A Master Constructor of ‘Macabre and Dark Humor’
Darkness and Humor are recurring and underlying elements of Roald Dahl’s writing style. Darkness was part of his life since early childhood, but despite its frequent recurrence, be it during war or in the form of illness, towards life. The author is versatile in his employment of the two elements that allow him to play with the reader’s perception and understanding of the themes of his writing, which is very enthralling. It deals with the questions connected with Roald Dahl’s unconventional treatment of the macabre themes dealing with, for instance, danger, vengeance, murder or death and thus determine the purpose of his narratives either as a mere way to shock and disgust the reader, or as an enthralling way to challenge conventional frame of mind, which can inspire discussion.
The principal secondary sources used in analysis of Roald Dahl’s short stories include Mieke Bal’s Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (1985) and various books on humor by authors Henri Bergson, Harold Bloom and James Morreall.
Roald Dahl’s early childhood was marked with family tragedy and strong inspiration he found in his mother. Then it focuses on the impact the various boarding schools the author attended had on him, the phase in his life that primarily became an inspiration for his children’s fiction.
Roald Dahl, best known as an author of “ingenious, irreverent children’s books”, has enthralled reading audiences by his captivating stories. Although critics tend to divide Dahl’s writing into two categories, one being books for children and the other adult fiction.
Roald Dahl’s effortless way of captivating his readers since mid- twentieth century is his ability to bring out the dark as well as the good in human beings. Roald Dahl’s way of storytelling had been inspired by his mother Sofie Magdalene Dahl, who was a gifted storyteller. Speaking about his mother, Dahl once said, she read out to them Scandinavian stories from books containing equally gloomy drawings by Theodor Kittelsen.
Roald Dahl in his autobiographical book Boy mentioned how young Dahl had first experienced severe physical punishment and serious psychological distress. The letters to his mother reveal his sensibility and his gift to turn misfortune into entertainment as he writes “Hoggart was sick, when I looked at it, I was sick, but then I felt all right (Dahl’s letter, Sturrock 57). Apart from changing Dahl’s view of the world to more critical, his education directed him to writing short and clear sentences, which later became typical of his writing style.
Ever since childhood Roald Dahl has been forced to face the unhappy and dark side of life. For the sake of the well-being of others he concealed his suffering, sometimes masking it with humor. The near death experience of war taught him not to take himself too seriously, and consequently humor and detachment, which proved to be the best way of coping with life’s obstacles, were integrated into his literary work. The reoccurring dark and macabre elements are evened out by more humorous and comic aspects, thus forming a combination which to a large extent underlines Dahl’s writing.
The aim of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with the basic reader and focus of the thesis, which are darkness and humor, in relation to their functions in literature and drama, with the purpose of establishing basic knowledge of the theories employed in the following chapter, which focuses on the analysis of Roald Dahl’s selected short stories. Darkness and humor are introduced here as distinctive elements of the horror story, tragedy and comedy, the last two genres being bearers of what black comedy and dark humor rely upon to a great extent.
“Darkness” is used in the title and throughout the thesis as a metaphorical expression referring to evil, death as well as mysterious elements that are recurring aspects of Road Dahl’s short fiction. It is principally connected with the characters, which serve to reveal a darker side of human nature as well as the harsh reality of the worlds they live in. The darkness of Dahl’s short stories is similar to that of horror story which, according to Cuddon, can be about “murder, suicide, torture, fear and madness” and which is a mode rather than a specific literary genre used with the purpose to frighten or shock the reader, but which “in the hands of a serious and genuinely imaginative writer […] explores the limits of what people are capable of doing and experiencing”. Any work of literature encompassing the dark side that includes death, evil, or violence, has a potential to arouse an unwanted feeling of emotional distress in the reader.
The underlying seriousness of the terror experienced by characters in horror stories has a certain tragic undertone as do works of dark humor and for that matter Roald Dahl’s short fiction as well.
