Category: Media

“Poison”

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Information

  • First published:
    • June 3, 1950 issue of Collier’s
    • Illustrated by Martha Sawyers

Plot Description

This is one of Dahl’s most famous stories, and one of the most misunderstood, I think. The entire time you’re reading it, you think that the main conflict is between the men and the krait on Harry’s stomach. It’s only in the last few paragraphs, though, that you realize that the “poison” is actually racism. Harry Pope is perfectly willing to tolerate Dr. Ganderbai as long as his life is in danger, but as soon as Ganderbai dares to question the white man, Harry lets his true colors show. The story is also a masterpiece of tension and suspense. You should check out the radio version sometime.

Spoiler warning! Timber Woods, the narrator, arrives home at his bungalow to discover his partner, Harry Pope, lying in bed and acting strangely. Harry is whispering and sweating all over. He tells Timber that a krait – an extremely poisonous little snake – crawled onto the bed and is now sleeping under the sheet on Harry’s stomach. Timber gets a knife from the kitchen in case Harry gets bitten, which he’ll use to cut the skin and suck out the poison. Harry tells him to call the doctor. Doctor Ganderbai agrees to come at once. Once he arrives, he quickly decides that the first thing to do is inject Harry with some snakebite serum. Carefully, Ganderbai rolls up Harry’s pajama sleeve and ties on a rubber tourniquet. Harry is struggling not to move or cough. Ganderbai smoothly inserts the needles and administers the serum. Outside, the doctor tells Timber that the serum is by no means a guarantee of safety. They decide to try to anesthetize the snake. The use chloroform to soak the mattress beneath Harry. The process is agonizing and takes a long time. Eventually they begin to slowly lift the sheet off Harry. They see no sign of the snake. “It could be up the leg of his pajamas,” says Ganderbai. At that, Harry goes berserk and leaps to his feet, shaking his legs violently. When he stops, they realize that he hasn’t been bitten and the snake is nowhere to be seen. “Mr. Pope, you are of course quite sure you saw it in the first place?” asks Ganderbai. Harry turns red and asks if Ganderbai is accusing him of being a liar. When the doctor doesn’t reply, Harry begins screaming horrible racist insults at him. The doctor quickly leaves. Timber stops the doctor outside and apologies for Harry. He thanks the doctor for his help. “All he needs is a good holiday,” Ganderbai says quietly before driving off.

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“Pig”

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Information

  • Note: Sometimes confused with Stanley Ellin’s famous short story “Specialty of the House,” which is about a restaurant that serves a very special lamb dish. Ellin’s story was published in 1948, whereas Dahl’s didn’t appear until 1960.

Plot Description

This is a pretty gruesome story and it’s not one of my favorites. I think Dahl was probably trying to comment on the way this cruel world takes innocents like Lexington and basically puts them through the meat-grinder. Except in this case… it’s literal. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this one for the kiddies.

Spoiler warning! Once upon a time, a boy named Lexington is born in New York City. Unfortunately he is soon orphaned when his parents are accidentally shot by the police, who mistake them for robbers. Lexington is sent to live with his Aunt Glosspan out in her cottage high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is an eccentric old woman who schools him herself and raises him to be a strict vegetarian. As he grows older, Lexington starts to exhibit a talent for cooking and Aunt Glosspan encourages him to write a cookbook. By the time he is 17, he has invented over 9,000 different dishes. He is shocked when Aunt Glosspan suddenly dies, though, and he buries her himself behind the cowshed. The next day he finds a letter she has left him instructing him to go to New York and meet with her lawyer. Apparently the lawyer will read her Will and then give Lexington money to pursue his cooking ambitions. Unfortunately for the boy, the lawyer is an unscrupulous man who takes advantage of Lexington’s trusting nature and ends up giving him just $15,000 out of the $500,000 his Aunt left for him. Upon leaving the office, Lexington decides he is hungry and heads to the nearest restaurant for some dinner. To his surprise, he is served pork for the first time in his life and he finds it delicious. Eager to learn about this new food for his book, he bribes the waiter to take him back into the kitchen to meet the chef. The chef tells him though, that he can’t be sure it was pig’s meat. “There’s just a chance,” he says, “that it might have been a piece of human stuff.” He tells Lexington that they’ve been getting an awful lot of it from the butcher lately. He’s pretty sure that the piece Lexington had was pork though, so the boy asks him to show him how to prepare it. The cook says that it all begins with a properly butchered pig. Wanting to see how this is done, Lexington takes off for the packing-house in the Bronx. When he gets there he is ushered into a waiting room to await the Guided Tour. He watches as others go through the doors before him: a mother with two little boys, a young couple, and a pale woman with long white gloves. Finally his turn is called, and he is led to the “schackling area” where the pigs are grabbed, looped about the ankle with a chain, and then dragged up through a hole in the roof. While he is watching, one of the workers slips a chain around Lexington’s ankle and before he knows what is happening he is being dragged along the path as well. “Help!” he cries. “There’s been a frightful mistake!” But no one stops the engine, and he’s carried along to the sticker, who slices open the boy’s jugular vein with a knife. As the belt moves on and Lexington begins to feel faint, he sees the pigs ahead being dropped into a large cauldron of boiling water. One of the pigs seems to be wearing white gloves. Lexington’s strong heart pumps out the last of his blood, and he passes on “out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.”

