Boy: Tales of Childhood

“He was so drunk that he mistook the fractured elbow for a dislocated elbow […] the pain must have been excruciating […] by then the pullers had done so much damage that a splinter of bone was sticking out through the skin of the forearm […] they simply amputated the arm at the elbow.”

Dahl is interested in exposing and exploring the vastly different standards of medical care that existed in his father’s time—and, a bit later in the book, his own 1920s childhood—in contrast to modern medical practices. The misdiagnosis of Harald’s broken arm and subsequent mistreatment is intentionally shocking to modern readers.

“The loss of an arm, he used to say, caused him only one serious inconvenience. He found it impossible to cut the top off a boiled egg.”

Harald’s use of humor belies the distressing account of the mismanagement of his broken arm, which was excruciatingly pulled apart and led to amputation. His use of humor is stylistically similar to Roald Dahl’s own use of dark, dry humor in distressing moments.

“He was a tremendous diary-writer. I still have one of his many notebooks from the Great War of 1914-18. Every single day during those five war years he would write several pages of comment and observation about the events of the time.”

Roald inherited or was strongly influenced by his father, Harald’s, discipline for writing consistently and documenting the events of his life and the world around him.