The Grisly Giants Beneath the Earth

I recently read Roald Dahl's The BFG.  I was surprised by how lighthearted the tale was in comparison to other popular Dahl works.

The giants, though flesh eating and barbarically hideous, were not really enough to offer much fright to my imagination. Not even the more childish bits of my mind were spooked by the idea. The image of large hands groping in through my bedroom window and stuffing me head first into a large gaping mouth was not enough to writhe the dark parts of my fancy. 

 

I lay in bed the night I first began reading the book and I watched the branches of the tree outside my window as they bobbed closer and further, closer and further, and I thought to myself that, in the dark, it looked very much like a grapnel hand groping in the night, waiting for me to look away so it could break its mundane pattern and reach out to grab me.

 

I thought the hand was friendly enough though, and, if I'd have to imagine the giant at the other end of it, I'd say it was more than likely the fingers of the Big Friendly Giant I was looking at. 

The snow rested on its knuckles and wrists as if it had been standing there a good long while, waving at me to notice it so it would have no choice but to take me away and be my friend. 

It made the hand look old, pale, and wrinkled, and somehow lonely. 

 

It was enough to tickle my fancy, I admit, but I slept fine that night. I did not dream of giants and large hungry hands. I had no nightmares about a short lived life ended with one final speculation as one slides helplessly down a giant's dark throat. 

But then Roald Dahl did something else, something strange and I dare say frightening. He stuffed the giants beneath the earth, not as a tool of horror, but as a way to get rid of them. 

Now that, I thought, that was a way to scare me, to put my imagination out in the dark and let it go wild imagining the outcomes of such a story. 

As I fell asleep that second night having completed the book and thus having left those nine hungry giants in their deep dug pit, I could not help but think about how gloriously frightful that image was. 

 

I don't know why the giants once imprisoned were so much more frightful to me than when they lurked free in the streets, leaning on rooftops and looking into windows for children to devour. Maybe deep dark pits are simply easier to imagine than humongous humanoid hands grabbing me. 

Maybe everyone that was once a child knows the fear of deep dark spaces, basements and closets and such, and abysmal nightmares about falling into such pitch black holes.

I was reminded of a painting by Francisco Goya entitled Saturn Devouring His Son, a painting that would have been enough to frighten me as a child. 

That image is exactly what I imagined it would look like, I thought to myself, picturing an ignorant soul going on a walk late at night with a flash light only to come across a deep pit, too dark to see down. 

Some horrid sound would come out of it, like someone ravenously enjoying their dinner, and they, not knowing any better, would shine their beam of light into the pit. 

Look up the painting and maybe you will understand the deep bedded terror of this image, if you do not already.

Why did Dahl think that putting the giants beneath the earth would solve the problem, I wonder? 

Story-wise it does, at least. It actually gets rid of them quite neatly, with very little trouble along the way as the nine beastly creatures are deposited into their prison. 

He puts the giants out of sight and out of mind, or at least, he pretends to. 

 

Really though, Dahl embeds them effortlessly into the child's mind. Likely they will not mind them there, not until they ask the question of what happens after. 

Do the giants ever get out? What if there is an earth quake? Or, worse, what if someone falls in?

Thus, narratively Dahl creates a horror. Few things are more frightful than stories that let us do the imagining. Books can be sealed up once finished. But hooks like these, they linger in one's head, reshaping into frightful scenarios.

 

I wonder if Dahl intended it? Was a deep pit really the best thing he could think of when trying to tuck the giants away? Or did he mean for us to imagine the echoes of their hungry howls on quiet windless nights?

I wouldn't put it past him. 

 

How far is this pit from civilization? The book doesn't tell us. But it must be close enough, surely. After all, we are told about the so called single disaster to come out of it: the time three silly drunk men fell in and all that was hence heard of them was the crunching of their bones and the giants below as they howled in delight. 

I gulp to think that there are nine hungry giants in that pit and only three silly men to feed them. 

I wonder if Dahl considered that too. It would not surprise me.

The story tells us that a sign is put up after that, a sign reading "it is forbidden to feed the giants"; a fine way to make light of the situation; enough to make any child laugh at the idea of flesh eating giants tucked away beneath the earth, right?

Until you think twice about it, then it makes one shiver. 

