A Biography of Roald Dahl: Common Themes in His Writings And How They Are Reflective of Childhood Experiences.

William Saroyan uses numerous literary devices such as symbolism and characterization throughout his short story, “Gaston”. He uses them to convey that parents have an influence on their children, who look up to them. He includes several details in each instance of the literary devices, to expand on the theme he is trying to convey.

Children’s literature is the precedent for the development of all children. Children’s literature varies from poetry to children’s picture books. Every aspect of children’s literature gives an ability to grow a child mentally and develop their ideas and imagination. In early literature, children were romanized to be perfect and well behaved. Author Maurice Sendak counters the idea of a perfect child in his book “Where The Wild Things Are”. Sendak uses his picture book to illustrate a child’s ability to have feelings of anger, resentment, and frustration. The interviewer, Patrick F. Roughen of Red Feather Journal states that“Where the Wild Things Are (1963) contains some of the earliest attempts in children’s literature to represent the intrapsychic challenges of the lives of children. Anger, frustration, and the complexities of parent-child relationships can be found throughout its pages”. “Where the Wild Things Are” reinforces the idea that children are capable of emotions that one would imagine are only depicted in the adult world.

The author creates pathos by exposing the reader to whom and how conditions impact families and youth. Duffield writes:

David Pelzer, the main (and perhaps only) protagonist, has struggled with a lot throughout the book I read. The story is mainly about Dave’s determination to withstand his abusive, alcoholic mother, who will, without a second thought, beat him if he doesn’t get his chores done. Even if he does get all of his chores done, he is starved and forced to sleep on an old army cot in his basement while his family lives in the luxury of the upstairs section of the house. The writer, Dave Pelzer, changed the names of his family to keep their anonymity, which was nice of him due to what goes on in his story. This essay is about a book called A Child Called “It.”

Conclusion: Roald Dahl uses his characters to portray his personal views that troubles in life can be solved by rationalizing the situation before making a decision, that you should appreciate what you have, and that ultimately that everyone is a lamb, all with the power to break free of their

Cruelty is something that eventually causes agony in the best of us. In The Kite Runner, the author uses cruelty in the novel to push the story and characters in a new direction. Cruelty acts as a driving force for the protagonist, Amir, and the people he interacts with. The author does this by placing the characters in unfamiliar situations and forcing them to react to those situations. Initially, Amir is placed in an unfamiliar situation when his friend, Hassan, is abused. His actions while he is in this situation set off a chain reaction forcing the characters to navigate difficult situations. Throughout these difficult situations, Amir grows emotionally as a result of the cruelty around him.

7. How does Dahl also make use of dramatic irony? Which did you find more powerful-the dramatic irony or the situational irony? Explain why.

As the first paragraph is introduced, Roald Dahl develops an image of Mrs. Patrick Maloney as an idle housewife. Description of the living room reflects

A snarling wolf can be as nice as a loving grandmother, and a cute bunny might actually be a demon in disguise, but you never know until you get to know them. The Landlady, written by Roald Dahl, is a short horror story of a young man named Billy Weaver going to the town of Bath for a business trip. While looking for a place to stay, he finds a seemingly kind, old lady who offers cheap bed and breakfast. While treating Billy to tea at night, the landlady poisons Billy and goes to make him one of her taxidermied collections. Dahl uses foreshadowing, characterization, and irony to examine how innocence can change the way things seem.

Cruelty is a topic that can function as a major plot point in stories and connect to several different literary elements. An author may use cruelty to express a theme, or a message about the real world, exemplified through a story. Cruelty could also be used as a device in order to progress plot. Even as a character trait, cruelty can give the reader more insight into a story’s plot, setting, or even the characters themselves. In Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, cruelty helps to communicate different themes, progress the plot, and give insight into characters.

There is good and evil in the world, but when impiety manifests itself in civilization, innocence fades. Encountering wickedness changes people’s mood and outlook of humanity. The pieces of literature, Night, written by Elie Wiesel; The Kite Runner, composed by Khaled Hosseini; and To Kill a Mockingbird, created by Harper Lee, all focus on the journey to adulthood marking one’s loss of innocence when the characters must confront the evils in society. Elie’s exposure to annihilation, the rape against Hassan, and Jem witnessing the injustice in humanity contribute to the characters’ development from childhood naivety to maturity, in similar fashions, where they all gain knowledge, understanding, and experience that alters their behavior as well as their perspective of life.

Children’s literature can take many forms, from far-fetching science fiction to spell binding who-done-it mysteries. One of the most popular ideas presented in these various forms is that of escapism. The characters in these stories explore quite complex social issues in ways that are less confrontational then realism. One might consider why escape is such a central theme; as a child there are numerous benefits to fantasy, it allows readers to experiment with different views of the world and takes hypothetical situations and invites them to make connections between this fictive scenario and their own reality. John Stephens an English professor at Macquarie University has said “ Fantasy writing operates through metaphor- so that the unfamiliar is used to stand in for, or comment upon, the familiar.”

people are not what they appear to be. Dahl's works for children are usually told from the

Through the eyes of society everyone has a set role they are expected to fulfill and certain characteristics they are supposed to exemplify. These roles and characteristics, this discourse, tells everyone how they should act and speak. For women it is the role of the mother. In our culture, that means raising the children, completing the household chores, and cooking all of the meals to perfection. Women are typical thought of as being demure and polite, small in stature, and submissive to the male gender. In the reverse, men also have certain roles that they are expected to fill and characteristics they are supposed to exemplify. Men are expected to be strong, dominant, and in charge of their families. They are often depicted, both in the media and in life, as the leaders. This discourse that we all follow can frequently be seen in Svava Jakobsdottir’s “A Story for Children.” The short story tells the tale of a woman as she raises her children and takes care of her household. The mother is completely devoted to her children and seeks to fulfill her role in the home to the fullest extent. As the story progresses, the main character slowly has pieces of herself removed by her children: her toe, her brain, and finally her heart. At the end of the text, after all of the children have become adults started families of their own, the mother realizes that she now has nothing and feels useless. In her short story, Jakobsdottir uses dramatization to depict the gender stereotypes and

effort to pick apart sentences in order to understand the story. Dahl used literary devices to create