Roald Dahl Reading Journal

Roald Dahl is known to be the master of dark humor, often tugging on the darker side of human nature and exploring the parts of us that we don't necessarily find suitable for public display. Whether it be the sexual perversions of Georgy Porgy's protagonist or the venomous lashing-out of Poison, Dahl finds ways to melt our shadow selves into his stories and display them in the spotlight to make us cringe, but also laugh.

An overarching theme of Dahl's stories is obfuscation--people deliberately hide parts of themselves that are later revealed in usually shocking manners. In Lamb to the Slaughter, we find out at the end that Mary Maloney isn't the sad, demure housewife that we rooted for during the entire story; she may have had other, darker things on her mind when she swung the heavy leg of lamb at her husband, as witnessed by her maniacal giggling at the end of the story. The same applies to the mild-mannered landlady that happens to have a thing for human taxidermy in The Landlady. One would never have guessed her more sinister intentions, yet here we are, as the camera slowly pans away from Billy, her newest victim, wondering what would happen to him and how he could escape--if he could manage to escape her trap. The best example of this obfuscation, however, appears in none other than The Way Up to Heaven.

Poor Mrs. Foster is on the receiving end of the marital blows in her mostly abusive relationship with her husband--he doesn't beat her literally, of course, but he has her wrapped around his finger in a rather cruel fashion. He plays with her nerves, and knowing that she has a terrible phobia of missing the train/plane/boat/what have you, deliberately makes her as tardy as she possibly could, thus wreaking havoc on her poor nerves every time. But Mrs. Foster is too kindly, too meek, to actually fight back against her husband and to put a definitive end to his antics. The reader feels very bad for her, as we see her fretting and sobbing desperately in the car as she waits for her husband to drop her off at the station. Other than just her victimized state, however, we see other parts of her character that make us feel at home with her: she is fond of her daughter, and also terribly fond of her grandchildren, making us think of her as the kind, gentle grandmother that we all know and love. Furthermore, her slightly neurotic state of being also reminds us of the stereotypical "gentle old lady" that makes us feel even more inclined to root for her. And this persona continues, until she finds out that her husband has been deliberately making her nervous all this time. There comes a shift in the narrative.

At first we don't notice her change in demeanor other than the fact that she suddenly has become more bold, stating that she has no time to wait for her husband. No real transformation has seemed to occur, seeing that she still writes nice chatty letters to her husband while she is abroad, and seeing how she treats her grandchildren with the typical love and kindness that we have come to expect of people like her. Yet there is an underlying uneasiness in the narrative: what could have made her so suddenly bold, bold enough to leave her husband behind? Was it simply because she found out Mr. Foster's ruse? Or was it the mysterious noise that she heard in the house, the noise that may have been more than just a sound? We don't find out until we read (or, in my case, re-read, because it wasn't very clear to me at first) the last scene. Then everything falls into place, and Mrs. Foster's actions take on a bone-chilling light. Mr. Foster had become stuck in the elevator, and his wife has left him there to die--she has finally freed herself from his abusive ways, but has done so in a very passive-aggressive, fatal way, and not in a way that we, the readers, might necessarily feel comfortable with. And how could we explain the fact that she continued to write her husband letters as if he were still alive, when she was the one who killed him? We must conclude that we never really knew Mrs. Foster's hidden depths at all; we didn't know what cruelty she herself was capable of. Dahl explores, rather subtly, the idea that the oppressed do not dream of equality, but rather retaliation, and to bully in turn the ones who have bullied them. It is not in any way a comfortable idea for any of us, but it is certainly undeniable, and a factor of human nature that we may have forgotten in our daily lives. Dahl's stories are here to remind us.

DG Journal Three

At first glance, Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" may appear a provocative and rather shocking narrative of the dangers of vanity and a warning against moral corruption. After all, when one first reads the book, the focus seems to be on Dorian's descent into depravity and the deconstruction of his boyish nature. From the first "sin" he commits (killing Sybil Vane indirectly by rejecting her cruelly), we see that the beautiful portrait of his face distorts to match his similarly distorting soul. This could be interpreted as a warning that drives home the point that Dorian's growing moral depravity is ugly, in every sense of the word. However, if we take into consideration Wilde's personal views that he also expressed in his preface, the perspective shifts into something considerably more difficult to define. Not only did he state that "the artist has no ethical considerations", but he also toys with this idea throughout the book--throughout the novel, beauty still reigns supreme as one of the ultimate values, as witnessed by Dorian's stellar social success, and it isn't James Vane who brings Dorian to his fate; it's Dorian himself, which is very morally ambiguous. Had Wilde intended his story to be one with a moral, he would have judged Dorian at the hands of someone who he had wronged, but instead opts to make Dorian atone for his sins by physically destroying his portrait; he becomes his own judge, and Dorian does not even repent thoroughly for his crimes to begin with. His motivation to destroy his portrait stems more from a desire to make the ugliness go away, rather than to cleanse his own soul of his sins. So which value reigns supreme in Wilde's novel? It is perhaps more accurate to assume that for Wilde, "Dorian Gray" was more of a study in aesthetics and the relationship of beauty and morals rather than a simple parable to scare his readers. In this sense, it is rather inappropriate to try to judge "Dorian Gray" solely in terms of morality.

