At the very end of the book is a little inscription by Dahl:
“A message to the children who have read this book: When you grow up and have
children of your own, do please remember something important. A Stodgy parent
is not fun at all! What a child wants—and DESERVES—is a parent who is SPARKY!”
Reading the book as an adult, this statement and many of the events in the book
may appear problematic—after all, their poaching is breaking the law and they
really shouldn’t buy an oven if they can’t afford it. However, this is really
the charm and the importance of it. Overall, the book explores the change in
the parent-child relationship, normalizing the realization that parents are
imperfect by delighting in the imperfection.
Danny’s journey really begins when he finds out about his
father’s secret habit—poaching: “Grown ups are complicated creatures, full of
quirks and secrets…all of them, including one’s own parents, have two or three
private habits hidden up their sleeves that would probably make you gasp if you
knew about them.” At first, Danny can’t believe that his father would engage in
something so dangerous—and so illegal! While Danny’s father has more noble,
Robin Hood-esque motivations, that does not change the fact that it is wrong on
some level. Danny, not his father, is the one who is most aware of the dangers
and consequences such a habit could mean. Dahl’s treatment of Father’s poaching
habit is fascinating, because he does not shy away from depicting how unhealthy
it is. Descriptions of Danny’s father when poaching always include an emphasis
on how his eyes widen and he grows more and more excited, almost indicative of addiction.
Danny’s father is restless when poaching, and does not fully consider the risks
that Danny points out to him.
For a while, this leads to a reversal in the father-son
relationship. When his father gets trapped in the pit, it is Danny who drives
out and saves him, and then who takes care of him as he recovers. For a while,
Danny is very wary of his father’s recklessness, and sees a noticeable change
as his father confides to him about his dreams of getting back at Mr. Hazell.
The latter half of the book, however, normalizes Danny’s
realization that his father isn’t perfect. As he and his father work together
in their scheme to ruin Mr. Hazell’s hunting party, they develop a new kind of
relationship—a friendship, rather than a parent-child relationship. There is an
interchange of ideas and their plan is a result of friend-to-friend
collaboration. Because of his father’s secret habit, Danny is able to have a
closer relationship with him than they ever did before.
At the beginning of the book, Danny describes his
relationship with his father in the way any typical lucky kid would—his father
reads him books, walks him to school, and teaches him things. However, at the
end their relationship is much more collaborative—and the end of the book Danny
and his father discuss dinner plans and how they need to get more silverware.
Overall, this progression depicts that although Danny has realized a shocking
thing about his father, those shocking realizations can bring them closer
together. It is his father’s imperfection that makes him “the most marvelous
and exciting father any boy ever had.”
No comments:
Post a Comment