I myself imagine that gaping black pit is itself like an open mouth leading directly to the colossal stomach of the hollowed out earth. I imagine at times you can hear nine enormous stomachs gurgle and growl and the giants as they wail out in horrid sounds of despair. 

It is no easier to think that the pit closed over eventually. In fact, it is almost worse. Crammed into their tightly collapsed holes, the giants would become utterly deformed; crooked from bowing; sightless from the lasting dark; left only with their tactual hands, always fingering and groping to see what's around them. The giants would mutter into the silence as the walls of the earth near in on them. Every so often the earth would tremor above as they shift, sleeping in its bowels. 

Soon, the people would forget there ever was such a thing as giants. 

And so, the grisly giants would sit, hunched forever beneath the earth, ingesting dirt and sucking the worms and centipedes out of the soil; always there, but never any less hungry. 

 

The Tail of Despereaux (And Why He Had to Lose It)

A Look at the Heroic Critters in Literature, Who (more often than not) Lose Their Tails

 

Ever since I wrote my post Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail a few months ago, another heroic critter has been coming in and out of mind. 

It occurred to me shortly after I shared the post here that Fantastic Mr. Fox wasn't the only fictional critter I knew of who had lost his tail. Despereaux, the heroic mouse in Kate Dicamillo's The Tale of Despereaux also loses his tail most gruesomely when Miggory Sow chops it off with a cleaver, so sparing his life by a hair, and yet, taking his tail nonetheless. 

 

Reepicheep in C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian also loses his tail in a battle against the Telmarines.

 

I thought that surely there must be a mutual string here in these stories. I might not have noticed it otherwise were it not for the trail left by a violently lost tail.

 

Throughout the weeks that followed my first touch on this topic in June, I thought from time to time about Despereaux, wondering occasionally if I could figure out what this symbolism meant, if anything.

Yet I was uncertain whether there was enough in this differential between the loss of tail. It was evident to me that these two stories (Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Tale of Despereaux) did not otherwise have much in common; one being rather grotesque, while the other, though somewhat violent at times, reads much like fairy tale. 

Then, less than a week after I started to ponder Despereaux and his poor cleaved tail, a little chipmunk began to help himself to the food in my bird feeder just outside my living room window. 

Ironically, the little bandit had lost his tail. 

I decided then that it was time to revisit The Tale of Despereuax in an attempt to unravel this mystery. This post is the result of what I have discovered in my lengthy investigation.

We learn from the mouse Reepicheep that the loss of a tail is a heavy burden to bear for any small critter; and so, naturally, Reepicheep was not forgotten in my thoughts as I considered this conundrum. 

In C.S. Lewis's Prince Caspian, Reepicheep also loses his tail. Thereafter his mice followers decide to chop off their own tails, saying that it would be better to go without it than to bear the shame of wearing an honour denied to their chief.

 

Fortunatetly, the world Reepicheep lives in is one of healing and redemption, and by the power of Aslan his tail is quickly restored and thus no more tails are chopped off.  

Because of this, I will not be talking much about the wonder that is Reepicheep the mouse and his blessed tail, only say that the reaction of his people shows that the loss of a tail is not to be taken too lightly.

Indeed, I myself would  have been unsettled by such a sight as a group of mice slicing off their own tails with the sharp end of a blade. Surely, Narnia would have to be a more savage place than I remember if that is how the story had gone and we were left to look at the bloodied rumps of these pure creatures. 

 

 

 

As I mentioned in my last post regarding this subject, I find Mr. Fox's own bloodied stump of a tail unsettling, for it represents to me the severity of death in an animal's world and just how near it lives to an animal's rump. A slip down a hole may not be enough to give Death the slip. But if, like Mr. Fox, the critter is lucky, it may miss them by a tail's length. 

 

Despereaux himself is spared from the meat cleaver, and, like Mr. Fox, he must live with this reminder for the rest of his life. Death nearly got him then. But it was not luck that spared him. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a lucky creature, this we cannot deny, for every tight spot he ever gets into he evades with a combination of luck and his own personal cunning. 

Despereaux is not cunning, and indeed, he is often unlucky. 

So, what spared him then?

In the weeks that followed, Despereaux popped often into my mind trailed by this simple question. But the more I thought about these tailless creatures and the argument I had made for Mr. Fox's stump the less it seemed to apply to Despereaux. While it is true that he lives in an often harsh world, death does not dwell nearly so close in Despereaux's castle. Indeed, with an air of destiny, Despereaux evades death the moment he is born, for none of the other mice in his litter survive. He is born along with dead brothers and dead sisters, and though his father claims that he cannot possibly live, the narrator immediately assures us that he does, for this is, after all, his story. 

