Roald Dahl is infamous for writing a series of books for children featuring macabre adult characters indulging in repulsive behavior. For the most part, these adults are sharply defined enough to easily exist as unique and idiosyncratic individuals. Dahl’s abilities to delineate characters of a grotesque nature who are both symbolic of a larger whole while also being absolutely singular in nature is one of his strengths as a writer. Maybe even more importantly, it is a talent that has managed to keep him from suffering the same fate as other writers.
As late as the Summer of So-Called Cancel Culture that was 2020, Dahl has managed to avoid having his books ripped from school shelves as a result of accusations of stereotyping of any kind. While seeming to be pretty free from any threat of serious accusations of racism in his work, it is only a matter of time, perhaps, before there is a real threat to his legacy raised somewhere. One simply cannot create characters as loathsome as Dahl has without someone somewhere finding—whether appropriately or not—a larger prejudicial view behind the repulsion. If one were to place a bet on such things, one could do worse than drop a few bucks betting that the first Dahl book to be plucked out of the canon is going to be The Twits.
In the first place, The Twits is generally viewed among even those adults who enjoy his more grotesque characters populating his children’s book as unpleasant reading experience. Both Mr. and Mrs. Twit are just, quite simply, repugnant in every way. Physically, they are gross beyond the capacity of many adults to handle. Adding to this revulsion is that they also lack any sort of redeeming qualities of rebellion. The Twits are, in fact, the Establishment. And it is this aspect which may be what ultimately dooms the book to extinction. Not for reasons that it should, but exactly the opposite.
There is no getting past the fact that the Twits are beyond redemption and focus of their humor at the scatological level is hardly one to bring adult fans to Dahl’s side of the case. Some reviewers have—not unreasonably—pointed out one message which the book seems to send is that unpleasant looking people are by definition unpleasant people. Of course, that it is no more the case here than in real life. The Twits would be an unpleasant couple even if they looked like the latest Hollywood super-couple. But, as Dahl is subtly pointing out, if that were the case, Mr. and Mrs. Twit would not be quite so unpopular. By making the Twits as physically repugnant as possible, Dahl is not making the case that ugly is as ugly looks, but that good looks are often an amazingly effective disguise for ugly people. And that message is buried much deeper in the subtext than the more vibrant concept that Dahl is making fun of ugly people.
The point being made is that Mr. and Mrs. Twit are kind of the opposite of what went on during the fiery summer of 2020 when statues of Confederate "heroes" were being torn down, threatened, officially removed and reconsidered. The men (and women) who enjoyed a long legacy in bronze or stone as a result of taking arms against the United States did not look at all like the Twits: to many outsiders even today they still look like grizzled heroes just as much at home in Athens, Greece as Athens, Georgia. But, as Dahl imaginatively makes clear through the fine of negation, looks are deceiving and while sometimes twits looks like twits, there are many occasions when absolute twits are disguised to look like heroes.