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“A Piece of Cake”

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Information

Plot Description

In The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Dahl claims that this is his “first story” and that it tells the story of how he was shot down over the Libyan Desert. Both statements are incorrect. Dahl’s first story was called “Shot Down Over Libya” and it’s nothing like this one. This version was written by Dahl almost thirty years later. Furthermore, Dahl didn’t crash as a result of enemy fire, but rather because of poor directions and lack of fuel. (You can read more about this controversy on the “Shot Down Over Libya” page.)

Spoiler warning! The story is told entirely in the first person. The narrator explains that he doesn’t remember much before it happened. He’s a pilot, and he describes landing at Fouka with his fellow pilot Peter. They discuss the shaking airmen there who have been stretched too thin by the war effort. Once their planes are refuelled, the two of them get ready to fly off towards their destination in the Libyan Desert. The old airman who straps in the narrator tells him to be careful. “It’s a piece of cake,” the narrator replies. It turns out to be otherwise. In the desert they are surrounded by “lots and lots of trouble”, and the narrator is too low to bail out of his plane. His plane crashes into the ground and he blacks out. By the time he comes to, the plane has caught fire and is burning around him. With some struggle (“I think there was something wrong with the telegraph system between the body and brain.”) he manages to extricate himself from the cockpit and crawl to safety. Peter has landed nearby and manages to find him. The narrator slips into unconsciousness while Peter takes care of him.

The next part of the story is filled with the dreams that the narrator has while unconscious in the hospital. He dreams of Peter and the airmen painting funny pictures on their aircraft to distract the Germans. He dreams of fighting his way through a sky filled with German fighter planes. The planes begin to sing and dance and play “Oranges and Lemons”. He gets annoyed that the Germans are not laughing at his funny pictures. His plane is shot and some of the bullets penetrate his body. He spirals out of control towards the ocean. He sees white horses riding on the waves. He finds himself sitting in a red velvet chair. Someone tells him that he is missing, believed killed. He wants to call his mother, but the telephone only goes to God. Then he dreams that he is running and cannot stop. He passes his mother, who is picking mushrooms. He runs towards a cliff and tries to throw himself to the ground, but it doesn’t work. He runs off the edge and finds himself falling into infinite blackness.

When he finally awakes, he discovers that he’s been in the hospital for four days. The nurse tells him that he’ll be fine. He calls out for her, but she’s already gone.

“Parson’s Pleasure”

