Sexual Innuendo
This book features topics not normally found in those writings of Dahl accompanied by cartoon illustrations. “Hot and Cold” is an exercise in sexual double entendre through the irony of the friend of his mother suddenly taking off her clothes in full view of a young boy. He assumes she must be cold, but she replies not at all and that, in fact, “I’m feeling devilishly hot!”
The Modern Contrarian
Updated to modern times is the classic nursery rhyme, “Mary, Mary.” This version starts out exactly the same with the narrator posing the question to Mary about that garden of hers is growing. The irony here is that Mary is still quite the contrary sort, but her disagreeable manner has nothing to do with her garden:
“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
`I live with my brat in a high-rise flat,
So how in the world would I know?’”
“The Tortoise and the Hare”
Dahl’s version of Aesop’s fable becomes an exercise in dramatic irony which is when the reader or audience possesses knowledge that a character does not. In this case, the reader knows that the new character introduced by the author—a crooked business rat—is playing the tortoise against the hare and vice versa without either of them knowing.
“The Price of Debauchery”
This poem is about the advice a mother gives daughter who has begun dating. The mom warns the high-school-age daughter that she could contract some “foul disease” with just one small kiss. When the daughter asks if she really means “from just a kiss” her mother replies “You know quite well my meaning, miss.” Ironically, however, this does not prove to be true as by the end of the verse the daughter is in heightened state of emotion because she kissed a boy named Tom and subsequently caught his “horrid runny cold.”
The New “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
The details are changed substantially in Dahl’s reworking of the iconic Hans Christian Andersen tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” It is a much darker version with a significantly much darker ending. Nevertheless, the framework of the story remains the same: an ironic tale of believing what you are told rather than what you see with your own eyes.
