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15. Captain Hardcastle
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 his third term at St. Peter’s, Roald is in the Sick Room with a fever. His friend Ellis lies in the bed next to his with a large boil on his thigh. Matron and the school doctor enter the room, take Roald’s temperature, and decide to send him back to class the following day with a temperature of 100 degrees. Moving on to Ellis, the doctor inspects his boil and takes action, throwing a towel over the boy’s eyes and twisting a scalpel into the boil at the same time so that Ellis can’t see the blade enter his skin. Ellis still screams in pain.
Again, Roald encounters callous treatment from a medical authority. Before the doctor punctures Ellis’s boil without pain relief, Matron and the doctor even resolve to send Roald himself back to classes with a high fever. This detail embodies the school staff’s tough love attitude toward the students: they want the boys out of their way as soon as possible, even if it comes at the cost of the boys’ health.
Themes