Journal Two

The first lamb is led to the slaughter, although we now know that the real sacrifice of this novel is going to be Dorian, not Sybil. Because by trampling upon her in a show of utter cruelty, Dorian shows us with his actions that he is the doomed one in the novel--the one who will fall into sin.

That said, it's still quite murky as to whether the novel wants to romanticize Dorian's actions. The entire matter is wrapped up in an aura of theatrical tragedy, much like the plays Sybil acted in; then again, the whole matter is still quite ugly. I'm not fooled by Dorian's passionate letter of repentance; it's clear that the visible manifestation of his own evils bothered him more than Sybil's distress, the marring of his portrait more than the poor girl's feelings. Even Lord Henry is shaken at first--of course, he later comes to enjoy the boy's fluctuations in emotions, being the twisted man that he is. The whole misadventure with Sybil also reflects Dorian's own family history in many ways, seeing that his mother also perished in a fit of love-induced passion. It didn't end well for her, so the reader begins to suspect that Dorian won't meet a happy ending either, by reading the foreshadowing.

Sybil's brother James serves as a sort of foil to Dorian; he's the most interesting character for me. If things are left as they are, he could very well act as Dorian's judge and executioner, thereby answering my previous questions about how much of Wilde's views are merged into the novel. Will Dorian meet a proper punishment at the hands of the brother of she who he wronged?  Or will he somehow escape rightful judgement? (I already know the answer to this question, however, which will bring me to a rather disheartening conclusion--but that is another topic for another day.) If he were to meet his death at the hands of Vane, then it would be reasonable to conclude that Wilde still wanted to give the fairest of endings to our murky protagonist. A failure to do so would mean that Wilde is imposing his own moral code on the novel, something that transcends our typical view of "punishing the sinner", and would make more of a tragic hero of Dorian. Exactly what our smirking, smug Lord Henry would have thought of, and in sync with the views expressed in the prologue: "No art is ever morbid. The artist can express everything."

I expressed my distress over Wilde's apparent disregard for morals in my previous journal entry, but the more I consider his life, the more it becomes understandable for me. He was a bi/homosexual in an era where anything other than heterosexuality was considered unspeakable taboo; he was a brilliant artist in a sea of mundane people; he was so different from the rest of his contemporaries that he probably did not find a good reason to bind himself to the same moral codes as they. And Lord Henry, the epitome of unconventionality, must be his avatar--perhaps not everything he says might reflect his views, and some things may be exaggerated for the sake of character establishment and symbolism, but Henry is in fact the closest we have to Wilde himself.

Journal One (warning, unintentionally pompous language. I'm sorry about that.)

My copy of Dorian Gray so graciously tells me, from the very beginning, that it is "unlikely that the 'rich odour', 'heavy scent' and 'delicate perfume' of the [rose, lilac and thorn] would have 'mingled together on the summer wind'". Huh. So much for the flowery atmosphere. Thus the first cracks start to appear in this delicate oeuvre, just as the words of Lord Henry begin to pave the first wrinkles of worry in Dorian's delicate cheek (not that those wrinkles would mar, in any way, his perfect face). Aestheticism is a big theme in The Portrait of Dorian Gray, dished out in heavy doses as it is in this first chapter: from the drawn-out description of the studio, to the presence of a dashing Adonis, the first chapter reminds one of a beautiful porcelain cup, almost fragile in its perfectness. But sometimes it isn't quite clear just how much of it is sincere and how much of it is deliberately set up to be smashed. 

Dorian begins as the epitome of boyhood, pure and untouched by life, until Lord Henry sashays into his life with his beautiful voice and tempting words. He praises Dorian for his beauty, and reminds him of a fact that has never actually occurred to the boy before: someday, his beauty will fade away, and he will no longer be charming. Life will no longer hand things to him, and he will not be loved. The importance of this own beauty comes crashing into Dorian's mind, and, seized by anxiety, he makes a feverish wish that his portrait take the burden of his age, so that his own face will never grow old. Basil Hallward, who obviously loves Dorian (whether it is a platonic, artistic love or a homosexual interest, it isn't clear), is pained by this turn of events, as he loved Dorian for his boyish innocence. Henry, on the other hand, is fascinated, and continues to plant seeds of vanity in the youth's mind. And it is on Henry that I will turn my focus.

How much of what he says directly reflects Wilde's own views? How much of it is later going to be contradicted? Wilde's somewhat defensive preface to Dorian Gray drips of a love for the aesthetic, as he said: "Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty." Such an importance he places on beauty! Is it so important as to erase the importance of morals ("No artist has ethical sympathies")? The entire novel of Dorian Gray, as we know, is the story of a clash between beauty and morals, between romance and reason--which side is Wilde on? Is Henry his spokesman, or his devil's advocate? Are Henry's words setting up the principal value of his novel, or is it creating a backdrop that will then be broken down? Surely he can't be arguing that depravity is excusable in the face of beauty--or is he?

Is Dorian's story a beautiful tragedy, or a sordid comedy? Is it the exquisitely crafted story of an exquisitely beautiful man who falls into the hands of the Devil and sells his soul? Or is it the story of one man who stumbles into squalor as he gives his all to keep his looks? Yes, the cup is heavily cracked, and what may look like an intricate pattern could turn out to be a stain. That is what I am set out to see in this book.