Danny the Champion of the World Essay Questions

What role does social status play in Danny, the Champion of the World?

Social status—particularly the spiritual emptiness of having an elevated social status—plays a significant role in the novel as one of its major themes. Danny and his father are humble, working-class people, living in a caravan instead of a house and working all day every day at their two-pump roadside gas station. Emphasizing their meager material existence, Dahl uses the metaphor of their patch of land sitting in the middle of the vast "ocean" of Mr. Hazell's estate. While Danny and his father are poor materially, they are rich in spirit. The inverse is true of Hazell, who is angry, resentful, and incredibly wealthy. Insecure in his identity, Hazell drives a Rolls-Royce to convey to others his elevated social status. He also hosts an annual shooting party so he can hob-nob with lords and ladies, dukes and duchesses. When Danny and his father misdirect the pheasants the gentry would have shot, they succeed in humiliating Hazell, whose guests will arrive and look down upon him for failing to entertain them as promised. In this way, Danny and his father hit Hazell where it hurts by depriving him of the social status he attempts to buy.

What role does the concept of solidarity play in Danny, the Champion of the World?

As a dominant theme around which much of the story revolves, solidarity plays a central role in Danny, the Champion of the World. In contrast to Hazell's solitary existence as a reviled landowner, the humble working-class community of Danny and his father and other townspeople are united in spirit, cooperation, and attitude. While Hazell lives a life dedicated to protecting his assets by hiring people to keep watch over the pheasants in his woods, the townspeople rely on their solidarity with each other to undermine Hazell's and other landed gentry's authority by poaching animals from his privately held forest. The solidarity that unites the community comes from a historical need to band together to provide food for one another when they were especially poor. Poaching became a necessary means of putting food on the table, as Danny's father says. In the modern day, the townspeople poach out of tradition, relying on their long-established community ties to share the spoils they steal from the rich. In this way, the book shows how solidarity is a necessary component of a safe and healthy community.

What significance does the concept of ingenuity have in Danny, the Champion of the World?

As one of the novel's major themes, ingenuity plays a significant role in Danny, the Champion of the World. The trait of being inventive and clever first enters the story when Danny explains that his boyhood spent fixing cars with his father means that he is probably the world's cleverest five-year-old mechanic. When he grows up, Danny learns that his grandfather also possessed ingenuity, inventing several innovative pheasant-poaching methods. Danny continues the tradition when he comes up with "The Sleeping Beauty," an ingenious method of poaching roosting pheasants—a first in the history of pheasant poaching. Supporting characters such as Doc Spencer are also ingenious, as Danny discovers when the doctor shares the story of how he used to tickle trout bellies until they were lulled into a sense of safety and could be lifted out of the stream. Ultimately, it is because of the townspeople's collective cleverness that they can consistently work together to outsmart Hazell and undermine his authority.

What is the significance of Mr. Hazell's Rolls-Royce?

The silver Rolls-Royce Mr. Hazell often drives past Danny's father's filling station plays a significant role in the story because it is a symbol of Hazell's elevated social status. As an expensive vehicle designed to provoke envy in others, the Rolls-Royce signifies to anyone who sees him in it that Mr. Hazell has money and the social prestige that comes with money. But for the working-class residents of the town, Hazell's Rolls-Royce becomes synonymous with greed and contempt. Rather than stand in awe of his social status and money, they undermine Hazell's authority whenever they can. At the end of the book, Sergeant Samways coaxes the birds off of the filling station and onto the Rolls-Royce, knowing that the birds' claws will damage the paintwork. Because Hazell's insecurity leads him to tie his identity to the vehicle, the damage done to his status symbol translates to damage done to his own psyche, and he drives off, panicked and humiliated.

In what ways is Danny, the Champion of the World a story about fathers and sons?

Although Danny, the Champion of the World is ostensibly concerned with pheasant poaching, the fact that the novel begins and ends with narration that emphasizes Danny's loving relationship with his father suggests that father-son bonding is the actual heart of the story. At the beginning of the book, Danny spends the first four chapters emphasizing in his narration how his father has always been kind-hearted, imaginative, and playful, even after the tragic sudden death of Danny's mother when he was four months old. Danny remarks that he believes his father lavishes on him all the love that otherwise would have gone to his mother. As the pheasant-poaching plot line develops, Danny continues to convey and comment on his father's love and support. After all the excitement of the climactic scene with Hazell's humiliation, Danny returns in the final chapter to the subject of his father. Ensuring the theme of father-son bonding lingers in the reader's mind, Danny ends his narration by reducing the content of the book to a single statement: "What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had."