In drama the genre breaking the boundaries between tragedy and comedy is known as black comedy, and in literature the tragic and the comic can diffuse by the means of a specific type of humor which is commonly referred to as dark or black humor. Cuddon notes that the term black comedy could be derived from André Breton’s Anthologie de l’humour noir (1940), which focuses on the comic treatment of the shocking and macabre (87). Many studies of dark humor suggest that the humorous treatment of what could be generally considered tragic is to express the absurdity of life and brutality of the modern world. Harold Bloom notes that this attitude is for the great writers of dark humor such as Joseph Heller (Catch-22) and Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-five) “clearly the only remaining approach that is artistically acceptable” (83) after the horrific experience of the Second World War, in which also Roald Dahl played active part. The decoding of incongruity, which forms the basis of every humorous text, between the dark and the comic aspects can be tricky as it is often hidden behind irony. As a result, the experiential outcome of dark humor, or the combination of the dark and humorous elements, can be mixed. The reader or the spectator might experience comic relief, which in tragedy heightens the tragic factor by contrast (Cuddon 159), or their experience might be reduced to a mere disgust and fear.
Very important in the analysis of the selected short stories by Roald Dahl, which is the focus of the following chapter, will be Bergson’s notion that “highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every event would be sentimentally prolonged or re-echoed, would neither know nor understand laughter” (4). In order to determine the level of emotional detachment necessary for establishment of humor in Dahl’s selected short stories, the analysis will look for the dark and humorous as well as tragic and comic aspects of the narrative structures and characters. Once the stories’ potential for the reader’s involvement is established, there will be a chance to consider possible interpretations and purposes of the stories.
“LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER”
Short summary
A pregnant docile housewife, Mary Maloney, awaits her husband’s arrival from work. Everything suggests she leads a stereotypical undisturbed life, happily married to the man she is deeply in love with. That evening, however, her husband says to her that he is about to leave her, but assures her that she and the baby will be looked after. Mary, in shock and denial, fetches a leg of lamb from the freezer in the cellar. When the husband, looking out the window, exclaims he will not be eating at home, Mary strikes him hard on the back of the head, killing him. After that, she rather practically considers what should be done next and because of her baby she decides not to risk getting caught and decides to destroy the evidence and get an alibi. After she puts the lamb in the oven and goes to the grocery shop, she calls the police to investigate her husband’s death. When the policemen come to investigate, they have their doubts about Mary, but eventually pity her and in the end they eat the only evidence, the cooked murder weapon, upon Mary’s request.
Analysis
Presumably the best known of the short stories by Roald Dahl is “Lamb to the Slaughter” that was published in 1953 by Harper’s Magazine after it had been rejected by The New Yorker. “Lamb to the Slaughter” were adapted for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. This section of the chapter looks at the narrative and rhetorical strategy Dahl employed in order to captivate the reader. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on the story’s major character, because, as will be shown, the darkness and humor of the story are character based. In the end, the possibility of resolution for the character and the reader’s possible response are discussed. The third person narrator of “Lamb to the Slaughter” is subjective in the sense that unlike a third person omniscient or objective narrator, he does not possess knowledge of everything that happens within the world of the story, nor does a narrator like that ignore characters’ thoughts and feelings. Instead, he concentrates on the feelings and opinions of one particular character, Mary Maloney, thus establishing room for the reader’s emotional investment. The reader accompanies Mary from the very beginning of the story when she excitedly awaits her husband’s arrival from work. It appears to be an ordinary evening for Mary when she sits prepared just before five o’clock and listens intently for the car to stop by the house “punctually as always”. Everything she does or says suggests her complete devotion to the man in whose presence she “loved to luxuriate”. Her behavior indicates that her life revolves around the man and things she can do to make him happy. She likes the “intent, far look in his eyes when they rested on her” and assigns his quietness to tiredness. The “far look” in the context of the later events in the story proves to be a case of misreading on Mary’s behalf and suggests that she is a character who thinks of the world she lives in as an ideal world, in which she has a happy fulfilling marriage. Bergson argues that “at the root of the comic [in a character] there is a sort of rigidity which compels its victims to keep strictly to one path, to follow it straight along, to shut their ears and refuse to listen” (185). Mary Maloney, who is satisfied with the stereotypical life she lives and fails to realize her blind love stuns her intellect, appears to be a character like the one Bergson described and a character whose spiritual rigidity cannot inspire sympathy in the reader, who consequently becomes an objective onlooker (Bergson 141). Mary’s one path she follows is her every day routine – wait long hours before she can finally expect her husband to come home so she could do all in her power to please him.
