ROALD DAHL
Roald
Dahl (1916-1990) was born in Wales. His books are mostly fantasy, and full of
imagination. They are always a little cruel, but never without humour - a
thrilling mixture of the grotesque and comic. He didn't only write books for
grown-ups, but also for children. However, his stories are so sarcastic and
humorous, that also adults appreciate reading them.
INTRODUCTION
Roald
Dalh was a master of a difficult form of literatura the short story. He wrote than
sixty short stories. He first gained success with them in 1953 with ‘’ SOMEONE
LIKE YOU’’ and his last book, collected stories, appeared in 2006. Many of
Dalh’s stories have become more widely know through film for televisión and
cinema,but people enjoy Reading them too. He was born in South Wales
in 1916, in the middle of the first World War. Both his parents were Norwegian,
her father death of one of Roald’s sister Astri. Roald Dalh worked for the
petrol company Shell when he left school. In november 1939,he joined the
British air force but he was forced to leave flying duties as a result of war
wounds. In 1953, Dalh married
the actress and film star Patricia Neal and the couple have five children after
several family tragedies the marriage ended in 1983, and later Dalh married for
the second time. By 1960,
he was living in England and was a popular author whose books cameo out on both
sides of the Atlantic. Roald Dalh died in 1990, he was a very rich man when he
died, his money was used to form and organization which helps sick people,
encourages Reading and also helps children enjoy music, there is a Roald Dalh
Museum and story centre for visitors of all ages.
TASTE
The
setting for this story is a dinner party at the home of stock broker Mike
Schofield. The guests include Schofield and his wife and daughter, the narrator
and his wife, and a man called Richard Pratt. Pratt is a famous gourmet and
enjoys showing off his knowledge of fine wine and food. He is also a thoroughly
unpleasant man. Both times prior that Pratt dined with Schofield, the two men
made a curious bet: Schofield bet that Pratt could not identify some special
wine that he had procured for the night. Pratt had always won. On the night
this story takes place, Schofield thinks that he will finally win one over on
the gourmet. He has a very rare bottle of claret from a tiny chateau in France,
and he boasts that Pratt will never be able to guess it. Pratt, who had been
spending the night engrossed in conversation with Schofield’s daughter Louise,
takes the bet and asks to up the stakes. He offers to bet two of his houses
against the hand of Louise in marriage. Both Louise and her mother are against
it, but Schofield manages to convince them to accept. He believes that Pratt
has no chance of winning. Pratt then proceeds to smell and taste the wine, and
he slowly begins to narrow down its possible origin. Eventually he gets the
correct answer and Schofield sits there horrified. Just as Pratt is starting to
get nasty about the bet, the house maid appears at his arm and offers him his
spectacles, which he had misplaced earlier. He takes no notice of her, but she
stands her ground and reminds him (rather loudly) that he left them in Mr.
Schofield’s study on top of the filing cabinet when he went in there that
evening… which is just where Pratt, on a previous visit, had advised Schofield
to leave his wines to “breathe”. In other words, he cheated!
A SWIM
Mr.
Botibol is traveling across the ocean in a large ship and wants desperately to
win the passenger auction. Each night the captain of the ship estimates the
distance that they will cover in 24 hours, and a range of possible numbers are
then auctioned off to the guests. Whoever owns the correct number the next day
wins the amount of money in the pool. Mr. Botibol notices that the sea has
suddenly gotten rough and that this will surely slow down the ship and throw
off the captain’s estimate. Confident in victory, then, he uses his life
savings to win the “low field” number (meaning any number more than 10 less
than the estimate). When he wakes up the next morning, though, the sea is calm
and the ship is making up for lost time. Mr. Botibol arrives at the desperate
conclusion that jumping overboard is the only way to slow down the ship and
therefore win the pool. He plans his strategy very deliberately – he will wear
light tennis clothes (so he can swim better), he will make sure another person
witnesses his “fall” and reports it to the captain, and he will swim as far
from the ship as possible so that it must turn completely astern to pick him
up. He finds the deck deserted except for one older woman. After talking to her
briefly he concludes that she is neither deaf nor blind, and within moments he
has plunged into the water screaming for help. The woman acts confused for a
moment, then relaxes and watches the small bobbing man get further and further
away. At the very end of the story, a bony woman comes out to collect the older
lady and admonishes her for “wandering about.” The old woman is seemingly a
mental patient!
