Danny, the Champion of the World

The death of Danny’s mother has been mentioned in a matter-of-fact way up until this point in the narrative. Danny was very young when she died, so he has no memory of her, but in Chapter 13 the reader gets a glimpse of how devastating her loss was for William. When William shares that they did everything together, including poaching, Danny realizes “what an immense sorrow” (122) his father has gone through. Even though the story focuses on a particular event, Mr. Hazell’s shooting party, the narrative details the years leading up to that day, allowing the reader to see Danny mature over time. Nine-year-old Danny is better able to understand his father and appreciate that not everything has been as idyllic for his father as it has been for him. This conversation further strengthens The Powerful Bond Between Father and Son.

Dahl uses his stories to educate as well as entertain his readers. In this section, the laws about game ownership and the intricacies of rearing and guarding pheasants are described by William as he explains them to Danny. The facts are relevant to the story arc as well as being educational and also reveal how the law itself can sometimes create The Gray Area Between Right and Wrong. The explanation of the law stating that pheasants “only belong to you when they are on your own land” (128) also foreshadows future events in the story.

Dahl captures the fear that Danny feels in the woods with descriptions like “a trickle of cold sweat” (135) runs down his face, but the overwhelming emotion felt during the “poach” is that of thrilled excitement. Adjectives such as “fantastic” and “marvelous” describe the tense scene in the woods, and even though an armed keeper is close by, William is “transfixed in ecstasy” (133). At the most dangerous moment, William whispers to Danny, “Don’t you love this?” (137), glorifying poaching as a thrilling game of cat and mouse. When Danny and William wait outside Hazell’s Wood for the birds to roost, Danny admits that he was “a bit” scared, to which William says, “Ah, but that’s what poaching’s all about […] It scares the pants off us. That’s why we love it” (138), reinforcing the point that poaching is fun and exciting and more like an extreme sport than trespassing and stealing. William’s characterization as the nice guy and the keepers as the mean guys is reiterated during his conversation with the head keeper. William keeps his tone “nice and friendly” (140), whereas the keeper insults Danny and William, calling their home a “filthy old caravan” (140). The physical description of the keeper underscores his role as an antagonist: He spits through crusty thin lips, and has “a hard eye and a hard cheek and hard dangerous hands [and] small discolored teeth” (140). There is no doubt that the keeper is unpleasant, but his negative attributes are amplified to propagate the “us versus them” motif that supports both the theme of The Upper Class Versus the Lower Classes and The Gray Area Between Right and Wrong.