The narrative strategy used in the short story is based on juxtaposition of want and absence, which Jingqiong Zhou in the book Raymond Carver’s Short Fiction in the History of Black Humor (2006) lists as one of elements of black humor, because there is marriage that from the perspective of the wife is functional and based on love, while the husband rejects her offerings and service and intends to leave her despite her pregnancy and dependency on him. The marriage is, in fact, dysfunctional as the relationship between the husband and wife is not based on openness and intimacy and the estrangement between the two is emotional as well as physical. When Patrick arrives home, there is no sign of affectionate welcome, except for Mary’s obedient taking and hanging his coat after which they sit at opposite ends of the same table. Her effort to make her husband happy is not met with welcome as he tells her to sit down whenever she jumps up to make him another drink or offers to bring him slippers, or cheese. The sense of something being rather wrong is foreshadowed when he does “an unusual thing” of drinking almost half a glass of whiskey at once. This foreshadowing alerts Mary as well as the reader, thus creating suspense in a situation where one character, Patrick, knows what is happening, while Mary and the reader can only guess what might be wrong. When Mary automatically assigns his behavior to tiredness, the reader, aware of her naïve devotion and the true reality of their own world, may suspect something worse is coming. The suspense increases proportionally to Patrick’s repeated refusals of Mary’s service. The juxtaposition of the two characters, one’s love and the other’s apathy, inevitably leads to the triggering point, in which Mary’s rigid spirit is challenged.
The narrator does not explicitly say what the husband told Mary, but instead a sense of horror and disbelief is pictured for the reader as Mary’s comfort zone, conditioned by the illusion of a happy marriage, is challenged. However, the state of shock and denial the character enters afterwards is only temporary. With the necessity to cope with the fact her husband is leaving her laid in front of the main character, the reader may have certain expectations as to what might happen next. These expectations are built upon the knowledge of the character established so far and the fact a situation like this is a rather common thing in the actual world of the reader. Instead of fulfilling the reader’s expectations, Dahl provides a resolution typical of his narratives – an unexpected turn of events. The conflict between the protagonists is resolved in a scene underlined with situational irony based upon the incongruity of the reader’s expectations and the actual events that take place in the story. Mary’s love for Patrick has been expressed throughout the beginning of the short story, therefore when she “simply walked up behind him and without any pause she swung the big frozen leg of lamb high in the air and brought it down as hard as she could on the back of his head”. The tragic aspect of Mary’s action is uplifted by narrative comment that the “funny thing was that she remained standing there for at least four or five seconds”. Morreall notes: “Like tragic heroes, comic protagonists face big problems, but they think rather than feel their way through them. Instead of chaining themselves to a principle or a tradition and dying in the process, they find a new way to look at things, wriggle out of the difficulty, and live to tell the tale”. If we follow Morreall’s definition, there are two possibilities for the main character, either she succumbs and becomes a tragic hero, or she thinks of a way to deal with the problem. The killing of Patrick itself is not a conscious decision made by Mary therefore she cannot be viewed as a black comedy protagonist at that point. It is the moment after the body falls to the ground that sparks self-awareness in Mary who faces the reality of what just happened and coldly thinks: “All right. […] So I’ve killed him”. From that point onwards Mary can be considered a comic witty character experiences a major character change and epiphany, when she is determined to cover her tracks thoroughly not for herself, but for the baby she is expecting. If we follow the definition of irony provided in the book The Primer of Humor Research (2008) which states that irony “revolves around the idea of ‘contrast’ or ‘incongruity’ between the actual situation and the expectations and/or utterance” (Raskin 122), Patrick’s unexpected murder by his loving wife is an example of situational irony, because the reader could not predict an outcome like this. The new side of Mary is a lot more confident, cunning, and darker than her previous role as subordinate housewife, which, as shown later in the short story, is the image other characters have in mind when they interact with her. This incongruity between the protagonists’ view of Mary as an innocent pregnant wife and her actual nature is the fundamental basis of the dark humor that is grounded in irony that underlines the second half of the narrative. Irony that occurs later in the story is different from the aforementioned situational irony, because the reader “understand[s] the implication and meaning of a situation on stage, or what is being said, but the characters do not” (Cuddon 237), which is a definition of dramatic irony. The short story can be noticed in the grocery shop when Mary says to Sam, the shopkeeper that “Patrick’s decided he’s tired and doesn’t want to eat out tonight”. The irony is further intensified when the shopkeeper asks Mary whether she would like some meat, a question to which she confidently replies: “No, I’ve got meat, thanks. I got a nice leg of lamb from the freezer”. Unlike the reader, the shopkeeper cannot possibly know that it was not even an hour ago that Mary killed her husband with the piece of meat; therefore the whole scene is marked by a distinctive level of irony. Irony is ever more present when Mary comes back from the shop “humming a little tune and smiling” and it reaches its climax when the policemen arrive to investigate their colleague’s death. While they investigate the scene with all due seriousness and respect for the widow, she refuses to leave the scene so she could make sure the investigation goes according to her plan, pretending to be grief-stricken. They assume the murder weapon was “almost certainly” a “large piece of metal” and that the murderer was a man, while it was the leg of lamb and the pregnant wife that killed Patrick. Another type of irony, verbal irony, occurs when Mary asks the policemen to do her a “small favor” by eating the lamb, because she “couldn’t touch a thing”. The reader realizes that the “favor” they would be doing her if they ate the meat would, in fact, be that they would destroy the evidence they are looking for. The story and irony reach climax when the policemen are eating the meat and at the same time talk of the murder weapon that might be “right here on the premises” or perhaps “right under our very noses”.