MRS
BIXBY AND THE COLONEL´S COAT
The
most famous of these stories is “Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel’s Coat”, which is
about a hard-working dentist and his duplicitous wife. Mrs. Bixby leaves home
once a month ostensibly to visit her aunt in Baltimore, but really she spends
the time with her lover, the Colonel. On this particular occasion she receives
a parting gift from the Colonel, and when she opens it on the train home she is
amazed to find an extremely beautiful and valuable mink coat. In a note the
Colonel explains that their relationship has to end, but Mrs. Bixby is consoled
by the thought of her fabulous new possession. Immediately she begins scheming
and trying to think of a story she can tell her husband about where she
obtained it. She decides to visit a pawnbroker and borrow $50 against the coat,
receiving a blank pawn ticket in return. When she gets home she tells her
husband that she found the ticket in a taxicab and he excitedly explains how
they go about claiming it. Since she doesn’t want to be recognized by the
pawnbroker, she lets him go to claim the item after he promises that he’ll give
whatever it is to her. He calls her from work the next day to let her know that
he has the item, and that she’s going to be really surprised and happy. Mrs.
Bixby is too eager to wait, so she goes to her husband’s office to pick up the
coat. Imagine her surprise, then, when her husband places a mangy mink stole
around her neck! She feigns happiness for his sake, while secretly planning to
return to the pawnbroker and accuse him of switching the coat for this
worthless item. On her way out of the office, though, she is passed by her
husband’s young assistant secretary, Miss Pulteney… wearing the “beautiful
black mink coat that the Colonel had given to Mrs. Bixby.”
THE WAY UP TO THE HEAVEN
Mrs.
Foster has a pathological fear of being late. Whenever she is in danger of
missing a train or plane or an engagement, a tiny muscle near her eye begins to
twitch. The worst part is that her husband, Mr. Eugene Foster, seems to torment
her by making sure that they always leave the house one or two minutes past the
point of safety. On this particular occasion Mrs. Foster is leaving to visit
her daughter and grandchildren in Paris for the first time ever, and she’s
frantic to think that she’ll miss her flight. By the time her husband finally
joins her at the car, she’s too far behind schedule. Luckily the flight is
postponed til the next day, and Mr. Foster persuades her to come home for the
night. When she’s ready to leave the next day, though, her husband suggests
that they drop him off at his club on the way. Knowing this will make her late,
she protests in vain. Just before the car leaves, he runs back in the house on
the pretense of picking up a gift he forgot for his daughter. While he’s gone
Mrs. Foster discovers the gift box shoved down between the seat cushions. She
runs up to the house to tell him that she has the gift… and suddenly she
pauses. She listens. She stays frozen for 10 seconds, straining to hear
something. Then she turns and runs to the car, telling the driver that they’re
too late and her husband will have to find another ride. She makes her flight
and has a wonderful visit with her grandchildren. She writes her husband every
week and sends him a telegram before she flies home six weeks later. He’s not
at the airport to meet her though, and when she enters the house (after taking
a taxi home) she notices a curious odor in the air. Satisfied, she enters her
husband’s study and calls the elevator repairman. It had jammed and she left
him to die there!
THE
SOUND MACHINE
Klausner is a man obsessed with sound. He has a theory
that there are many, many sounds in the world that humans are just unable to
hear due to their high frequencies. He explains to his doctor that he has
invented a machine that will allow him to tune in to those frequencies and
convert those pitches into audible sound. The first time he tries it out in his
yard, he hears shrieking in his headphones as his neighbor cuts roses from her
garden. Each time a flower is cut, he hears a shriek. The next day, he tries a
bigger experiment. He takes an axe and swings it into a large beech tree. He is
horrified to hear the deep and pathetic moan that the tree makes in response.
Klausner rushes back to the house and calls his doctor. “Please come. Come
quickly. I want someone to hear it. It’s driving me mad!” he says. The doctor
agrees to come over and listen to the headphones, but just as Klausner takes a
second swing at the tree a large branch crashes down between them and destroys
the machine. Klausner is deeply shaken and asks the doctor to paint the tree’s
cuts with iodine. The doctor claims not to have heard anything, but he agrees
to Klausner’s demands and dresses the wounds.