Thus, Despereaux survives, defying death with his birth alone. One might say it was his destiny that pulled him through. 

 

There is no destiny for Mr. Fox. Indeed, the word is not once uttered. One must remember that the events of the story itself are brought about by the consequences of Mr. Fox's own actions. They are the direct result of his animalistic instincts, to thieve, to eat, to snap chicken necks and crunch on bird bones. 

 

Despereaux, however, is never good at following his mouse instincts. Anyone assigned the task of teaching Despereaux the ways of being a mouse quickly gives up, and so Despereaux is left alone, free to spend his time as he wishes. 

Mostly, Despereaux wishes to daydream.

This simple activity in itself may not seem like a big deal, until one considers that Despereaux is doing things that are beyond even the Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all, despite his fantasticality, Mr. Fox's desires remain largly animalistic. He desires to eat good food, to protect his mate and his offspring, to have good game, and to be tricksy. 

Any fox we might otherwise observe will surely share in these desires: to hunt, to live, to expand the size of his den and further his own line.

 

Despereaux though, as we already discussed, is not just any mouse. He desires to transcend his own mousehood. He has little desire for food. When his sister tells him to eat the crispy pages of a book, Despereaux is perplexed. He would rather read it. While his siblings hunt for crumbs, Despereaux watches the light and he listens to the far off sound of music.

The music, we are told, is enough to make him forget the few mouse instincts he possesses, and so, Despereaux is led by his fate away from his siblings and right to the foot of the human king. 

 

We can all imagine what would happen to Mr. Fox had he forgotten his foxness so: he'd have been shot. His fur would likely have been turned into a hat, and his tail would have prematurely acted as a trophy. 

Despereaux's world is kinder. Indeed, I will tell you that the story ends with Despereaux sharing a table with the King and his daughter, an altogether whimsical image that can only be the stuff of fairytales.

 

Thus, the differential between the two worlds becomes once again evident. The world Dicamillo creates in this narrative is altogether lighter and more dreamy than that of any Roald Dahl book I've ever read, for in this world the gap between humanity and animality can be crossed with compassion and a willingness to change. 

These things are not available to the heroic creatures I mentioned in my last post. For Mr. Fox, for Hazel and Fiver, and for Peter Rabbit there is no crossing this gorge, for death stands in that valley. It is a law not to be breached; a disparity left agape with the curcuial disability of a limited language and an ultimate failure to see the life and possibility in the other. Be it the shortcoming of the beast or the man, these worlds are split apart, and in life they cannot be united. 

 

 

When I said that death does not live close in Despereaux's castle, I meant that death is by no means his next door neighbor. Even so, we find out very quickly exactly where death lives: in its most threatening form it lives in the dungeon, down a long winding staircase and many floors beneath Despereaux's own little feet. Yet, before we even know why, we are told that Despereaux is destined to go there. 

Indeed, the narrator herself tells us that it is fate that sends him there. With the sound of drumming and the smell of celery breath, bound to by a red thread, Despereaux is sent forth to meet death again. 

No mouse, we are told, has ever come back from the dungeons.

 

Despereaux does come back. He goes down the dark winding stair down which mice are sent to die, and he comes back up them again. 

In fact, he does so quite easily. He does not even do so himself. He is carried up on a tray, borne up by a girl named Miggery Sow, who, as I've already told you, will be the one to chop off his tail.

 

It is notable that the first thing Despereaux does when he comes to in the dungeon is to reach for his tail. Throughout the story so far, he has reached for tails often, sometimes his own, sometimes those of others, such as those of his older siblings. But there, with no other tail to cling to, Despereaux searches for his own and is frightened by how long it takes him to find it in the pitch black darkness. 

There in the black, with death circling around him, nearing him with sound of rat claws and long rat tails slithering, his own tail is the only comfort he can cling to.

 

It is also there that Despereaux utters the phrase "I need to live... I can't die," into the ear of the one who will save him.

It is also notable that Despereaux loses his tail the moment he leaves the dungeons. Just as he is recalled to the light and the life that it holds, Despereaux is greeted by a blinding flash as the cleaver comes down. 