The sharing of the knowledge of what happened between the character and the reader creates expectations that are to a large extent based upon the character’s motivation and the reader’s understanding of that motivation, which an understanding which defines the reader’s attitude towards the humorous treatment of what essentially is a crime, which is left unpunished. Dark humor is at a quiet and intimate level, which invites sympathy for the characters. The reader’s sympathy for the husband and his decision to leave his dependent wife, who seems to mistake service with intimacy, is as likely as their sympathy for the pregnant wife who is told “there needn’t really be any fuss” as she is about to be abandoned by her husband. Depending on the reader’s attitude towards the problem, the resolution of the short story may be satisfactory or disappointing, perhaps even disturbing, if we take into account that the murderer got away. The truth remains, though, that Mary’s unintended act of revenge on her husband allows her to step out of her initial restricted frame of mind and break free from stereotype. As dark and disturbing as the murder may be, Mary manages to deal with the consequences of her actions in a witty manner, becoming a strong and cunning person in the process, thus allowing for a certain amount of the reader’s admiration.
“PIG”
Short summary
“Pig” tells a story of a boy whose parents are shot dead after police men mistook them for burglars when they were trying to get into their house through a window. When relatives gather at the house, none of them is willing to take care of the boy who inherited his parents’ substantial debts, except for an elderly woman called Glosspan, who is a devoted vegetarian. She takes the boy to live with her in a small isolated cottage in Virginia and when he reaches the age of six, she decides to homeschool him. Lexington, who is first taught how to cook vegetarian meals, turns out to be talented at cooking and his aunt predicts a good future for him. After she dies and Lexington, aged seventeen, buries her, he follows aunt’s last instructions – he goes to a village doctor and then to New York. In New York, he meets Mr. Zuckerman, a lawyer, who cons him into graciously accepting $15,000 instead of $500,000 that Glosspan left him. When later at restaurant Lexington accidently tastes pork, surprised by its delicious taste he decides to find out more about the meat. When he arrives at a slaughterhouse for a guided-tour, he sees other rather mysterious visitors. Finally when his turn comes, he enters a shackling-pen where one of the workers puts a chain around his ankle and then, like pigs, Lexington is killed.
Analysis
Roald Dahl’s short story “Pig”, called by the Telegraph the “masterpiece of Kiss Kiss”, a collection of his short stories published in 1960 is a story that with its darkness and uplifting narrative style employs exaggeration, grotesque elements, and irony that are distinctive aspects of dark humor. It is these components and the story’s similarity to fairy tales that are looked into in the following paragraphs. Last but not least, the section provides an insight into what effects the aforementioned components of dark humor might have on the reader’s perception of the story. The choice of narrative voice used in “Pig” resembles that of fairy tales and is one of the significant elements that help to emphasize its overall uplifting mood, which is grounded in dark humor. This aspect is demonstrated in the very opening of the story when the narrator uses the well-known phrase “Once upon a time […]”.
