Author Roald Dahl is one of those writers of children's books who many adults would insist should not be read by children at all. His fantasy stories -- featuring some of the most Wonderland-esque ideas to ever appear outside of a book by Lewis Carroll -- are populated with dark challenges, dangerous magic, and the most fearsome adults in all of children's literature.
But as any young fan of Dahl could tell you, it is precisely the darkness and fear that make his stories so powerful. By giving his young protagonists frightening, powerful monsters to defeat, Dahl's heroes show readers that they, too, can be expected to triumph over their dragons ... metaphorical or otherwise. (With Dahl, it's always hard to tell; wait until we get to the story about the rhinoceros.)
September 13th marks the 96th anniversary of Dahl's birthday. But before making your very own
Bruce Bogtrotter Cake in celebration, let's look back on some of the most weird, wild, and wonderful moments of triumph from Dahl's most celebrated classics.
(Warning: plot spoilers ahead!)
We know from Harry Potter that there's plenty of good witches out there in the world. But there's also some decidedly evil ones, as in Dahl's book The Witches, wherein it's revealed that not only is the world full of (evil) witches in hiding, but that these Witches are out to destroy all the little kids they can. (Dahl Witches aren't big fans of children, you see.)
Luckily for the (unnamed) young boy who is the hero of our story, his grandma not only knows all about Witches -- she knows how to spot them. Just about anybody can be a Witch in disguise, but our hero's learnt how to spot them, a skill which saves him on more than one occasion. It's not until he and his grandma are on vacation overseas, however, that his Witch-spotting skills are truly put to the test. Not only does he discover that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (holding their conference at the very same hotel where our hero and his grandma are staying) is a conference of Witches in disguise, but he also uncovers the Witches' evil plan: to turn all the children in the world into mice.
Unfortunately for our hero, the Witches catch him all the same, and before he knows it, he's been turned into a mouse himself. Luckily for him, he's a talking mouse, and his newfound rodent appearance doesn't stop him and his grandma from implementing a plan to pepper the Witches' conference dinner with their very own mouse-transforming potion. The entire conference, including the Grand High Witch, are all turned into harmless mice -- upsetting the hotel staff (by the sudden appearance of a rodent infestation) in the process.
Speaking of Harry Potter ... before the Dursleys, there were Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, who became the guardians of little James after his parents were, well, eaten by an escaped rhinoceros. (These things happen.) Forced to work and slave for his aunts (who refer to him by such affectionate pet names as "you disgusting little beast"), James is able to escape his relatives with the help of some magical crocodile tongues -- which have a peculiar effect on the peach tree outside, causing the tree to grow a fruit the size of a small house. While his aunts make money off of the strange attraction in their front yard, James eventually manages to sneak a look at the peach -- only to find a group of giant talking insects living in the hollowed-out inside. Making fast friends, the not-so-little group of bugs team up with James to escape Aunts Sponge and Spiker, rolling the peach away from the house (rolling it over the house, actually -- sorry, Sponge and Spiker), and off into the world and the start of grand adventures.
Most fantasy stories starring young and plucky young orphans feature some sort of daring escape from the cruel guardians left behind. But long before Ron and his brothers came in a flying Ford to save Harry from a boring and unfriendly summer with his aunt and uncle, there was Dahl's quite-unique escape for James ... by peach.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is less about Charlie Bucket and his delightful trip through the world of Willy Wonka's candy factory, than it is a story about four terrible little children getting their comeuppance. Charlie may be a kind, decent sort of guy himself, but his fellow contest-winners -- Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, and Mike Teavee -- are anything but.
If you know the story, than you know that each child's particular fate hinges on exactly what it is that makes them so uniquely bratty. Mike Teavee, obsessed with television (as his name suggests), finds himself shrunken down to the size of the characters on the TV screen; Violet Beauregarde, champion gum-chewer (and all-around loud mouth), bites into a bad gumball and winds up turned into a giant blueberry. (Yes, a giant, talking blueberry; if you don't like surreal weirdness in your books, Dahl isn't going to work for you.)
But of all the children, it's Veruca Salt -- the spoiled little heiress of two very rich and very spoiling parents -- who has, perhaps, the best fate. Willy Wonka keeps a large team of squirrels on hand to pick out the good nuts from the bad ones for his candy products. When confronted with Veruca, the squirrels determine that she is, indeed, a bad nut -- and it's into the garbage shoot with her, to join all the other bad nuts (and a few gagging tons of spoiled fish, bacon rinds, old steaks, and liverworst).
And it's not just Veruca who makes a fateful trip down the garbage shoot. After all, as Dahl is careful to point out, it's not really Veruca who is to blame for her spoiled disposition:
"But now, my dears, we think you might
Be wondering –- is it really right
That every single bit of blame
And all the scolding and the shame
Should fall upon Veruca Salt?
Is she the only one at fault?
For though she's spoiled, and dreadfully so,
A girl can't spoil herself, you know.
Who spoiled her, then? Ah, who indeed?
Who pandered to her every need?
Who turned her into such a brat?
Who are the culprits? Who did that?
Alas! You needen't look so far
To find out who these sinners are.
They are (and this is very sad)
Her loving parents, MUM and DAD.
And that is why we're glad they fell
Into the garbage chute as well."
- Bruce Bogtrotter and the Cake (
Matilda)
Matilda's eventual defeat of the villainous Trunchbull is certainly an impressive, unforgettable moment, not just in the novel Matilda but from Dahl's stories as a whole. But when it comes to Crowning Moments of Awesome, I still think this chapter might be my true favorite.
At a school assembly, little Bruce Bogtrotter is accused by the Trunchbull of eating a piece of chocolate cake -- from her chocolate cake, a cake baked by the school cook especially for the headmistress herself. Bruce's punishment at first seems too good to be true: he is given an entire chocolate cake then and there at the assembly. There's only one catch: he's got to eat it himself. The whole thing.
Eating an enormous cake by oneself is a surefire recipe for certain dyspeptic disaster. But this is a Dahl book, and in Dahl books, children always win. Bruce rises magnificently to the occasion, and -- with the encouragement of the whole school -- successfully finishes off the whole cake.
It's not the total defeat of the Trunchbull, but it's an important victory nonetheless. Funny, slightly disgusting, and wholly heartfelt, this scene is quintessential Dahl. After all, it's a scene which proves what Dahl himself so obviously knew: that victory can come about in the oddest of ways.
Check out a complete list of Roald Dahl books here.
