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Roald DahlThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Middle Grade | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Kindness and Cruelty
Many of Roald Dahl’s works utilize simple themes with moral undertones. As a children’s book author, Dahl used his stories to engage kids in deep thinking about what it means to be a good person and to treat others with compassion and care. Dahl weaves examples of kindness and cruelty throughout many of the stories in this collection. While many authors of children’s literature may steer away from darker or more sinister plot points and themes, Dahl embraces them, recognizing that children face a multitude of challenges and often encounter cruelty in their day-to-day lives. Danger is an important part of children’s literature, building tension that creates interest and engages the reader. While the dangers of his readers daily life may not be as overt as the presence of witches or war, Dahl uses danger to captivate young people and to highlight goodness as a counter to evil. In both “The Boy Who Talked with Animals” and “The Swan,” Dahl highlights the moral theme of kindness by juxtaposing it with stark cruelty.
“The Boy Who Talked with Animals” explores kindness and cruelty through the contrast between the character of David and the crowd on the beach. The narrator is appalled at the behavior and conversations of the crowd when anglers catch a gigantic turtle. Dahl juxtaposes the image of the turtle, a great beast calmly and silently awaiting its fate on the beach, with the viciousness of the anglers and the crowd to highlight their lack of empathy and compassion. Many in the crowd are excited at the prospect of eating the turtle for dinner. Others poke the turtle and drag it up the hill with a rope. Some may find the story disturbing or upsetting, but Dahl trusts young people to understand that hope is coming. By the time David, Dahl’s child protagonist, steps in, throwing his arms around the neck of the turtle and admonishing the crowd for behaving so cruelly toward the animal, the fate of the turtle has become the central question that pulls the reader forward. The crowd’s brutality is countered by David’s kindness. Dahl further emphasizes the importance of David’s kindness by investing his character with powerful magic. David can talk to animals, and he later runs away by swimming into the ocean on the back of the turtle.
“The Swan” provides another example of the theme. Like David, Peter loves animals and feels incapable of doing them harm. Dahl highlights the two larger boys’ violence and cruelty as they shoot birds in the bird sanctuary, force Peter to wait on the tracks for a passing train and eventually shoot him in the thigh, positioning them as foils for Peter. Once again, Dahl trusts his young readers to relate to and navigate the danger of this story. In the end, Peter’s kindness is rewarded with transformative magic. When Ernie and Raymond attach the dead swan’s wings to Peter’s arms, the small boy flies away from them. “The Swan” and “The Boy Who Talked With Animals” parallel each other, emphasizing a sense of magic that comes from living with love and consideration for others. Dahl utilizes danger to emphasize the theme and the importance of radical kindness, even in the face of radical cruelty.
Greed and Generosity
Dahl’s narratives in “The Mildenhall Treasure,” “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” and “The Hitchhiker” center the theme of greed and generosity examined through the lens of his personal history. Born into a wealthy family, Dahl attended prestigious boarding schools as a child. His teachers were cruel, and that brutality found its way into how his peers related to one another. Although attending English boarding schools was a privilege afforded to Dahl by his family’s wealth, he characterized his experiences there as years of misery in an education system designed to tear children down—experiences he echoed in his stories. For example, Dahl drew the character of Miss Trunchbull in Matilda directly from his childhood experiences. Dahl’s work grapples with the relationship between the wealth and social prestige associated with boarding school and the cruelty he experienced there. He rejected the greed he saw in wealthy communities and the insatiable desire to advance wealth by those who already had much more than others.
As with Kindness and Cruelty, Dahl uses the juxtaposition of two static characters who inhabit opposing moral poles to illustrate both greed and generosity. Gordon Butcher and Sydney Ford in “The Mildenhall Treasure” represent these opposing forces. Butcher defines wealth not monetarily but in skill, safety, sustenance and contentment: “His wealth was his small brick house, his two cows, his tractor, his skill as a plowman (47). Butcher sees his life as one that provides him with everything he needs, and he is content with the little he has. Ford, however, already has monetary wealth and remains single-mindedly focused on attaining more. He’s miserable when he hoards a treasure that he cannot sell, but his greed prevents him from allowing Butcher to claim what is rightfully his—effectively trapping him in his own avarice.
In “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” the title character’s arc follows and transformative trajectory from greed to generosity. As he engages with meditative practice, Henry realizes what Sydney Ford fails to recognize: that wealth cannot make him happy. In the end, Henry gives his estate away. Dahl emphasizes that this action improves Henry’s legacy. At the story's start, the narrator describes Henry as unremarkable and unimportant. At the end, after devoting himself to giving to others, Henry is remembered as a remarkable and generous person. Yet, Dahl’s story critiques the practice of generosity for the sole purpose of seeking recognition, emphasizing that Henry gives his fortune away anonymously, staying hidden from those who benefit from his gifts.
Dahl further interrogates the moral landscape of greed in the titular character of “The Hitchhiker,” whose skill at picking pockets would traditionally code him as morally corrupt. Yet, Dahl emphasizes that the hitchhiker lives according to a specific moral code, only stealing from “them as can afford it, the winners and the rich,” which the narrator characterizes as “thoughtful” (39). In the context of Dahl’s personal history which ascribes greed to the wealthy—a vice that can only be countered by generosity—this trio of stories defines a moral landscape nuanced by an excess or lack of economic and social privilege.
The Transformative Power of Magic
Roald Dahl’s novels often incorporate elements of magic as sources of hope for change, catalyzing transformation of both internal character and external circumstances. He emphasizes the importance of belief and wonder in many of his tales for children, including The Minpins, Matilda, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach. In the stories in this collection, Dahl utilizes magic to draw attention to moral themes, transform the characters, and carry them away from their original sense of self or from situations in which they are experiencing danger or cruelty. Magic also functions as a type of reward. Characters who are kind and generous are endowed with magical ability, while those who are unkind and violent are left to live out their lives in personal misery.
In “The Boy Who Talks with Animals” and “The Swan” both David and Peter experience transformation via magic. David is the only person on the beach willing to stand up for a turtle's livelihood. Even though he is a child, he defends the turtle against the cruelty and indifference of a crowd of adults, challenging their behavior. His kindness is paired with the ability to talk with animals. At the end of the story, magic whisks him away, and he and the turtle live together in the ocean. In “The Swan,” Peter stands up to his bullies who have killed protected birds in an avian sanctuary. In the end, magic transforms the severed swans wings—the embodiment of Ernie and Raymond’s cruelty to both Peter and the birds—into the keys to Peters freedom, allowing him to fly away from abusers to the safety of his own home.
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” provides another example of the transformative power of magic shifting the motive of the titular character from greed to generosity. Henry’s life and personality is totally altered by his encounter with magic. His meditative practice increases his magical ability, and soon allows him to see without his eyes. However, he discovers that he no longer has an interest in advancing his own wealth. He is transformed by magic. Throughout this collection Dahl associates magic with the innocence and goodness of children. Therefore, when individuals engage with magic and wonder, they are also engaging with goodness. By developing his magical ability, Henry Sugar rediscovers the innate morality of a child and is changed forever.
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