So, Despereaux loses his tail. What do you think saved him?

If you want the techincal answer, Migger Sow did. She saved him when she saw more than just a filthy mouse, and so, as cook shouted the implacable words "kill him even if he's already dead", Miggory Sow missed him by a hair, and so Despereaux scurried away; he scurried like an actual professional mouse, the story tells us; for in this moment he is, after all, just an animal who has lost his tail and is running for his life. 

If you want the fairy tale answer, Despereaux's destiny saved him too. For Despereaux, we are told, is destined to save the princess, and thus, to eat soup at the table of the King.

 

That leaves us with one final question. Why did Despereaux have to lose his tail?

 

We are told by the people of Reepicheep that to wear a tail is an honour. 

Honour is a word often uttered by Despereaux throughout the course of his story. It is spoken by him to the princess when he first gives his heart to her. ("I honor you," he whispered with his paw on his heart.)

It is whispered by him in the face of danger and death when the princess is nowhere near, for it makes him feel braver to think of honouring her. 

 

So, one might say, Despereaux does honour her. He loses his tail for her, and so he honours her in the greatest way a little mouse can. Maybe even more.

 

I have, however, come to think that it is not quite that simple. After all, what does Despereaux's and Reepicheep's honour have to do with Mr. Fox's consequential world? The only mutual thread between the bullet, the cleaver, and the heat of battle is that they all have death in them. Yet, none of these critters ultimately dies within their story.

If we are to accept that the losing of a tail is a symbol for death, then we can be certain that these critters have all faced it.

So, why did they have to lose their tails at all?

Probably because only animals have tails; and because Despereaux, in order to transcend his animalness, had to lose a little. In order to unite animality with humanity, he had to give something up. 

 

As for Mr. Fox, he will never cross the breach between animality and humanity in this life. These two worlds cannot be united while they are living. 

Despereaux himself dies by all accounts but actuality: he is sent to the pit of no return, and comes back caked in blood and flour, looking altogether like a ghost. 

 

His story ends with a heavenly image as the author asks us to imagine a mouse and a rat at the table of a king, eating soup and being joyous. It is indeed the stuff of fairy tales. But by the light of this image, I see a heavenly twinge. 

 

 

 

In Despereaux's world death looks like a dark dungeon. Fortunately, it does not look so in mine. To me it looks a bit like the image Dicamillo leaves us with: of animal and humankind eating together at a table. To me, there is light even on the other side of death.

So, as I draw this mystery to a close at last, Reepicheep comes once again into my mind. I am not, however, thinking about his tail. 

I am thinking that Reepicheep is the only critter among all those I've mentioned that doesn't die, who will never die; not by the cleaver, or by the hunter, not in battle, not even by time.

I am thinking about Reepicheep in his little boat, sailing over the sweet waves into Aslan's country, there to depart from death forever. 

I cannot think of another place in literature where man and animal can live and dwell so well together, walk together, fight together, even die together, and then spend eternity together after all else is done.

 

"The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."  (Isiah 11:6-9)

First, They Must Lose Their Parents

Why Kids Love Stories that Make Them Spook and Squirm

 

 Sabrina sees her parents in the mirror: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

 

I have often noticed that there is an uncanny pattern to be traced throughout the course of children's literature: the most popular children's tales are the dark ones. 

  

Even if they do frighten them, it really does seem that children like to read them. There is something about spooky stories that fascinates them. Stories like these are far darker than the fairy tale versions we'd like to imagine. Some adults even go so far as to forbid their children from reading them. Whether or not there is any real danger to stories about monsters and evil is yet to be proven. What is revealed here instead is that adults seem to fear these literary monstrosities more than their children. Evidently, these are not the books they'd have their child read for fear of what lies inside of them. Doubtlessly, in their mind children's books should be far lighter and fluffier than they are in reality. One might say this is a fairy tale version of the truth.

 

The irony in all this is, of course, that fairy tales have always been dark. Some of us have just forgotten.

 

 The Wolf Shows its Face: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

This phenomenon goes back to the wildly popular fairy tales once collected by the Brothers Grimm. Yet modern children's literature continues to follow in these dark footsteps. A Series of Unfortunate Events will not stop reminding us that it is a sinister and unhappy tale; Roald Dahl, the most popular children's author of all time, is full of the macabre and the disconcerting. But it doesn't end there. Stories like Neil Gaiman's Coraline are horrific enough to alarm adults. Gaiman himself claimed that it is the "strangest thing" he had ever written. He wrote that,

"It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares."

