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17. Goat’s Tobacco
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
At age 13, Roald starts attending Repton School near Derby. His family has moved to Kent. Roald, his mother, and his siblings are all taken aback by the clothes he’s expected to wear for school: a very starchy white shirt with a high collar, pinstripe trousers, a waistcoat, and a coat with tails. As his sisters laugh at his outfit, Roald’s mother hands him a straw hat to finish the ensemble. As Roald’s mother escorts him to the train station for his first day of classes, she reassures him that English men love to wear fancy and outlandish clothes, and that people who look at Roald will only see the evidence that he’s going to a fine English school.
Roald’s mother generally goes along with the English customs that surround her. She took the advice of the St. Peter’s Headmaster to leave quickly after dropping Roald off, for instance, and she took Dr. Dunbar’s recommendation of sending Roald to boarding school in the first place. Here, however, she offers a hint into just how strange English culture can look from an outsider’s perspective. To a stranger, English dress doesn’t necessarily look like a badge of prestige—it just looks like a silly outfit. With one foot in Norway and the other foot in Britain, Roald’s mother is able to translate and frame the situation for her son’s benefit.
Themes