Fabula, which is defined by Bal as a “series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors [characters]”, of “Pig” is typical of that of fairy tales. Vladimir Propp’s sequential analysis of the Russian folktale suggests that its structure, as well as the structure of fairy tales, is much patterned, therefore also very predictable. To demonstrate the fairy tale aspect of this particular short story, Propp’s concept of functions, that is not the importance of characters as such, but their function from the point of view of their significance for the course of the action in the story (Propp and Sibelan), will be applied in the analysis of the short narrative along with some character types as outlined by Propp. Although not necessarily in the order of functions outlined by Propp, several functions described in his study take place in the short story. In the beginning, the absence occurs when Lexington’s parents leave their newborn, who they refer to as their “son and heir”, with their nanny and are later killed by the police. Lexington is given an interdiction, which in the case of “Pig” is implied in his upbringing and diet, which is strictly vegetarian. The narrative reaches next level when aunt Glosspan dies, which in Propp’s analysis is termed mediation, a misfortunate event in the story that consequently leads to the hero’s departure. It is on his journey that Lexington encounters the villain, whose role helps develop the following functions: delivery, the point at which Mr. Zuckerman learns of Lexington’s inheritance and naiveté, and trickery and complicity that take place when the lawyer uses this knowledge to trick foolish Lexington into accepting $15,000 instead of $500,000. The interdiction implied earlier in the narrative is later violated so that another villain can enter the story and face Lexington. When he eats pork at the cheap restaurant, he feels compelled to find out more about what has been kept secret from him, which leads him to the slaughter house. During their struggle, Lexington and the butcher meet directly; however, unlike in fairy tales where the magic agent given to the hero helps him defeat the villain, vulnerable Lexington with his terrific talent for cooking unexpectedly dies. Thus Dahl employs the narrative pattern that is part of most people’s lives from an early age, but does not provide the happy ending the reader would predict. The humorous aspect of the short story is intensified by frequent use of exaggeration and hyperbole which in “Pig” mark contrast between good and bad and intensify the entertaining narrative voice. Given the setting of the story, present day New York City and Virginia, the very application of fairy tale structure and voice stand out as a hyperbole. Firstly, the proud parents refer to Lexington as “our son and heir” and when they find out they cannot get into the “dark and silent” house, the wife hysterically thinks to herself that her baby is “imprisoned in this place”, a clear hyperbole of the actual fact that her baby is in their own house with the nanny, both probably asleep. Exaggeration is also applied in the description of aunt Glosspan’s vegetarian lifestyle when the narrator says she considers eating meat “not only unhealthy and disgusting, but horribly cruel” or her exaggerated prediction of Lexington’s future when she exclaims – “You will make history!” Lexington’s talent is also exaggerated when the narrator says he “could handle his pants like a juggler”, moreover, from the moment he sets out on the journey to New York, he is frequently called “our hero” by the narrator. The name, on the one hand, seems out of place for a boy with no real extraordinary talent, on the other hand, it expresses the narrator’s support of the orphaned boy, in which case it arouses sympathy. The difference between Lexington and other characters in the story is that his use of language is evidently more colorful and stands out in the new environments he finds himself in all of a sudden. The meal he eats at the restaurant must be average, given the description of the restaurant and attitude of the employees, but Lexington calls it “wonderful”, “fantastic“ and “remarkable”. His shouting “there’s been a frightful mistake!” is marked with the most peculiar choice of words for someone hanging upside down in a slaughterhouse, especially when we consider the actual unexpectedness of the whole situation. Apart from exaggeration that uplifts the narrative mood, the story is filled with grotesque imagery and macabre elements, which are present in the story from the very beginning, but are more emphasized as the story progresses. Mr. Zuckerman, one of the villains occurring in the story, stands out as a grotesque caricature of a greedy lawyer – “a small spongy man with livid jowls and a huge magenta nose, and when he smiled, bits of gold flashed at your marvelously from lots of different places inside his mouth”. Although death is a recurring theme of “Pig”, it is not treated altogether tragically as one could expect. The reader first encounters death when Lexington’s parents are shot dead. As tragic as the fact that they leave behind the little twelve-dayold boy is, the scene in which they die is rather grotesque. After the husband passionately kisses his wife thinking of how women like to be kissed with their “legs dangling in the air”, the policemen notice them – a man holding a woman “dangling half in and half out of the house”. Despite their warning, the man, considerate towards women’s feelings, continues “gallantly to push her” through the window until the police open fire and shoot them. The narrative does not revel in the sadness of the situation; quite the contrary, the narrator matter-of-factly concludes that Lexington