Category: Media

“Mr. Feasey”

Sections: Information | Plot Description 

Information

Plot Description

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

Spoiler warning! The narrator Gordon and his friend Claud are exceptionally nervous, because they’re about to pull off the biggest scam of their lives. They’re off to the greyhound racing track with their dog Jackie. Claud knows everything there is to know about greyhound racing, and he’s sure they’ve got a winner. Four months before Claud bought a dog that turned out to be a dead ringer for Jackie, but couldn’t run fast at all. They’ve been running the slow dog at the track for the past eight weeks to make sure that he gets moved into the bottom racing grade. Now they plan on running Jackie and placing all their money on him to win. The only obstacle is Mr. Feasey, who runs the track. He has an incredible memory and is able to spot an imposter dog from a mile away. Once they get to the track, they’re horrified when Mr. Feasey tells them that he doesn’t intend to let them run their “champion” anymore. As a last resort, Claud bets Mr. Feasey a pound that Jackie won’t come in last place. This piques Feasey’s interest, and he inspects the dog closely. Satisfied that it’s the same dog, he accepts the bet and allows Jackie into the first race. While Claud gets Jackie ready and bribes the winder (the man who pulls the rabbit that the dogs chase), Gordon goes down the row of bookies placing bets on Jackie. He stands to win over two thousand pounds. The race begins and Jackie wins easily. Mr. Feasey is furious and tells them that they’re banned from the track in the future. Claud takes Jackie back to the van while Gordon goes to collect their winnings. When he gets there, though, the first bookie won’t pay and says he backed another dog. All the details are in the bookmaker’s book, but he won’t let Gordon see it. None of the other bookies will pay out either. “You’re a thief! A lousy little thief!” Gordon yells. “Well, I never,” says the bookie. “Look who’s talking!” Everyone laughs as Gordon sees Claud waiting for him with a suitcase in hand for the money.

“Mr. Botibol”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews 

Information

Plot Description

The main character, Mr. Botibol, has the same name as the protagonist from another Dahl story, “Dip in the Pool.”

Spoiler warning! Mr. Botibol is a very odd-looking and strange man. At the beginning of the story, he goes to lunch with Mr. Clements, the solicitor of a firm looking to buy out his company. Mr. Botibol accepts the bid (which was much too low) and allows Mr. Clements to get him drunk. Once he is tipsy, Mr. Botibol admits that he has never had one bit of success in his life – not even with women. When he arrives home, Botibol switches on the radio and hears a symphony by Beethoven. He gets the sudden impulse to pretend to conduct the symphony. This makes him feel so good that he does it again the next day. He decided to have a real concert hall built in his home with a gramaphone setup so that he can conduct to his heart’s content. His butler is alarmed at these changes (as well as the fact that Botibol is now drinking wine at all his meals), but Botibol tries to explain that he’s not going mad. Botibol has such a great time in his concert hall that he decides to have a grand piano installed, but one that makes no noice. Then he can pretend to play concertos as well as conduct them. While he is buying piano records, a girl strikes up a conversation with him. She loves Chopin, whose records Botibol has just bought. To his own surprise, he invites her to come listen to them. When she arrives the next day, he shows her the concert hall and explains about his secret. He talks her into “performing” with him that night, her on the piano and him conducting. They change into their fancy dress and have a lovely dinner with lots of wine. Then they went to the concert hall and gave the performance of their lives. Mr. Botibol was impressed with her fake piano-playing, and excitedly invites her to play again the next night. Suddenly she realizes that it’s late and she has to work in the morning. Mr. Botibol asks where she works. Reluctantly, she tells him that she is a piano teacher. He is shocked into silence.

Reviews

“The Mildenhall Treasure”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Fun Stuff | Criticism and Analysis

Information

  • Connections:

Plot Description

In a note before the true story, Dahl explains how he read in the newspaper about a “remarkable find of Roman silver.” As true stories of treasure sent “shivers of electricity” through him, he immediately drove to Mildenhall to interview the ploughman involved. The man, Gordon Butcher, consented to tell Dahl what happened and Dahl used that as the basis for his story. After it was published in America, Dahl sent half the money to Butcher.

