My grand padlet by Isaac Choi

What is the theme of the story so far?

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 08:45:56 UTC

Roald Dahl is the main character and the author of this book. In this part of the book we see before he is born, and he shares the lives of his parents and comparing the lives of especially his father and his uncle, who both served in France before going their separate paths. As oscar(roald's uncle) would see success in fishing, but Roalds father would get married and have two kids with his first wife before she died, losing an arm, and he ends up remarrying to a younger woman named Sophie who ends up giving birth to Roald Dahl, the main character and author of this book.

Setting and its Significance

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 08:50:55 UTC

The main setting of this book is in Wales, as it is where his family lives and where he will attend boarding school. Roald spends most of his time in Wales and is born in 1916, during the first world war. This is very significant because when he is born there aren't many people being born due to most of the men off fighting in the first world war, alongside Roald being born in the British empire helping to expedite his education to greater heights. Although he wasn't rich, since he is in a 1st world nation he was much greater access to education then someone born in Africa or Asia. This will also pave part of his personality as he becomes introverted while in Wales due to him perfering his studies.

What we know

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 08:54:53 UTC

Roald Dahl is obviously a famous writer, as he wrote this book about himself. However, earlier in his life he was just a welsh student hanging around in boarding school, who enjoyed being home more often because he was always homesick, faking diseases to go back to his mother who he was very fond of.

Why is he complex?

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 09:03:28 UTC

Roald is an extremely complex and confusing character in my opinion. This is strange because he is a young boy, and should have more basic feelings. However, as we can see throughout the book he has more complex feelings of anxiety, anger, and I'm not quite sure yet but I believe he is developing some depression. These mixed signals of feelings make him a much different character then expected.

Page 5

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 09:10:22 UTC

“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.” This quote is pretty significant to me because it signifies the struggles of his family growing up, his own father didn't have an arm but was still expected to provide for such a large family. It is also beautiful if you would like to put it that way because it shows that he writes how he felt at the time, and gives a sense of humanity to the story.

Page 13

1069641_2 — 2024-09-08 09:25:50 UTC

“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.” This passage is nice because it shows how much his father meant to him. He knew so much about his father and he esentially idolized him because he loved and adored his father so much.