became an orphan. Similarly to this scene, aunt Glosspan and little Lexington have a talk about how “ordinary people” kill animals and eat them. This seemingly significant subject matter would make one expect the conversation to end with a meaningful explanation or lesson for the boy and reader, however, the aunt only straightforwardly answers his questions saying “they don’t wait for them to die […] they kill them”, “they usually slit their throats with a knife” or that “they cut them up into bits and they cook the bits” after which she casually sends the boy off to fetch chives from the garden. The final eighth part of “Pig” is most marked with grotesque and macabre elements. Even though there is a certain level of foreshadowing when the narrator describes the quietness of the waiting room and the “mysterious” smiles of other visitors at the slaughter house, the moment when one of the workers puts chain around Lexington’s ankle is very unexpected and shocking. Despite the initial terrifying look of the scene when “our hero” is screaming for help and “dangling upside down”, the tense and chaotic mood is interrupted with the image of the guide who looks “serenely at the rapidly ascending youth”. While some resolutions, as pointed out above, of the unexpected turn outs of events of the story are treated in a disinterested manner, some are grounded in irony, which was previously defined as incongruity between that which is expected or uttered and that which actually is, is also a typical aspect of black humor. Harold Bloom in his book Dark Humour: Bloom’s Literary Themes (2010) defines irony as “a constant catalyst of black humor in that it regularly functions as a bridge between the comic and the tragic. […] It focuses on the discrepancy between the real and the ideal, and like humor it has traditionally been one of the chief devices of satire”. In the short story Mr. Zuckerman’s congratulating Lexington upon his aunt’s death is an example of situational irony, since the reader would normally perceive death of a loved one as tragic, but the story does not fulfill the reader’s expectation of sympathy. Another example of irony is the unexpected twist in the slaughterhouse. Aunt Glosspan’s predictions of the boy’s successful future and the narrative’s purposeful exaggeration of the boy who, as soon as he goes on the adventure, becomes “our hero” intensify the ironic ending of the story, when Lexington is hanging upside down and has his throat slit in the most dark and grotesque manner. Irony can be found also in the very title of the short story and the very last sentence of the narrative. Lexington’s violation of Glosspan’s interdiction, which made it clear that eating animal flesh was unacceptable, results in the boy’s punishment, which is ironic in the sense that the boy who has never before eaten animal flesh ends up on the wire next to other pigs and is slaughtered in the same way they are. Furthermore, his call for help is only met with the “expression of absolute peace and benevolence” on the butcher’s face as he says Lexington “with pleasure” and slits open his throat. The sardonic tone of the closing paragraph underlines the ironic treatment of dark themes that occur in the story: “Suddenly our hero started to feel very sleepy, but it wasn’t until his good strong heart has pumped the last drop of blood from his body that he passed on out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next”. The phrase “the best of all possible worlds” refers to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s optimistic philosophy which argues that the world we live in is the best, because the universe is organized in perfect harmony in which individuals can exercise their free will that allows them to perfect, or disgrace, themselves all in relation to the whole (Kavanaugh). Similarly to Voltaire, who uses the phrase in his satirical literary piece Candide (1759), Dahl ridicules the idea in a sardonic tone as reality of the world created in “Pig” shows that law does not protect innocent, but kills or robs them, and it all ends in death. Lexington is a hero who makes progress geographically, but cannot escape his inability to function in the real world due to his isolated and idealistic upbringing that does not allow him to critically judge people and situations and adapt in order to survive. Similarly to other works of black humor that have in common “the same detachment, the same irony, the same mocking apocalyptic tone, the same parody undercutting of all system, the same one-dimensional characters” (Bloom 83), “Pig” uses irony to point out the dark reality of the world the characters, and possibly even the reader, live in. The cheerful narrative voice employing fairy tale aspects of storytelling humors the macabre themes and incongruity between ideals and reality and thus allows the reader to recognize the unrealistic tone of the story. As a result, the story has the potential to let the reader enjoy the story without any emotional attachment to the characters. However, Morreall notes that tragic, grotesque, and macabre aspects of narratives or plays are emotionally engaging elements, therefore the unexpected turn from adventure story to horror story that occurs in “Pig” might change the reader’s response to emotion. Intensity with which the narrator describes his horrifying events in the slaughterhouse is relieved in the aforementioned final paragraph, which proves there was a purpose in the vivid macabre scene – the ironic remark heightens the tragic ending of the story and forces the reader to evaluate the terrible things that happened to all the good characters in the story, but perhaps it also forces the reader to reflect on the reality of the world they live in.