 

An adult may puzzle over this. Indeed, a strange change comes over the mind of the practical adult when they find out that most children prefer tales about monsters and evil as opposed to books containing more comfortable and childlike ideas. I myself read these dark tales as a child, and I read them still, for they fascinate me to no end. Though the things that interest me about them now are not the things I liked about them as a child. Indeed, I never realized them then. I loved them because they were about adventure, because they thrilled me, and sometimes made me squirm. 

 

 

 The Jabberwocky: The Problem Child.

 

I believe it was in part these books that inspired in me a desire to free myself of my parents. It seems like a harsh or even humorous thing to say. Yet just how far a child dares go when they run away from home varies (it usually is a matter of blocks, but some are bolder than others). The steps halt and the tears come when a child runs to the extent of their desire to be parent-less and realizes that the big, frightful and altogether unfamiliar world is somewhere outside their door.

But, of course, this never happens to the children in the stories. Red Riding Hood does not turn around when she runs into the wolf, and despite what the rational adult would have her do, none can deny that at least Red Riding Hoods exertion into the deep dark woods and away from her mother made for a good story.

 

 The Deep Dark Wood: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

  Little Red Riding Hood meets the Wolf: Little Red Riding Hood.

 

It remains a rather obvious truth that even children's tales without monsters are usually about orphans, and, if they are not orphans, the protagonist's parents have been lost somehow. This tradition began with our first tales about children; classics like David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Huckleberry Finn all feature children that are somehow parent-less, whether their parents are deceased or simply too incompetent to provide care. 

But, though the villain's face may change from one tale to another, as does the perpetrator that took their parents away, when it comes to children's stories, the adventure almost always begins the same way: First, the child must lose their parents, then the journey begins. 

 

 

Orphans: The Fairy Tale Detectives.

Alone in the World: The Wide Window.

 

By removing the children's guardian, they are cut loose into the world, sent adrift into trial and adversary, sometimes even into horror, all of which they will have to deal with on their own. Thus, Alice's mother does not seek her in the Looking Glass, Red Riding Hood goes into the woods alone, Coraline's parents do not crawl through the little door after her. 

Of course, no child would adamantly wish this fate upon themselves (I hope). Nevertheless, orphan-hood is romanticized, not so much because it is desired, but because it makes for a good story. If the child is parent-less, they must make their own way, find their own place. If there are monsters under their bed, there are no parents to check for them; they must take a peak themselves. If a scoundrel is after their fortune, they must outsmart him alone. If their house is being invaded by monsters, they must fight them off without adult aid. 

Thus, adventure becomes inevitable. 

Herein lies, I believe, the true appeal to the mind of a child. It lies between the motherless child and the monster, for it is here that the book reveals in full the idea that resonates so with the young mind that reads it: it reveals that the child can be capable, courageous, even heroic.

Inevitably, it was in books like these that I myself met many villains and faced many monsters. Yet, though I admit I was not always a particularly brave child, they never frightened me. Indeed, the only time these books kept me up at night was when I was busy reading them. 

Thinking back now, the only time the dark of my childhood bedroom ever scared me was when the book lay on my nightstand, still unfinished. It was then that the dark felt like the unknown pages of a still unread book, a book left stagnant amidst trial, still without an ending. It was questions like will May Bird ever make it back to the world of the living that kept me awake at night. 

 The Dark Unknown Pond: May Bird and the Ever After.

 

Ironically, my parents didn't let me finish that book, and I regret it still. I wonder sometimes how that book ends, for I never finished it. My parents forbidding was more frightening than the book itself, for it had not yet occurred to me that the ideas within a book could be dangerous, and the unknown sources of that danger scared me more than any book ever could.

At the end of the day, the truth is that any fear I might have felt was conquered when the children I was reading about conquered their monsters, be it the Other Mother, or the boogeyman.

 The Other Mother's Face: Coraline.

 

Much could be said about how adults and children experience horror differently. Even more could be written about how adults and children experience books differently. (I myself have written a great deal on this topic here on this blog.)

Yet perhaps the most fundamental question is this: What makes these creepy children's books so popular with kids? Why do kiddies like to squirm?

 

I believe, at its core, this question has a simple explanation.