Spoiler warning! Gordon Butcher woke early on a cold January morning and kissed his wife and children good-bye. He bicycled through the biting wind to the home of Ford, where he left his tractor the day before. His task for the day was to plough up a field belonging to a man named Rolfe, who had hired Ford to do the job. Ford was busy, so he hired Butcher to do it for him. As the field was intended for sugar beets, Butcher had been instructed to plot it very deep, ten or twelve inches. In the afternoon, there was a sudden jolt and the wooden peg that held the plow to the tractor snapped. Butcher climbed down and began to dig away the soil to see what he had struck. He saw a large metal plate. That part of Suffolk was much favored by the Romans, so all the farmers knew of the possibility of Roman treasure being buried on their land. Butcher went to fetch Ford, who knew about this kind of thing. The two men returned to the field and began to dig out the plate. Eventually they pulled thirty-four separate pieces of encrusted ancient metal out of that hole. Ford had an advantage over Butcher, in that he knew the law regarding the finding of silver in Britain. All gold and silver dug from the ground is “Treasure Trove” and automatically property of the Crown. You are legally required to notify the police if you find some, and you will be compensated the market value of the item. But, it is the person who discovers the treasure that gets the reward, not the person who owns the land. As Butcher had been the one hired to do the job, the reward would be his. Ford cunningly managed to suggest to Butcher that the metal was worthless and Butcher allowed him to take it home without a thought. In secret, Ford polished all the pieces and was astonished with their brilliance and beauty. He kept them hidden, though, and four years passed. In 1946, after the War was over, his secret was discovered by a man named Dr. Fawcett, who happened to see one of the spoons that Ford had left sitting on the mantelpiece. The treasure was turned over to the police, who started an investigation. Eventually the finders were declared to be Ford and Butcher, who each received a thousand pounds compensation. Butcher had no idea that “had he been allowed to take the treasure home originally, he would have almost certainly have revealed its existence and would thus have become eligible to receive one hundred per cent of its value, which could have been anything between half a million and a million pounds.”

Fun Stuff

Criticism and Analysis

“Man From the South”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews | Fun Stuff

Information

Plot Description

Spoiler warning! The narrator of this famous story is never named, but I always presumed him to be an English writer (i.e. Dahl’s stand-in). This narrator is lounging by a pool at a Jamaican hotel when he meets a strange little South American man in a white suit and cream Panama hat. They are joined by an American boy and an English girl, and the boy offers them all a cigarette. When he boasts that his lighter always lights, even in such wind, the old man asks if he’s willing to bet on it. The boy is surprised but agrees to bet a dollar. The old man laughs and offers to up the stakes: If the boy can light his lighter ten times in a row, he will give him a brand new Cadillac. If the boy loses, the man will cut off the little finger on his left hand. After some deliberation, the boy agrees to the bet. They all go up to the old man’s room where he prepares for the bet. The boy’s hand is tied to the desk with his pinky sticking out and the man holds a chopping knife at the ready. The boy makes it up to eight successful lights when the door suddenly opens and a woman rushes in yelling in Spanish. She throws the old man down on the bed and apologizes to the others. She says that she should not have left him alone and that he has taken forty-seven fingers where they come from. She eventually managed to win everything from him, but it took her a long time. The last thing the narrator sees as he leaves the room is the woman’s hand… with only one finger and one thumb left on it.

Reviews

Fun Stuff

“Madame Rosette”

Sections: Information | Plot Description

Information

Plot Description

This is one of Dahl’s “flying” stories and deals with three R.A.F. pilots on leave in Cairo, Egypt. It does have a slightly adult theme (Madame Rosette runs a seedy brothel) and younger readers might want to skip this one for now.

Spoiler warning! Two R.A.F. pilots, Stuffy and the Stag, are from the same squadron and have been granted leave in Cairo. They check into a hotel together to bathe and relax. Later they go out shopping and Stuffy is attracted to the beautiful Egyptian girl who sells him sunglasses. The Stag tells him that he’s heard of a woman named Madame Rosette who can arrange a rendezvous with any girl in town. Stuffy calls her up, but later he has a change of heart and convinces the Stag to call it off. The two of them meet up with William, who is from another squadron, and together they all drink beers in an Egyptian bar. On the way home they formulate a crazy plan: they want to rescue all the girls from Madame Rosette. They travel to her brothel and manage to lock her up in her office. Then they escort the fourteen girls there to a nearby bar and buy them drinks. The girls are delighted and write down their phone numbers for the rest of the squadron. At the end of the night, the three pilots escort the girls home.

“Lucky Break”

Sections: Information | Plot Description

Information

Plot Description

This isn’t really much of a story. It’s mostly just Dahl’s advice for becoming a writer and anecdotes about how he fell into the profession. A lot of the school passages seem to be reproduced in Boy.

