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6. Mrs Pratchett’s Revenge
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
From ages four to seventeen, Roald goes to Norway with his whole family for summer vacation. The trip is long and complicated, involving a train trip to London and a boat trip to Oslo, but Roald’s mother plans everything efficiently by mail. When their group arrives in Oslo, they visit the family of Roald’s mother for a reunion. Roald remembers his maternal grandparents, whom he calls “Bestepapa” and “Bestemama,” as quiet and pleasant people. On the night of their arrival, the family always has a special meal of poached fish, potatoes, and toffee ice cream. Roald remembers toasting around the table per Norwegian tradition.
Roald’s summers in Norway are the opposite of his school years in England. Roald presents Norway, the land of his family, as beautiful and full of fun, while most of his stories about England are bleak and full of suffering. The comparison might be unfair, given that Roald’s time in Norway is spent on vacation rather than in the classroom. Still, all the details that Roald includes in his passages about Norway—the hearty food, the friendly adults, and the warm family meals—stands in opposition to the cold discipline of English culture in Boy. The disparity suggests that the English ways of raising and educating children are not necessarily as superior as Roald’s father believed them to be—not if they sacrifice beauty and happiness, his ultimate values.
Themes