 

Kids like books that are frightful because the world to them is frightful. Not only this, books like A Series of Unfortunate Events and Coraline put its child characters in the face of the frightful and yet they still feature them as heroes. Even when misfortune strikes or the monsters come knocking, these books suggest that the children stand a fighting chance. 

 

 Snatched: The Inside Story.

I have seen the following quotation attributed to many writers. But I know Gaiman was at least paraphrasing one of them (probably Chesterton) when he wrote that:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

 

The same is true for monsters, for Other-Mothers, and for sinister and selfish adults.

Every child will at one point face the real adversaries and true horrors around them (hopefully not to the same dramatic extent as these fictional children). 

But be it Gaiman, Chesterton, or Lewis to whom we attribute this idea, at one point or another, they all may have spoken truly when they said that there is a fundamental truth to fairy tales; not just because they teach that monsters (or dragons) can be beaten, but because they teach that the world is dark and full of evil. Brace yourself child, there are monsters out there, these tales say.

 

 The Tyrannical Editor: The Inside Story.

Yet, at the end of the day, that is not why I believe children read them. As much as monsters fascinate and entice the minds of children, the idea that truly captures their imagination is the image these books give them of themselves. This is their most important message: that, though the world is evil, they don't have to be. Thus, our child-heroes face cruelty and trial with courage, kindness, and a good heart.

As to why this scares the adult mind more than the child's... Well, the simple answer is this: The world is big and frightful, and there are monsters in it.

But perhaps it takes a child's imagination to believe and know that they could have what it takes to conquer it, or, at the least, not to let it conquer them.

      Into the Unknown World: The Bad Beginning.

If the world has you feeling anxious or even a bit frightened, I dare you to read a children's book. Revisit Narnia or Wonderland, crawl through the little door, run from the man with a uni-brow, unravel the conspiracy of the Scarlet Hand, rescue your kidnapped parents. If you're like me and you've read these books before, you already know what you'll find there. The unknown can no longer frighten you. 

Indeed, you will find that these books have something new to tell you, something that you probably never fully realized when you were a child: Nothing inspires bravery in such a fundamentally simple way as a book written for children.

As C.S. Lewis said,

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” 

~C.S. Lewis

Willy Wonka's Whammy

How Wonka's Wonka-Vite Exposed Granny's Greed

"Mr. Wonka shook his head sadly and passed a hand over his eyes. Had you been standing very close to him you would have heard him murmuring softly under his breath, 'Oh, deary deary me, here we go again...'" ~Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

It is no great secret that Charlie Bucket was the most well behaved of the group of otherwise snotty children that visited Willy Wonka's marvelous Chocolate Factory. Compared to the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the pretentious Violet Beauregarde, conceited Veruca Salt, and finally, Mike Teavee the television fiend, Charlie Bucket is an angel. The second the children and their chaperones step into the factory and the great doors close behind them, the reader is already certain that Charlie will come out on top.

But, as the other four children fall one by one into the horrid temptation of their greed, we realize that not all of them will come out entirely as they were. Whether the fate of these children horrifies, perplexes, or disturbs you, I very much doubt that their behavior did not, at the very least, exhaust you. For what exhausting children they are; how ill-behaved, how spoiled, and how awfully greedy.

Augustus Gloop, for example, is compared to a pig. When we are first introduced to him he is described to have

"great flabby folds of fat bulg(ing) out from every part of his body"

and a face like

"a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world" 

One might say that these horrid children got what they had coming for them, that their punishment serves them right. But they are only children, after all. Yet the book assures us that the alarming experiences they undergo while in the factory do not change them for the better. 

The Oompa Loompa's claim that

"however long (the) pig (aka Augustus Gloop) might live,

we're positive he'd never give

even the smallest bit of fun or happiness to anyone". 

A truly horrifying thing to say about a child. But even so, one is inclined to believe them. For Augustus Gloop, like the others, is, to put it shortly, an obnoxious child with little to redeem him beyond his youngness. If anything can, his inexperience may excuse his behavior.

One cannot say the same for the adults.

Upon reading the second tale of Charlie Bucket's adventures with the extraordinary Willy Wonka, I was surprised to be confronted with similar behavior, though this time its perpetrators were not four foolish children, but four foolish adults.

While Roald Dahl's stories feature many charming children much like Charlie, his adult characters are not nearly so pleasant. In fact, many are horrid, evil, and nefarious.