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Plot Description

Spoiler warning! Mr. Cyril Boggis is an antiques dealer in Chelsea, London. He doesn’t have a large shop, but he still manages to make a tidy income each year by buying the most remarkable pieces of furniture at very, very cheap prices and selling them for immense profits. His friends in the trade wonder where he finds such rare items so regularly. It turns out that Mr. Boggis’s scheme is rather simple: he dresses up as a clergyman and visits English farmhouses under the pretenses of writing articles for the Society for the Preservation of Rare Furniture. When he finds something valuable, he makes the person an offer and then sells the item in his shop for twenty times as much. On this particular trip he’s canvassing the county of Buckinghamshire and comes across three locals (Claud, Bert, and Rummins) near a dirty, ramshackle farmhouse. Once he convinces them to let him inside, he is flabbergasted to see a Chippendale Commode standing in the living room. The Commodes were made by the famous 18th-century furniture maker Thomas Chippendale, and only three others were known to be in existence. Boggis nearly faints when he realizes that this piece could fetch up to twenty thousand pounds in an auction. He recovers, though, and mentions that he needs a new set of legs for a table he has at home. The ones on the commode, he says, would just fit. Rummins is doubtful, and so Boggis cons him into thinking that the piece is simply a worthless Victorian reproduction. He finally ends up purchasing the commode for the grand total of twenty pounds. After he leaves to get his car, the three men decide to help him out by cutting the legs off for him. Rummins also speculates that the parson might back out of the deal if he can’t fit the entire piece into his car (he doesn’t know that Boggis has a station wagon), so Claud takes an axe and breaks the commode to pieces. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he says. “That was a bloody good carpenter put this job together and I don’t care what the parson says.” At that moment, Mr. Boggis drives up in his car.

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“Only This”

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Information

Plot Description

Spoiler warning! In an English cottage, an old woman lies sleeping in the moonlight of her open window. On her dressing table is a picture of her son in his Royal Air Force uniform. Suddenly there is a great throbbing noise overhead and she wakes. It is the bombers going off to battle. She stands by the window and prays that God will keep her son safe. He is her only child, and she knows that “there was nothing else to live for except this”. She sits and begins to think of him, wishing she could see him and talk to him. She closes her eyes and begins to see the aircraft, and in her mind she is standing there next to him in the cockpit. He smiles at her and she is happy. As the plane nears the battlefield, she can see searchlights and anti-aircraft fire through the windshield. She watches as the plane is hit and an engine catches fire. She is worried, but he smiles at her and continues flying. There is an explosion and the cabin fills with smoke. She watches in fear as her son fights to control the plane while the crew bail out. She panics and tries to drag him from his seat, but he’s unconscious and she can’t undo the many buckles holding him down. Knowing that survival is now impossible, she throws herself on top him and cries. The plane spirals downwards and crashes. Back in the English cottage, the woman leans back against her chair with her eyes closed, clutching the blankets around her. A gentle rumble announces that the surviving bombers are flying home to the British airfields. But the old woman never moves. “She had been dead for some time.”

“Nunc Dimittis”

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Plot Description

This is one of my favorite Dahl stories, and the one with (I think) the most potent twist in the tail of all. It’s not until the very last sentence that you understand the true story.

Spoiler warning! Lionel Lampson is a wealthy older gentleman who enjoys fine art and the company of the upper classes. One night he escorts a vulgar woman named Gladys Ponsonby home from a dinner party. Gladys, who is a little drunk, shows off a new portrait of herself that she had commissioned. She tells Lionel a secret – the artist, John Royden, paints all his subjects first in the nude, then in their underwear, and lastly in their clothes. He is shocked and correctly deduces that this is why all the wealthy women in town are rushing to have their portraits painted by him. Gladys then changes the subject and asks Lionel about his relationship with a young beauty named Janet de Pelagia. Lionel is embarrassed until Gladys relates that earlier that afternoon Janet had called him a “crashing bore”. Lionel is outraged and forces Gladys to repeat the entire conversation. He is so upset to hear what Janet thinks about him that he swoons. The next day he wakes and vows revenge. He hits upon the perfect plan and calls up this artist Royden. He tells him that he’d like a picture of Janet, but doesn’t want her to know about it. He pays Royden a handsome amount for his services, and then goes off to Italy for four months. By the time Lionel returns, Royden has finished the painting and it’s the talk of the Royal Academy. Royden delivers it to Lionel, who can’t wait to move on to the second part of his plan. He is an expert cleaner and restorer of paintings, and very carefully he begins to remove the top layer (the clothing) of the painting. By the time he has finished, Janet de Pelagia is standing before him almost life-size in nothing but her underclothes. Lionel then invites Janet and all the top members of society to his home for a dinner party. He keeps the dining room dark and they eat by candlelight. At the very end, he has the maid turn on the light. As he slips from the room, he has the pleasure of seeing on Janet’s face the “surprised, not-quite-understanding look of a person who precisely one second before has been shot dead, right through the heart”. As the outraged guests begin to exclaim over the painting, Lionel gets into his car and speeds off to his other house. Two days later, he receives a phone call from Gladys Ponsonby that kills his good mood. She tells him that all his old friends are against him and have sworn never to speak to him again. Lionel begins to feel quite bad. Then, in the post arrives a letter from Janet forgiving him and saying that she knew it was a joke and that she’s always loved him. She also sends him a jar of his favorite food, caviare. As the story ends, Lionel mentions that he might have eaten too much of it, as he isn’t feeling too well right now. In fact, he says, “come to think of it, I really do feel rather ill all of a sudden.”

