What Dahl does to food

The mental and majestic look in George's Marvellous Medicine. As the novel begins Dahl begins with George being left alone with his nasty, awful grandmother. Grandma begins to agitate George as she complains he is growing too tall and to stop this he must stop eating chocolate and to choose cabbage instead. What particularly startles George is when Grandma says;  "A big fat earwig is very tasty,' But you've got to be very quick, my dear, when you put one of those in your mouth. It has a sharp pair of nippers on it's back and if it grabs your tongue with those, it never lets you go. So you've got to bite the earwig first,  chop chop,  before it bites you."   Often in Dahl's literature, the food his nastier characters enjoy can be seen in what they describe as they are always disgusting and stomach churning and here the food Grandma describes actually scares young George out of the room! Also, interesting to note is another evil quality of Grandma as ...

Looking into The BFG and his big friendly guts: The only food that the BFG states that he eats is snozzcumbers, yet another creative compilation of words made by Dahl that gets the reader guessing as to what on earth these are!? Snozzcumbers are disgusting striped warty-cucumber like vegetables with wart-like growths that taste like rotten fish for Sophie and slime and cockroaches for the BFG and sounds like crushing ice when eaten. One reason in which this snack may be up the BFG's street is that it varies from nine to twelve feet in size. I guess everyone has their own form of delicious.  In the original 1982 book, according to Sophie a snozzcumber, "was about half as long again as an ordinary man but was much thicker. It was as thick around its girth as a perambulator. It was black with white stripes along its length. And it was covered all over with coarse knobbles.” An instant thought for me arising from this quote was what a perambulator is, it is, in fact, an ...

Large and lethal looks into the food in Roald Dahl's 'The Witches' The witches in the novel are nasty, evil characters who hunt children. These witches look and act like normal members of society, yet they are in fact monstrous "demons in human shape". The Grand High Witch reveals her master plan in order to hunt and turn children into mice. She prints out her own "homemade" money and gives this to every witch in England to purchase sweet shops and give away free chocolate and sweets to entice children, yet these are laced with her latest creation "Formula 86" a "mouse-maker", once digested the next morning the child will turn into a mouse.  Chocolate and sweets are a child's number one weakness and the Grand High Witch being a smart, manipulative witch she uses the child's love for food to achieve her goal. The goal is for once the children have digested the potion and become mice, their teachers can kill the transforme...

Roald Dahl takes us into a world of food in it's finest beauty in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. As they walk into Willy Wonka's edible garden they are greeted with a chocolate waterfall; “What a marvellous smell !’ answered Grandpa Joe, taking a long deep sniff. All the most wonderful smells in the world seemed to be mixed up in the air around them — the smell of roasting coffee and burnt sugar and melting chocolate and mint and violets and crushed hazelnuts and apple blossom and caramel and lemon peel.” The description presses a response from several of our senses, visually imagining the beautiful, brightly coloured  scene , taking a deep breath in to capture the warmth and comfort it brings and tasting a touch of caramel on our lips. “EATABLE MARSHMALLOW PILLOWS  LICKABLE WALLPAPER FOR NURSERIES  HOT ICE CREAMS FOR COLD DAYS  COWS THAT GIVE CHOCOLATE MILK  FIZZY LIFTING DRINKS  SQUARE SWEETS THAT LOOK ROUND”  Roald Dahl be...