![]() ![]() Self-absorbed, telly-obsessed Mr and Mrs Wormwood cannot stand their bookish, preternaturally bright little girl. The Sisters Grimm abuse their nephew (“You nasty little beast!”) and thoroughly deserve their sticky ending squelched to death by the eponymous giant fruit.ĭeprivation and monstrous behaviour of all kinds abound in the pages of Dahl.įor Charlie Bucket, who lives on watery cabbage soup, watching other kids eat chocolate is PURE TORTURE! He is sent to live with Aunt Sponge, a greedy, selfish, morbidly fat woman, and the equally repulsive Aunt Spiker (played to ghastly perfection by Miriam Margoyles and Joanna Lumley, respectively, in the film). Young James’s terrors are only just beginning. A runaway rhinoceros has eaten them “during a visit to London”. From Oliver Twist and Pip in Great Expectations via Alice in Wonderland and James Henry Trotter to Harry Potter himself, the heroes of juvenile fiction invariably face the trials and tribulations of this world alone.Īt the shocking start of James and the Giant Peach, Dahl dispatches James’s parents with characteristic cruel brio. Like all great children’s authors (a reliably odd, frequently unpleasant bunch), Dahl preferred the exciting state of orphanhood to the supposed comforts of the nuclear family. ![]() Roald Dahl didn’t have much time for parents, which may go some way to explaining why children have so much time for Roald Dahl.
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