Boy by Roald Dahl

When reading Roald Dahl's memoir, Boy, one thing came persistently to mind: Ripping Yarns. Ripping Yarns is a set of parodies featuring Monty Python's Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The parodies are based loosely on Tom Brown's School Days (1857), and the first parody to come out was Tomkinson's School Days (1976), which explores the tortures and intricacies of English prep-school. Being a comedy, everything is extremely over-the-top, particularly the hazing and punishments. All new kids must fight the school bear hand-to-paw, the teachers and students are equally tortured and frightened by the official school bully, and Tomkinson's escape is brought to a halt when the school leopard finally tracks him down.

Then comes The 30-mile Hop, during which participants must hop on one foot over treacherous mountain terrain for 30 miles. When Tomkinson (played by Palin) survives and is proclaimed winner of The Hop, they reward him by appointing him New School Bully. Everyone stares at him a moment, waiting to see how he'll adapt to this change from the crushed to the crusher, and then he stands up very straight, looks down his nose at a younger kid, and says something very condescending and threatening, to which all students and teachers look relieved. It's pretty hilarious, but strangely, according to Dahl's memoir, it appears to be only an extreme exaggeration of the truth. Every little bit reminds me of Dahl's experiences at prep-school - there's brutal physical punishment; sadistic, superior upper-classmen; and a cruel pecking order in which physical accomplishment is one of the few ways a person might gain a better place in the hierarchy.

Another similarity between Boy and Tomkinson's School Days is perspective. In both, the hero of the tale is a boy who tends to be a victim at the hands of the people who make up the system that's in place. Neither boy would enjoy seeing their handiwork in perfectly straight bruises across younger students' backsides, and so neither is sadistic Boazer material. This makes me wonder - have any of the dark, grimacing, cruel little Boazers written memoirs about their school days? I wonder if they recall with glory or shame the way they invested their every moment in administering fear. In their hypothetical memoirs, would they gloss over or skip over or rewrite their behavior? I wonder if they would suddenly stop dead in their tracks, pen halfway to paper and realize, finally, that they might be psychopaths. Could any of them bear to look inward for half a second and ponder "How did I enjoy giving punishment and pain? How do I sleep at night?"

On a totally different note on this story, I started wondering if tales of prep-school days became to Brits something akin to our up-hill-both-ways accounts of school in ages past. I get this image of a British family, sitting around the supper table: grandpa is relating a toilet-seat-warming-in-freezing-weather tale, and the kids are paralyzed with shock and awe, spoons hovering between their plates and their mouths. Then, later, they decide it just can't be real. No way. Meanwhile, I'm at my grandparents, eating supper, and grandpa brings out the treacherous-trip-to-school tale and I don't believe a word. No way. BUT now I see Tomkinson's School Days wasn't far off from the actual English prep-schools described in Boy, so...maybe...just maybe, the legend of "up-hill-both-ways" isn't too far off, either. Maybe grandpas and grandmas everywhere really did get to and from school by mountain climbing into the wind while towing a heavy lunch pail (or something very similar in difficulty). I'm starting to think anything is possible. Haha, and perhaps I can cheesily add that that is the magic of Roald Dahl and his storytelling. :)

As far as teaching the book, I think it would be cool to read something by Roald Dahl either before or after this, so students can see the connections between the author's life experiences and his writing. It could also be really neat to have students write a short memoir of a single experience they've had. They'd be learning about the genre memoir and how it's different from autobiography, and they'd be writing about something they know. Writing about their own experiences and then getting to share the stories with each other could be a really fun time. Plus, if they know from the start that they will be sharing their stories with each other, I think they'd be more interested in working to make the story clear and interesting for their audience/classmates.