Spoiler warning! Dahl starts off by giving advice to people who want to become full-time professional writers. He says that you have to have another day job to start, and he gives a list of qualities that you should possess. Then he flashes back to his days at St. Peter’s Prep School, where boys were savagely beaten for any infraction of the rules. He looks over some of his school reports trying to see any hint of his future career, but most of his teachers give him horrible marks in English Composition. His only good memories of those school years were the Saturday afternoons when the teachers would all go off to the pub and a local woman, Mrs. O’Connor, was brought in to watch the boys. Instead of merely babysitting them, though, she taught them about the entire history of English literature. By the time Dahl left for Repton, he was an insatiable reader. Repton was even worse for him, and when he left school he decided to work for Shell and visit exotic lands. He was posted to East Africa, but left in 1939 to join the R.A.F. and fight in World War II. He tells of his training and of the horrific crash that eventually got him invalided home. Then the R.A.F. decided to send him to America as “Assistant Air Attaché”. While there, he was contacted by the famous author C.S. Forester, who wanted to write a story about the crash. Dahl wrote down everything he could remember and sent it to Forester, who responded, “Did you know you were a writer?” The story was published “without any changes” in the Saturday Evening Post. Dahl goes on to talk about The Gremlins and how he was eventually able to meet Franklin Roosevelt. At the end of the story, Dahl talks about the red notebook that he wrotes down all of his plot ideas in. He even shows the reader the blurbs that eventually become Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and “Henry Sugar”. And that, he says, is “how I became a writer.”

“The Last Act”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews

Information

  • First published:
  • Also published:

Plot Description

This is not a nice story. In fact, it’s probably my least favorite Dahl story of all. It should not be read by any children. It’s full of disturbing violence and sexual content, so I’m going to keep this synopsis as vague as possible. Read at your own risk.

Spoiler warning! When Anna Cooper finds out that her beloved husband Ed has been killed in a car accident, it nearly drives her crazy. They were so completely in love that she doesn’t think she can survive without him. Her children manage to convince her to carry on, but soon they’re all moved out and busy with their own lives. Anna misses Ed so much that she decides to kill herself. Before she can do it, though, her friend Liz talks her into helping out at Liz’s adoption society office. Anna discovers that hard work makes her feel needed and that life is once again worth living. After a year and a half of this, she feels that she’s “back in the swim” once again. It’s then that she has to take a business trip to Dallas, Texas to deal with a particularly difficult adoption case. In the hotel, Anna starts to feel frightened and alone. She remembers conversations she had with Ed about Texas. She needs a friend. Suddenly she remembers that Conrad Kreuger lives in Dallas. Conrad was her high school sweetheart and they had planned to get married. Then, of course, Anna had met Ed and left Conrad, and Conrad had married another girl named Araminty. She decides to call him up and, to her surprise, he suggests meeting her at the hotel for a drink. Anna is nervous about this, but feels her psychiatrist back home would be pleased (as he’s always telling her that she needs to “physically replace” Ed). She meets Conrad and is happy to see that he looks as handsome as ever. When she orders a gin martini, he frowns and tells her why gin is not good for women. That’s when Anna discovers that Conrad is now a gynaecologist. She and Conrad talk and she learns that his marriage only lasted two years and that he has almost no contact with his son. She commiserates and tells him the whole story of Ed’s death and her suicidal tendencies. After another discussion of how mentholated cigarettes are bad for women, Conrad lets it slip that he is still bitter about the way Anna jilted him. She is surprised, but he tells her that he was wildly in love with her. Then he suggests that the two of them might… “have a bit of unfinished business.” Anna isn’t sure how she feels about sleeping with another man. After a third martini, though, she’s floating and allows herself to be led back up to her hotel room. She and Conrad kiss for a while, and Anna begins to feel excited about being with him. He continues to make odd medical references, but she shushes him. Conrad is strangely clinical as he removes his clothes and prepares to make love to her. In the middle of the act, though, he feels an obstruction and she begins to feel sick. She wants him to leave but instead he pins her down and begins telling her precisely what is medically wrong with her. She’s nearly hysterical now and struggles to get him off her. Finally she begins to scream and he pushes her to the floor. She staggers to the bathroom crying “Ed!… Ed!… Ed!…” Conrad hears the click of the medicine cabinet being opened. Quickly he dresses himself, wipes the lipstick off his face, and leaves the room.

Reviews

“The Landlady”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Criticism and Analysis | Teacher Ideas

Information

Plot Description

This is one of Dahl’s most famous stories and it’s been dramatized on television at least once. It’s got one of my favorite endings too, simply because it’s so simple and subtle… and scary!