THE LEG OF LAMB
Mary Maloney is a devoted wife and expectant mother. She
waits happily each night for the arrival of her husband Patrick, home from work
at the police station. On this particular night, though, she can tell something
is wrong. In disbelief, she listens as Patrick tells her that he is leaving her
for another woman. [Actually Dahl never really says this; the details are left
up to the reader’s imagination.] Dazed, she goes into the kitchen to prepare
their supper and pulls a large frozen leg of lamb from the deep freeze. Still
numb, she carries it into the living room and without warning bashes her
husband over the head with it. As she looks at Patrick lying dead on the floor,
she slowly begins to come back to her senses. Immediately she realizes the
ramifications of what she has done. Not wanting her unborn child to suffer as a
result of her crime, she begins planning her alibi. She places the leg of lamb
in a pan in the oven and goes down to the corner grocery to get some food for
“Patrick’s dinner” (making sure the grocer sees her normal and cheerful state
of mind). She returns home and screams when she finds Patrick lying on the
floor. She calls the police and informs them that she found her husband lying
dead on the floor. Within hours swarms of officers are searching the house and
conducting an investigation. Mary’s story of coming home from the grocer and
finding him is corroborated as she had planned. While the police are searching
fruitlessly into the night for the murder weapon, Mary offers them some lamb
that she had prepared for dinner. They are happy to oblige. While they lounge
in the kitchen and discuss the case (their mouths “sloppy” with meat), Mary
Maloney sits in the living room and giggles softly to herself.
BIRTH AND FATE
The narrative begins immediately after the birth of a baby, a
boy. The doctor tries to reassure the mother Klara that the child is healthy
and will survive, but she has lost all hope after her other three children have
died. We also learn that she and her husband, Alois, have recently moved to
this new city and that he is an overbearing, unsatisfied sort of man. The
doctor manages to convince her that her new son is all right and she decides to
name him Adolphus, or Adolf for short. She finally gets to hold her little
Adolf and falls in love with the beautiful child. Her husband arrives (Note:
the doctor addresses him as “Herr Hitler”!!) and comments on the boy’s small
size. The doctor pleads with him to give his wife some needed support. He
finally kisses her and tries to comfort her. “He must live, Alois,” she cries.
“He must, he must… Oh God, be merciful unto him now…” Of course, we know that
the very infant whose life she prays for is none other than Adolf Hitler, the
man responsible for millions of deaths and years of suffering in World War II.
POISON
Timber Woods, the narrator, arrives home at his bungalow to discover his
partner, Harry Pope, lying in bed and acting strangely. Harry is whispering and
sweating all over. He tells Timber that a krait – an extremely poisonous little
snake – crawled onto the bed and is now sleeping under the sheet on Harry’s
stomach. Timber gets a knife from the kitchen in case Harry gets bitten, which
he’ll use to cut the skin and suck out the poison. Harry tells him to call the
doctor. Doctor Ganderbai agrees to come at once. Once he arrives, he quickly
decides that the first thing to do is inject Harry with some snakebite serum.
Carefully, Ganderbai rolls up Harry’s pajama sleeve and ties on a rubber
tourniquet. Harry is struggling not to move or cough. Ganderbai smoothly inserts
the needles and administers the serum. Outside, the doctor tells Timber that
the serum is by no means a guarantee of safety. They decide to try to
anesthetize the snake. The use chloroform to soak the mattress beneath Harry.
The process is agonizing and takes a long time. Eventually they begin to slowly
lift the sheet off Harry. They see no sign of the snake. “It could be up the
leg of his pajamas,” says Ganderbai. At that, Harry goes berserk and leaps to
his feet, shaking his legs violently. When he stops, they realize that he
hasn’t been bitten and the snake is nowhere to be seen. “Mr. Pope, you are of
course quite sure you saw it in the first place?” asks
Ganderbai. Harry turns red and asks if Ganderbai is accusing him of being a
liar. When the doctor doesn’t reply, Harry begins screaming horrible racist
insults at him. The doctor quickly leaves. Timber stops the doctor outside and
apologies for Harry. He thanks the doctor for his help. “All he needs is a good
holiday,” Ganderbai says quietly before driving off.
La
estructura de una oración en presente simple es muy fácil