925 this was considered quite sufficient.”

Dahl explores the vastly different accepted safety standards in the 1920s, when he was a boy. He is retrospectively astounded that one hour of tutelage was considered sufficient to teach his half-sister how to operate the first car the family ever owned. The sarcasm inherent in his statement becomes clear when he reveals that his sister wrecks the car the first time he rides with her.

“Naturally, the wretched boy dirtied his pants, which caused a storm later on upstairs with the Matron.”

Dahl angrily condemns the adults who terrified and disciplined the children at boarding school with punitive and cruel rules. A peer is not allowed to use the lavatory and then is disciplined for soiling himself.

“I am giving you a stripe!”

The cruel and vindictive Captain Hardcastle gives Dahl a stripe, which will result in a flogging from the Headmaster. The events that transpire are unfair, and young Dahl is being punished for cheating and lying when he did neither. He exposes the vulnerability of young children who have no one to advocate for them and are left at the mercy of the adults who run the boarding school.

“Small boys can be very comradely when a member of their community has got into trouble, and even more so when they feel an injustice has been done.”

Dahl celebrates the bonds formed by the traumatized children at boarding school. He suggests that the friendship and camaraderie between the boys allowed them to withstand the cruelty and stress of the schools.

“I doubt very much if you would be entirely happy today if a doctor threw a towel in your face and jumped on you with a knife.”

Dahl, through the anecdote of Ellis’s boil being lanced by the doctor who throws a towel into his face to distract him before slicing his boil open, condemns the unconventional and often unethical approach of medical professionals in the 1920s.

“A ritual took place in the dormitory after each beating. The victim was required to stand in the middle of the room and lower his pyjama trousers so that the damage could be inspected.”

Dahl wonders at, and condemns, the cruelty that was endorsed at Repton. It was accepted that older boys—Boazers—would viciously beat young boys for the smallest transgression and then proudly observe the marks left by the flogging and put them on display for other students to see.

“Michael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the Headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. The great man then gave him one terrific crack.”

Of all the cruel adults detailed in Dahl’s childhood, the Headmaster at Repton is depicted as the most vicious in his beating of young children. His cruelty, despite his sermonizing about the importance of forgiveness and mercy, leads Dahl to become skeptical about the Church and about God.