None of these things can be said about the kindhearted parents of Charlie Bucket, and indeed, there hardly ever was a sweeter set of grandparents than Charlie's. Till Grandma Georgina became the worst of the lot, that is.

If you don't believe me, simply read the chapter entitled "Good-Bye Georgina" in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in which Grandma Georgina undergoes the most drastic transformation brought upon by greed. In this chapter, Willy Wonka reveals that his candy is capable of anything. It is, in fact, so marvelous that his Wonka-Vite, a candy which he claims is basically the "most valuable bottle of pills in the world", can actually make somebody younger. Each pill, Wonka explains, shaves exactly 20 years off your age.

The pills immediately bring out the worst in the four elderly folk. And despite Wonka's precautions, too many pills are swallowed. The cries of wonder quickly turn to screams as the grandparents won't stop aging backwards. Their age falls off them so far and so fast that they are reduced to helpless, quibbling babies. And she with the worst behavior, she who swallowed the pills most greedily, is reduced to nothing at all. Grandma Georgina swallowed a few pills too many, and aged backwards, right out of existence. 

In a way, it is not so much the shock of these harsh and drastic punishments that alarms us. Adults meet far more violent ends in other tales by Roald Dahl. When James' aunts get crushed by his giant peach, for example, it is not just the gruesome end that disturbs us, but that this end was actually deserved. Indeed, no children's story has ever dealt in catharsis, debasing human characters into caricatures of greed, cruelty, and depravity to the point that they actually deserve be indefinitely punished, even to die.

Dahl's un-corrupted children (usually the protagonist) are contrasted with these cruel adults and snotty youngsters, who are often comparable to animals, or worse, to monsters. Indeed, anyone who has had the misfortune of running from the tyrannical beast of a woman Miss Trunchbull or been stuck in a room full of bald children-eating witches cannot doubt that Dahl's stories are much more sinister than the average children's story. Yet these characters nonetheless resemble real adult and childish foolishry, exaggerated both by the perspective of a child and the scope of fiction.

Whatever else can be said about the adventures of Charlie Bucket, it becomes clear when Grandma Georgina disappears in the pit of her own greed that Willy Wonka has a harmatia of his own, a fatal mistake, a whammy, if you will, that corrupts those around him and curses his otherwise extraordinary existence. 

The golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that invites the five children to Wonka's factory promises them

"mystic and marvellous surprises that will entrance, delight, intrigue, astonish, and perplex beyond measure".

But it is no coincidence that four out of five children that visit the factory fall into the inevitable down fall brought on by their greed. Two out of four adults offered the chance to age backwards are reduced back to blubbering children, while another is eaten up completely. And, if Wonka's marvelous invention can bring out the worst in even the sweet grandparents of Charlie Bucket, well, it becomes all to clear why Willy Wonka shut himself up in his factory in the first place.

Fantastic Mr. Fox Goes for a Walk

To continue with my focus on Fantastic Mr. Fox, here is a drawing I've been working on for the last two weeks. I started working on this before I wrote my previous blog post. I wonder what it says about me that I unconsciously decided to paint in his tail...

As you can see in the picture, I used tea (English breakfast if you're wondering) for the sky with a touch of yellow paint for the brighter parts.

I used a mixture of green tea and acrylic paint for the hill. You can see some of the tea leaves still on the page. 

The light and the flowers are done with acrylic paint.

And the finished result!

Why Mr. Fox Had to Lose His Tail

"Did we get him?" said Bean.

"One of them shone a flashlight on the hole, and there on the ground, in the circle of light, half in and half out of the hole, lay the poor tattered bloodstained remains of.... a fox's tail." ~Fantastic Mr. Fox

Ever since I re-watched Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox earlier last week something about the movie has been bothering me. I was a child the first time I saw the film, and the feeling it gave me was one I had only ever experienced when facing things that scared me. I couldn't quite trace what it was about the movie that frightened me, except to know that it was a similar feeling to being trapped inside a closet space with no way out, or being chased by something in a nightmare. It was these types of tight, claustrophobic, and ultimately squeamish fears that the film brought back to me then, as it does now.

And yet it wasn't that Fantastic Mr. Fox was a movie that outright scared me as a child, for I had no nightmares about it, neither did it trouble my waking hours. Indeed, I could easily push the inner feeling of panic away. But then, all I had to do was think about the movie, and the gut twisting feeling would return.

