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9. A Visit to the Doctor
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Authority and Hypocrisy
Beauty and Imagination
Growing Up
English Nationalism
Summary
Analysis
In 1925, when Roald is nine years old, he starts at St. Peter’s School in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. On the first day of term, Roald and his mother make the trip to Weston-super-Mare with his trunk and tuck-box, a pine box that English schoolboys use to keep their precious snacks and trinkets. Roald comments that English schools are like businesses, and Headmasters are motivated to make money however they can—including by encouraging anxious mothers to send expensive treats to their sons. When Roald and his mother reach St. Peter’s, the St. Peter’s Headmaster approaches them and shakes Roald’s mother’s hand, encouraging her to leave quickly. She does, and Roald begins to cry.
Roald’s commentary on the administration of English public schools in this chapter exposes the corruption at the heart of English educational institutions. If school Headmasters are primarily focused on making money, they must have a less genuine interest in educating or looking after children, despite how they present themselves. This kind of hypocrisy partially explains the cruelty and strictness of Roald’s masters and Headmasters: adults who dislike children end up in education anyway because of money and power. Roald’s mother’s departure from the St. Peter’s grounds marks a turning point in his coming of age. From now on, Roald is almost totally in the grasp of the English educational system.
Themes