(If you don’t get it, she sent him poisoned caviare as her revenge.)

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“Neck”

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Information

Plot Description

I think this story is a lot more effective if you actually visualize it like you’re seeing it on television. Dahl did, in fact, dramatize it on his show “Tales of the Unexpected” with Sir John Gielgud as the butler Jelks and Joan Collins as Natalia. Doesn’t that just make it even better?

Spoiler warning! The narrator, a newspaper society columnist, starts off by telling us the history of Sir Basil Turton. Sir Basil inherited a vast newspaper empire from his father and immediately became the most sought-after bachelor in London. He was swept off his feet by a dazzling foreign woman named Natalia and they were married not long after. The narrator meets Lady Turton at a dinner party and, though he finds her manners rude, manages to wrangle an invitation to visit her home the next weekend. When the day arrives, the narrator drives down and is astonished at the variety of topiary and sculpture on the grounds of Wooton (Sir Basil’s estate). He enters the house and is shown to his room by a footman. Instantly he can tell that something is wrong in this house. While changing for dinner, our narrator is interrupted by Jelks, the butler, who launches into a peculiar rant about tipping. The upshot is that he would rather the narrator split his card winnings from the weekend with him than to tip. The narrator agrees, but is not amused when Jelks goes on to give him tips about Lady Turton’s playing tactics. The narrator gets the idea that Jelks doesn’t much like Lady Turton, nor her other houseguests. The narrator meets everyone else at dinner, and settles down to converse with Sir Basil about sculpture. Lady Turton amuses herself with her friends Carmen La Rosa and Major Jack Haddock, a bounder that is obviously in love with her. The narrator notices that Sir Basil is well aware of his wife’s indiscretion, but he’s unable to bring himself to do anything about it. The next day, the narrator and Sir Basil go for a walk around the estate. They take a seat up high on a hill that overlooks the entire garden. In the middle of their conversation, they witness Lady Turton and Major Haddock cavorting on one of the lawns, unaware that they are being watched. Haddock has a camera and is taking pictures of Lady Turton, who is mocking one of the sculptures. As a joke, she puts her head through a hole in the sculpture and then Haddock kisses her. Unfortunately, her head gets stuck. Sir Basil suggests that perhaps they should go help her out. When Sir Basil and the narrator arrive, Natalia is embarrassed and furious. Sir Basil tells Jelks to go get him something so that he can take the sculpture apart. Jelks returns with a saw and an axe. Everybody freezes as Jelks holds out the implements, and the narrator notices that Jelks slightly pushes the axe forward. Sir Basil takes the axe. The narrator says, “For me, after that, it was like the awful moment when you see a child running out into the road and a car is coming and all you can do is shut your eyes tight and wait…” When he finally opens his eyes, Sir Basil is telling Jelks that the axe is far too dangerous and requesting the saw. Lady Turton looks quite ill and her “mouth was opening and shutting making a kind of gurgling sound”. The narrator notices that, for the first time, Sir Basil has rosy cheeks and a smile in his eyes.

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“My Lady Love, My Dove”

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Plot Description

Spoiler warning! Arthur is happily married to Pamela, a very wealthy yet overbearing woman. They are awaiting some weekend guests, the Snapes, and Pamela isn’t looking forward to it. The only reason she invited them was that the Snapes are good bridge players and they play for a decent stake. Suddenly Pamela gets the idea that they should bug the Snapes’s room. Arthur doesn’t like the idea, but Pamela bullies him and reminds him that they’ve done similar things together in the past. “I’m a nasty person,” she says. “And so are you — in a secret sort of way. That’s why we get along together.” Arthur is eventually persuaded to hide a microphone in the guest room and run the wire to the speaker in the master bedroom. Later the guests arrive and everyone has a pleasant dinner. Afterwards they play bridge, and the Snapes have all the luck. The wife, Sally, makes one mistake though that costs them several hundred points. At the end of the evening the couples part and Pamela excitedly tells Arthur to turn on the speaker. They are astonished to hear Mr. Snape reprimanding his wife for her earlier bridge error. She apologizes, but he tells her that they’re just going to have to practice some more. Arthur realizes that they’re talking about a betting code which allows them to cheat and know all of their partner’s cards. Arthur isn’t sure what they should do about it, and waits for Pamela’s decision. Her words shock him: “Why, Arthur, this is a mar-vellous idea… Go fetch a deck of cards; we’ll start right away.”