I experienced a similar feeling the first time I read the tale of Peter Rabbit, who likewise narrowly dodges a bloody end at the hands of a farmer. Like Mr. Fox, Peter Rabbit loses something in the chase, and though it is not a body part, it is just as essential to his being as Mr. Fox's tail. Peter Rabbit's blue jacket and shoes are hung up on the skeletal form of a scarecrow, a formidable symbol showing just how nearly the farmer caught him. 

It wasn't until years later when I read Richard Adam's Watership Down and found myself experiencing the same feeling of panic that I began to wonder what it was about these tales that caused me to feel such fear. I found it increasingly strange that the fear I felt as a child troubled me just the same as an adult. And yet these tales are, at their core, children's tales, animal stories, full of wit and charm, and, of course, violence.

Finally, last week on my way to the grocery store, as I was thinking about Mr. Fox's tail, it hit me. The idea in itself has been in these stories all along, and so I can take no credit for them. But, in thinking about Mr. Fox's tail, I was finally able to put my finger on why these tales cause me to relive feelings of claustrophobia and cleithrophobia.

It started with me wishing that Mr. Fox could get his tail back, or better yet, that he hadn't lost it in the first place. A fox's tail is such a nice tail, after all. And the bony, fur-less tail he later gets back is so gory and ugly, the exact opposite of everything a fox's tail should be.

I wasn't sure why it bothered me so much, because it shouldn't have. It was just a tail. Only a child would wish for such a simple thing to be remedied, for such a perfect world where foxes didn't have to lose their tails.

But I soon realized that it wasn't the violent loss of the tail that left such a sour taste in my mouth, but what the tail represents. In short, what I was really wishing for was that Mr. Fox could live in a world in which bullets didn't bite so hard, in which death didn't nip so closely at his heels, and consequences didn't come in such a final form.

But consequences are hardly unique to these beast tales. On the contrary, every well told tale has consequences. Books like Game of Thrones dish out consequences to no end. And yet, even this adult story, which is so well known for its violence and brutal off-killings, didn't make me feel quite so claustrophobic and quite so fearful as Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Fantastic Mr. Fox and tales like it remain the most harsh example of consequences any children's story has ever displayed. What's more, in these tales consequences are given so very quickly. The childish "naughtiness" of Peter Rabbit nearly results in his untimely demise, a harshness which no fortunate child ever experienced. Indeed, a vegetable garden has never seemed so terribly claustrophobic as when Peter Rabbit gets lost in it; a human home has never felt so like a deathtrap as when one of these animal protagonists is trapped in it.

What's more, the animals in these stories are charming, humorous, and even bear peoplelike qualities, such as the wearing of clothes. Nonetheless, the story does not allow them to escape their animal lives, even if they do live in furnished houses and wear jackets. And, being animals, they can be killed for almost nothing. After all, in tales like Peter Rabbit characters are turned into pie, an act which literature normally reserves for the most disturbing acts of revenge, consider Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, for example. Furthermore, the animals in these stories have something the humans in them don't. They have motive, desire, wants, curiosities. Meanwhile, the humans in these stories are little more than creatures of mass productivity, with endless gardens, bird-farm empires with wire fences around them and ravage beasts to guard them. It is only after the critter penetrates them that the human's motives are revealed, and we, the reader, come to realize that their only desire is a repulsive refusal to allow animal trespassers and a revolting need to punish the animals that do.

As Richard Adams wrote in Watership Down,

"Animals don't behave like men... If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality."

Ultimately, the thing that makes animal tales of this nature feel so claustrophobic is that there is not a lot of wiggle room in them. Their world is harsher and much quicker to strike than any human one we know, for in their world there is no buffer between one mistake and another; there is no intermediary between one mistake and death. Thus, a single misstep could very easily be one too many. Indeed, death is never more than a step away, and though Mr. Fox and Peter Rabbit ultimately give it the slip, it does not miss them by much.

But like I said, the squeamish feeling leaves me as soon as I stop thinking about these stories, in other words, as soon as I return to my human life, in which death does not live so close, in the farmhouse down the hill, or worse, laying watch outside my front door.

As Roald Dahl concluded his animal tale masterpiece,

"They sat there by the hole, waiting for the fox to come out. And so far I know, they are still waiting," (Fantastic Mr. Fox).