Spoiler warning! Billy Weaver arrives in Bath after taking the train from London. He’s never been to the town before, but he’s due to start a new job there soon and he’s excited at the prospect. He heads toward The Bell and Dragon, which is a pub he’s been told he could spend the night at. On the way though, he notices a sign in the window of a nearby house: “BED AND BREAKFAST.” Billy looks in the window and notices that it’s a charming house, with a roaring fire and a little dog curled up asleep on the rug. On an impulse, he decides to check it out and rings the bell. It is answered immediately a little old lady who invites him to enter and tells him the room rate. As it’s less than half what he was prepared to pay, Billy decides to stay. She tells him that he is the only guest as she takes him to his room. When he goes downstairs to sign the guest-book, he notices that there are only two names in the entire book. The names are over two years old… and what’s more, they strike him as being familiar. As he struggles to remember where he’s heard the names before, the landlady brings him a cup of tea. He seems to remember that one of them was an Eton schoolboy that disappeared, but she assures him that her Mr. Temple was different. Billy sits down before the fire with his tea and notices a strange odor that comes from the woman, something like walnuts or new leather. They begin talking about the former guests, and she notes that both of them were handsome young men just like him. He asks if they left recently, and she replies that both of them are still in the house on the fourth floor. Billy is confused and tries to change the subject by commenting on a parrot in a cage, which he thought was alive but just realized is stuffed. The landlady reveals that she herself stuffed the bird, and as she is a taxidermist she stuffs all her own pets. Billy realizes with a shock that the little dachsund by the fire isn’t alive. He also notices a curious bitter almond taste in his tea, and he asks the landlady again: “Haven’t there been any other guests here except them in the last two or three years?” She gives him a little smile as she replies, “No, my dear. Only you.”

(If you don’t get it, here’s what happens: she poisoned the other two men and stuffed them. Billy has read of their disappearances in the newspaper, and now he’s to be the next victim! The bitter almond taste in his tea is potassium cyanide.)

Criticism and Analysis

Teacher Ideas

“Lamb to the Slaughter”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews | Criticism and Analysis | Teacher Ideas

Information

Plot Description

This is probably the most well-known of all Dahl’s short stories, simply because (in my opinion) it’s so simple. There isn’t a single wasted word in it. It’s gripping, shocking, and yet the story proceeds in such a rational manner that the reader’s suspension of disbelief is never broken. We are with Mary Maloney from the first sentence of the story, and only at the end do we realize that we never really knew her at all.

Spoiler warning! Mary Maloney is a devoted wife and expectant mother. She waits happily each night for the arrival of her husband Patrick, home from work at the police station. On this particular night, though, she can tell something is wrong. In disbelief, she listens as Patrick tells her that he is leaving her for another woman. [Actually Dahl never really says this; the details are left up to the reader’s imagination.] Dazed, she goes into the kitchen to prepare their supper and pulls a large frozen leg of lamb from the deep freeze. Still numb, she carries it into the living room and without warning bashes her husband over the head with it. As she looks at Patrick lying dead on the floor, she slowly begins to come back to her senses. Immediately she realizes the ramifications of what she has done. Not wanting her unborn child to suffer as a result of her crime, she begins planning her alibi. She places the leg of lamb in a pan in the oven and goes down to the corner grocery to get some food for “Patrick’s dinner” (making sure the grocer sees her normal and cheerful state of mind). She returns home and screams when she finds Patrick lying on the floor. She calls the police and informs them that she found her husband lying dead on the floor. Within hours swarms of officers are searching the house and conducting an investigation. Mary’s story of coming home from the grocer and finding him is corroborated as she had planned. While the police are searching fruitlessly into the night for the murder weapon, Mary offers them some lamb that she had prepared for dinner. They are happy to oblige. While they lounge in the kitchen and discuss the case (their mouths “sloppy” with meat), Mary Maloney sits in the living room and giggles softly to herself.

Reviews

Criticism and Analysis

Teacher Ideas

“Katina”

Sections: Information | Plot Description

Information

  • First published:
  • Connections:
    • The setting is the RAF’s Greek campaign in World War II, which Dahl took part in and describes in Going Solo

Plot Description

This is a story about the “last days of RAF fighters during the first Greek campaign” of World War II. Dahl himself fought in these battles and it’s not hard to imagine that a lot of it is autobiographical.

Spoiler warning! The story opens in Paramythia, Greece in early April, 1941. Three off-duty RAF pilots go to the village to help in the aftermath of a German bombing. There they find a little Greek girl sitting silently and bleeding from a cut on her forehead. They take her back to their landing field to have the company doctor help her. Once she’s better, they find out that her name is Katina and that her family were killed in the village. During a German raid on the aerodrome, the men hide in the trenches while Katina stands in the field yelling at the enemy bombers. That night they officially add her name to the list of squadron members. She travels with them as the squadron keeps moving, each time losing more planes as the situation becomes more desperate. Eventually they end up in a village called Megara, forced to use a homemade landing strip and hide their planes in the forests. The pilots are ordered to take off to protect an important shipping move, but the Germans are ready. Before the first plane can even leave the ground it is shot down. Everyone runs to hide in the trenches as the Messerschmitts buzz past and destroy the parked aircraft. The narrator peeps out and sees Katina running into the middle of the field, shaking her fists at the Germans. A Messerschmitt shoots her and she falls to the ground. The men all run to her but it is too late; she’s dead. The narrator stands and stares at the flaming planes around him. “…I saw beyond it not a tangled mass of smoking wreckage, but the flames of a hotter and intenser fire which now burned and smouldered in the hearts of the people of Greece.”