My Love/Hate Relationship with Roald Dahl

I have a love/hate relationship with Roald Dahl because he shoehorns his own cynical opinions into some of his work, but I still believe his villains are valuable for children to encounter. 

In Danny, Champion of the World, Roald Dahl blatantly claims that rich people are all “phony” and “idiots,” and justifies crime on the part of the hero of the story on those grounds (Danny, Champion of the World, pg 32). The story is about a little boy and his father, and the father is painted as the biggest, kindest hero—he is said to have “smiling eyes,” and his love for his son is truly touching. However, one night the main character, Danny, wakes up in the middle of the night to find himself alone in his home. Later, he finds out that his father has been out poaching pheasants on the land of their rich neighbor, Victor Hazell. His father justifies his crime, refers to it as an art form, implies that Hazell deserves it, and Danny goes right along with it. He later goes on to join his father in coming up with the most creative ways to poach pheasants. This point about how ridiculous the wealthy are is driven home later when the reader encounters Victor Hazell and finds that he is indeed a completely stupid jerk.

Roald Dahl can feel however he wants about whomever he wants, but as a general rule, hateful cynicism like that should not have a place in children’s literature, unless it serves a greater purpose within an otherwise life-affirming story. A child is incapable of understanding the reasons behind someone’s disdain for the rich, and to the extent that they are capable, why would Dahl wish to exploit that in order to spew such hate into the minds of children? Why does he wish to justify his “heroic” main character breaking the law because somebody is mean and dumb? That’s not how the world works.

Now, despite this criticism, I do still love many of Dahl’s novels. Not only do I have a sentimental attachment to several of his works stemming from my own childhood, but I also think his villains are truly valuable for children to read about because they help a child to feel powerful.

In Matilda, a small, ultra-brilliant girl must fight back against the cruelty of her parents and the principal of her school. All three characters are horrific tyrants, and Roald Dahl makes them pretty scary. In the end, through combining her wits with her special telekinetic powers, Matilda drives the principal out of town, never to be heard from again, and gets to leave her parents’ house in order to live with her beautiful and kind kindergarten teacher, Miss Honey. 

Adults may not like to hear it, but children sometimes see us as big, scary, and unfair, even when—sometimes especially when—we are trying to do what is best for them. And, whenever we read a book, we subconsciously put ourselves into the main character’s shoes. So, when children read Matilda, they are put into the shoes of someone who has the power to handle unfairness, and to win against it, even in the face of truly horrible villains. Matilda makes children feel powerful and strong, when they are certainly familiar with the feeling of being small and weak. 

Don’t worry—after they read Matilda, your children won’t rebel against you and superglue your hat to your head because you made them do the dishes when they didn’t want to. The villains in Matilda have the added benefit of being so completely awful that anything readers’ parents might have done “to slight them” really pales in comparison.

While there are things about Roald Dahl’s writing that I find repulsive in a children’s author, there are other virtues in his works that I think make several of them unmissable. He is sometimes inappropriately cynical to a nearly unforgivable degree, but I do forgive him because of how strong and capable his triumphant stories make children feel when they inevitably face unfairness in real life. 

Recommended works by Roald Dahl:

Matilda

James and the Giant Peach

Esio Trot