All are God’s creations, they are born, grow up, and choose their own way of life. They choose what they want to be or what their ambition or career path should be. Surprisingly, there are only a few people who have taken up a totally unrelated and different career to their former ones. One such great man is Roald Dahl. “Loved for their gleefully evil villains and their often mischievous sensibility, Dahl’s books introduce us to fantastic creatures and bizarre places and encourage our imaginations to run wild” (About Roald Dahl, 2010, para.1). Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916. He belonged to a Norwegian family located at Liandaff, Wales (Roald Dahl, 2010, para.1). His parents were Harald Dahl and Sofie Magdalene Dahl (née Hesselberg). He had four sisters namely Alfhild, Else, Asta, and Astri. When he was three, he lost his elder sister Astri and his father to death. So he remained the only blood-related child of his mother. Being a child born out of second marriage, he enjoyed it greatly as his mother was always on his side, no matter what. As we can see in the cases of many authors and poets, Roald also enjoyed stories and books from a very early age. He was introduced to the world of stories by his mother and he was very keen to see her in action. As children grow up, their curiosity increases and, they enter a phase of life dealing with a lot of adventures and begin searching for new worlds. Roald Dahl’s interests took him towards adventure stories and Captain Marryat became a hero to him. Kids do often have a lot of secrets enclosed within them, the same goes for Roald as he had a secret diary which he began writing at the age of eight. Writing the diary was a really difficult task for him as during this process he preferred to be on top of a tree for the whole time. The tree, for him, was a vault for keeping his diary, this way his sisters couldn’t get hold of it, unlike boys, they never climbed trees.
The inspiration for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, one of his most famous works had come from one of his trips to the sweets store along with his friends. This was when he was only seven and a trip to the shop was like a tour around half of the world for him. Roald had a rough time in school. This fact is evident from his experiences. At the age of nine, he became a boarder at St. Peter’s Prep School and then began his misery. He suffered from homesickness, so he found a solution to this problem by writing letters to his mother at least once a week. At the age of thirteen, he became a student of Repton Public School, where he became a maestro in heavyweight boxing and squash. He became a genius in the sports field, but elsewhere he began facing troubles, that is, from his English Master, who was utterly disappointed in the young Roald and said, “He was quite incapable of marshaling his thoughts on paper” (Roald Dahl, n.d., para.3). As every misery has a bright side to it, Repton also proved to have a bright side, which was being situated near one of England’s most famous chocolate factories, the Cadbury’s. Despite, his schooldays being unhappy, they were significant to him as he was influenced deeply through his worldliness and he wrote books that reflected his experiences. On leaving school Roald went to work in Africa for the Shell Petroleum Company. (Roald Dahl, 2005, para.1).
When he was twenty-three, he became a member of the Royal Air Force in Nairobi and learned how to maneuver a plane. So he began his journey as a pilot officer but he faced a lot of difficulties through the war years and due to fights with enemy planes he was injured many times and finally, he was transferred to Washington in 1942 as an Air Attaché. This seemed a totally different side to his story-loving character. Based on one of his severe experiences during the Second World War, he wrote a story ‘A Piece of Cake’, which got published and made him realize that he had a special flair for writing.
Roald first wrote stories for adults and he became a children’s author only after knowing and experiencing the challenges of fatherhood. Dahl and his family moved back to England in 1960 and settled in Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire at Gipsy House (Roald Dahl, 2010, para.9).
There he found a hut, the place where he wielded his pencil to write children’s stories. He would describe himself as a disciplined writer, and he even said that if a writer sits for long hours and writes, then his work becomes inefficient. (Roald Dahl, 2010). Roald married two times, first to Patricia Neal, the Oscar-winning actress in the 1960s, and then to Felicity Crosland (Liccy) in 1983. He had five children in his first marriage, and he would tell them bedtime stories every night which were made up by himself and this was his official training for becoming an author of children’s books. He once remarked “had I not had children, I would not have written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.” Then his first book ‘James and the Giant Peach’ (1961) was published. But there are a lot of controversies to his first children’s book. Some say it was ‘The Gremlins’ and some believe his first book to be ‘James and the Giant Peach’. This was followed by an array of bestsellers namely Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Danny the Champion of the World, and The Big Friendly Giant (Roald Dahl, 2005).
During an interview, Roald Dahl had been asked the question “What it was like writing a book?” to which he replied “When you’re writing it’s rather like going on a very long walk, across valley and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up to the top of a hill, and you see something else, then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the dame landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book because it’s got the be the best view of all when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you’ve done all ties up. But it’s a very, very long slow process” (Roald Dahl interview, 2010, para.1).
Though Roald tasted a lot of success he also suffered many catastrophes in his life, such as when his daughter Olivia who was only seven, died due to encephalitis, and his son Theo’s brain was damaged due to a road accident. But despite all this, he never gave up writing and held on. Peter Lennon said, “It cannot be said that the series of misfortunes and tragedies Dahl was to suffer made him more bitter loss and physical adversities seemed to stimulate his enormous energies to positive action. He fought misfortune as if it was a dragon to be slain” (Roald Dahl, 2010, para.1).
The young and adult both enjoyed Roald’s works with great pleasure. Some of his works have even been turned into movies. He died in 1990, a tragic loss to the world of literature. Even though he is not there anymore, his stories will forever remain in our hearts and souls. There is a special museum dedicated to Roald Dahl where his hut is also an important fragment. People all over the world remember this remarkable and exceptional author on Roald Dahl’s Day, which is celebrated worldwide on his birthday, September 13th (Welcome to the Roald Dahl day websit!, 2008, para.1).
Following are the most recognizable works:
- Matilda
- George’s Marvelous Medicine
- Fantastic Mr. Fox
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- The Twits (Reeves, 2008, para.1).
Reference
About Roald Dahl. (2010). Fantastic Function. Web.
Roald Dahl. (2010). penguin Bookes. Web.
Roald Dahal. (2005). Poet Archive. Web.
Roald Dahl. (2010). The Roald Dahl. Com. Web.
Roald Dahl interview. (2010). Children’s classic. Web.
Roald Dahl. (2010). Children’s classic. Web.
Roald Dahal. (n.d.). Buckinghumshire County Council. 2010. Web.
Reeves, P. (2008).Top 5 books by Roald Dahl. Suite 101.Com. Web.
Welcome to the Roald Dahl day websit!. (2008). Roald Dahl Nominee Limited. Web.