Roald Dahl's Guide to Railway Safety Literary Elements

Safety pamphlet/Children’s literature

All areas touched by the British rail system throughout the U.K. around 1991.

The narrator is firmly and unambiguously situated as Roald Dahl in the opening lines.

The mood of the text is at all times serious in its concern with and presentation of railway safety advice for children. The tone, however, is much lighter than in other official government publications covering the same subject, often presenting advice alongside absurd illustrations and occasionally much more lighthearted textual accompaniment to these images.

Protagonist: Safety advice. Antagonist: Consequences of failing to follow such advice.

The conflict is at all times presented as that existing between what may and may not be avoided if the safety considerations offered in in the pamphlet are not exercised.

The climax actually occurs early in the text before the advisory material even appears. The introduction to that material has Dahl admitting that he seems a strange choice to write a work of advice to children on what to do and not do considering his canon of work which urges subversion of adult authority, metaphorically portrayed here as Giants who represent The Enemy to kids. This introduction climaxes with Dahl accepting his role in this unique case as a member of the Enemy whose job is specifically to tell kids what to do and not to do.

Dahl predicts the future of climate change science at a time before it was really even very widely known as global warming:
“The flood of motor-cars and lorries and trucks onto our roads in recent years is a tragedy for nature and for the environment and for our health.”

“Never put anything on the railway line—I don’t think many of you would be stupid enough to do this” seems to be a massive example of understated irony in consideration of Dahl’s well-established low opinion of humanity’s intellectual capacity.

Dahl alludes to his body of work in which children are often outwitting and subverting authoritarian adults in the opening paragraphs. It is there that he admits to realizing he seems a uniquely unlikely choice for this particular project on that the basis of that historical context.

Dahl refrains from introducing too much imagery into the actual safety advice descriptions, most likely because this advice is accompanied by actual visual imagery in the form of drawings. Although imagery is used in the opening introductory section, the most memorable example is actually relegated to a nostalgic digression from the subject of safety:
“Our roads were clean and uncrowded, and in our cities the air was not polluted with gases from a million exhaust-pipes. It was a lovely world to live in, but now the motor-car has ruined it…Instead of walking to school as we always used to do in the olden days…nearly every child of today gets taken there in a car…perhaps in a few hundred years from now our great-great-great grandchildren will be born with hardly any legs at all because they won’t have any use for them.”

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In describing the pervasiveness of Giants (adults) in the world of kids and how their constant requirements that their orders must be followed turns them into The Enemy, parallelism is effectively engaged: “Deep down inside the child’s mind (subconsciously) the giants become THE ENEMY. Your teachers become THE ENEMY. Even your loving parents become THE ENEMY.”

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