The analysis of the two short stories has shown that the author’s employment of darkness and humor is rich; therefore, it allows the reader to experience feelings ranging from those more positive, such as relief or amusement, and those rather negative, for instance, shock or disgust. The incongruity between the dark and humorous, or between the tragic and comic, components of Dahl’s stories is surprising, sometimes shocking, and manages to inspire questions about the messages which such narratives might convey. It turns out, these messages can be difficult to find for they often hide behind irony, but still they are present and touch upon what the reader, as a living human being, might be interested in – the dark side of human nature and the world around them. Firstly, we will look the findings of the previous chapter in order to provide a concise picture of the author’s rich narrative style.
The most recurring narrative strategy of Dahl’s short stories is unexpectedness and incongruity, which form the fundamental basis of every comic or humorous text. The analysis has shown, the unexpected unfolding of events in Dahl’s short stories is grounded in humor, where the reader’s expectations are disappointed. This incongruity of expectation and failure is resolved by the means of humor, usually irony.
In “Lamb to the Slaughter”, after the introduction dwelling on Mary’s eternal love and admiration for her husband, one would not expect her to kill him with a piece of meat. “Pig” is the most extreme example of how far the author is willing to go to shock the reader. First, his parents are killed by those who are supposed to serve and protect people and when young Lexington, who as the hero possessing an amusing talent was predicted to have a great future, is unexpectedly killed in a very vivid macabre scene. Roald Dahl manages to keep the tragic elements of the dark themes at bay thanks to detached and sometimes even light-hearted narrative voices. The narrators of the selected short stories all provide a somewhat removed point of view, even though not all of them represent the so-called third person narrator who is unaffected by the story’s development. The story of Mary Maloney is written in the third person omniscient as is the story of “Pig”. Third person omniscient narrative strategy makes possible the detachment necessary for comic or humorous experience of the stories, despite their actual dark themes.
Despite their significant detachment, Roald Dahl’s narratives do not fail to offer characters and developments, which would leave the reader disinterested thanks to the personal and intimate aspect. “Lamb to the Slaughter” provides an image of a devoted and rigid woman who does not escape the fantasy she has created for herself until her beloved husband intends to leave her. Mary, after a profound state of shock and denial, embarks on a journey where she becomes an independent human being capable of shaping things around her according to her own desire. Lexington, too, has a restricted point of view on the world and people, which does not allow him to survive in the real world outside his cottage. The main characters of the selected short stories have a limited frame of mind, which only one of them manages to escape. The limited perception of such characters affects people around them, or is fatal to the characters themselves, like Lexington. The level of intimacy in “Lamb to the Slaughter” is evident from the very beginning, therefore the conflict between the husband and wife almost instantly attracts the reader. Patrick’s decision to leave Mary and his unexpected murder can both be justified; therefore the following development of events further intensifies the reader’s understanding of the conflict and its resolution. Finally, “Pig” most directly touches upon a very intimate theme of death, as well as the evil and cruel aspect of the world. It does so in a very humorous satirical manner and it is in the end when the irony leaves the reader surprised to the extent that inspires the reader to think about their life and control they have, or do not have, over it. To conclude the findings of the thesis, the reader of Roald Dahl’s macabre short stories is given the chance to enjoy simple linear narratives that stem from incongruity hidden in the text, which is based on the difference between darkness and humor (tragedy and comedy), in which is grounded the incongruity between that what the reader can expect from the narratives and that what actually happens in them. The thrilling narrative voices lead the reader through the events in the characters’ lives and the unexpected darkness within some of these characters, such as Mary, is treated in the ways ranging from simple comedic elements, which in the end heightens the tragic aspect of the story, to witty ironic humor. The themes that revolve around the darkness within protagonists and the world they live in are present even though they are often hidden behind irony. It is irony that inspires the reader to look for meanings hidden in Dahl’s short narratives. Roald Dahl’s storytelling and use of dark humor are unique in a thrilling way as the author manages to play with the reader’s mind and provoke further thinking of the things people are willing to do in the harsh reality of the world they live in.
