Gorging on George's Marvellous Medicine

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 she expresses the joys of eating dirty garden insects that live in mud but furthermore, the importance of biting the earwig before it bites you! CHOP, CHOP. Finally, it could be noted that this is the quote that leads us to the inciting incident as it is this information that injects fear into young George, causing him to run to the kitchen and create a new medicine that could relieve Grandma of some of her nasty qualities.

As a children's literary writer Roald Dahl uses a variety of writing techniques and rhyme is one in particular we often see. The rhyming technique turns the long list of poisons and powders into a song and we get all of the small details into exactly what George's marvellous medicine contains. The way in which Dahl describes these ingredients sparks responses from an array of our senses; 'Each with a rather nasty smell. I'll stir them long, a mixture tough, a mixture strong and then, heigh-ho, and down it goes, a nice big spoonful (hold your nose)'. As much as we can imagine this huge metallic pot bubbling and boiling away with all of these nasty ingredients, snails, bugs, bee's and flea's it is impossible to not let our noses flair up with all of these foul ingredients.

Roald Dahl concots new and innovative snacks and dishes that his characters come into contact with. The food in his literature is like none seen in any other literary texts and the wild imagination Dahl has runs wild. The perfect recipe to create an elaborate and exotic world, wonderful for any child to want to enter.