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“Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat”

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Information

  • First published:
    • December 1959 issue of Nugget

Plot Description

Some sources refer to this as a “story-within-a-story”, but I wouldn’t go so far. It’s more like a story with a little stitched-on introduction. Critics like to point to this tale as yet another example of Dahl’s misogyny, but it’s actually quite different for a husband to win against a wife in his work (see “Lamb to the Slaughter” or “The Way Up to Heaven”).

Note: This story is based on an apocryphal anecdote dating back to at least the 1930’s. Dahl didn’t originate the plot!

Spoiler warning! Dahl introduces the story by commenting on the ruthless practice of American woman marrying men, using them, and divorcing them just for financial gain. He claims that these poor overworked men meet in bars and console themselves with tales in which cuckolded men win one over the evil forces of femininity. The most famous of these stories is “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat”, which is about a hard-working dentist and his duplicitous wife. Mrs. Bixby leaves home once a month ostensibly to visit her aunt in Baltimore, but really she spends the time with her lover, the Colonel. On this particular occasion she receives a parting gift from the Colonel, and when she opens it on the train home she is amazed to find an extremely beautiful and valuable mink coat. In a note the Colonel explains that their relationship has to end, but Mrs. Bixby is consoled by the thought of her fabulous new possession. Immediately she begins scheming and trying to think of a story she can tell her husband about where she obtained it. She decides to visit a pawnbroker and borrow $50 against the coat, receiving a blank pawn ticket in return. When she gets home she tells her husband that she found the ticket in a taxicab and he excitedly explains how they go about claiming it. Since she doesn’t want to be recognized by the pawnbroker, she lets him go to claim the item after he promises that he’ll give whatever it is to her. He calls her from work the next day to let her know that he has the item, and that she’s going to be really surprised and happy. Mrs. Bixby is too eager to wait, so she goes to her husband’s office to pick up the coat. Imagine her surprise, then, when her husband places a mangy mink stole around her neck! She feigns happiness for his sake, while secretly planning to return to the pawnbroker and accuse him of switching the coat for this worthless item. On her way out of the office, though, she is passed by her husband’s young assistant secretary, Miss Pulteney… wearing the “beautiful black mink coat that the Colonel had given to Mrs. Bixby.”

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“Mr. Hoddy”

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Plot Description

This is from the “Claud’s Dog” series of stories that were first published in Someone Like You.

Spoiler warning! Claud Cubbage is going to his girlfriend Clarice’s house to be inspected and questioned by her father, Mr. Hoddy. Claud wants to marry Clarice and Mr. Hoddy wants to make sure that he can take care of her. Clarice warns Claud, though, not to mention his plan to win at the greyhound track (see “Mr. Feasey”), because her father hates greyhounds. She tells Claud just to make something up to please her father. Later that night, Claud starts to feel uncomfortable as Mr. Hoddy grills him about his future business plans. Claud explains that he and his friend Gordon, who runs the filling station, have a number of expansion ideas that they’re working on. He tries to leave it at that, but Mr. Hoddy presses him. Finally Claud announces that they’re planning to run a “maggot factory.” They’ll harvest maggots from rotting meat, raise them, and ship them to grateful fisherman all over the world. Claud’s imagination begins to run away from him as he describes the different varieties of maggots they’ll supply, along with the various details of feeding them and keeping them warm in the winter. Mr. Hoddy, of course, cannot believe what he is hearing. He’s a grocer and the thought of his daughter being supported by an income from maggots is disgusting to him. He can finally take no more and rises suddenly, asking Claud to stop and escorting him out the door. “I think it’s time I was getting along,” Claud said. “Goodnight.”