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Roald DahlA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Autobiographical elements of Roald Dahl’s life can be found throughout his fiction. The author’s time spent at a boys’ school with an abusive headmaster, for example, influenced the character of Miss Trunchbull in Matilda. A love for gobstoppers, popular with boys between the two World Wars, made its way into Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as the Everlasting Gobstopper. Meanwhile, the darkness of Dahl’s writing likely stems from difficult childhood experiences, such as the deaths of his sister and father and the violence he experienced at Repton School.
Traces of these darker experiences, including hazing in which older boys used younger boys as servants, and Dahl’s participation in World War II as a fighter pilot, can be seen in “Skin.” This story explores the perception of people as commodities to develop the theme of The Great Divide that exists between social classes. Moreover, Dahl understood how a war can affect individuals, as represented in Drioli’s loneliness and destitution after World War II. Though Dahl’s real-life experiences and Drioli’s fictionalized experiences are not explicitly parallel, “Skin” examines a postwar culture in which cruelty, desperation, and greed coexist. Just as real-life details are present in his children’s stories, the aspects of society Dahl found problematic are worked into his short fiction.
By Roald Dahl
Beware of the Dog
Roald Dahl
Billy and the Minpins
Roald Dahl
Boy: Tales of Childhood
Roald Dahl
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Roald Dahl
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Roald Dahl
Danny, the Champion of the World
Roald Dahl
Esio Trot
Roald Dahl
Fantastic Mr Fox
Roald Dahl
George's Marvelous Medicine
Roald Dahl
Going Solo
Roald Dahl
James And The Giant Peach
Roald Dahl
Lamb To The Slaughter
Roald Dahl
Matilda
Roald Dahl
The BFG
Roald Dahl
The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me
Roald Dahl, Illustr. Quentin Blake
The Landlady
Roald Dahl
The Magic Finger
Roald Dahl, Illustr. Quentin Blake
The Twits
Roald Dahl
The Way Up To Heaven
Roald Dahl
The Witches
Roald Dahl