Boy Summary

Roald’s father falls off the roof of his family home in Norway, breaking his arm. The family calls a doctor, but he arrives drunk and misdiagnoses the injury as a dislocation. This results in Roald’s father permanently losing the use of his arm, but he manages to go through life with only one. As young adults, Roald’s father and uncle set out to make their fortunes, achieving great success. Roald’s father has two children with his first wife. After her death, he marries Roald’s mother, with whom he has four more children (including Roald). They settle in Wales.

When Roald is three years old, his oldest sister Astri and his father both die of illness. To honor Roald’s father’s wish of educating his children in the English school system, Roald’s mother keeps the family in Wales instead of moving back to Norway. She enrolls Roald in kindergarten, and then at Llandaff Cathedral School. Now seven years old, Roald loves going to the nearby sweet shop with his pack of friends. However, Roald and his friends hate Mrs. Pratchett, the rude shop owner. Roald hatches a plan to prank Mrs. Pratchett by hiding a dead mouse in one of her jars of candy. Although the prank succeeds, Mrs. Pratchett later identifies the boys to the school’s Headmaster, Mr. Coombes. Mr. Coombes beats the boys with a cane while Mrs. Pratchett enthusiastically eggs him on. Later that night, Roald’s mother discovers the marks on his bottom and rushes to the school to scold Mr. Coombes. When he implies to her that she’s too foreign to understand British discipline, she tells him that she’ll be sending Roald to a proper English school at the end of the year.

The Dahl family goes on a vacation to gorgeous Norway every summer. Roald’s mother takes him to the doctor to have his adenoids removed without anesthesia. At age nine, Roald starts attending St. Peter’s School, a boarding school in Somerset. He cries as his mother leaves him, and he struggles with homesickness throughout his time there. At St. Peter’s, discipline is harsh. The Headmaster at St. Peter’s censors the students’ letters to their families, and the strict Matron doles out punishments for offenses as minor as snoring. Roald fakes appendicitis to escape St. Peter’s, but the family doctor Dr. Dunbar catches on to Roald’s plan and gives him a gentle lecture on perseverance, revealing that he was the one who suggested boarding school to Roald’s mother.

During his first Christmas break home from St. Peter’s, Roald’s half-sister crashes a new motorcar while driving the whole family. The windshield slices Roald’s nose almost entirely off, but Roald’s mother takes charge of the situation and guides the shaken half-sister to Dr. Dunbar’s office in Cardiff while holding Roald’s nose to his face. After Roald undergoes surgery, his mother praises him for his bravery.

Back at St. Peter’s, more incidents disturb Roald. Captain Hardcastle, the Latin teacher, falsely accuses Roald of cheating and sends him to the Headmaster’s office. The Headmaster resolutely takes Captain Hardcastle’s word over Roald’s and beats Roald with a cane. Later, Roald also remembers lying in the infirmary and witnessing his friend Ellis scream in agony as the school doctor punctures a boil on his leg.

Still, Roald has fond memories of his summers in Norway. When Roald is nine, his half-sister brings her new fiancé on the family vacation, and Roald pranks him by replacing the tobacco in his pipe with goat droppings.

When Roald is 13, he starts to attend Repton School, a prestigious English academy. At Repton, older boys who are prefects are called “Boazers,” and they have free rein over the discipline of the younger boys. Roald remembers one Boazer in particular, Williamson, who seems to take pride in landing his strikes at the exact same place on a boy’s bottom. The Headmaster at Repton is just as cruel as the others Roald has met, although this one doesn’t cane Roald. Roald hears from a friend that the Headmaster likes to lecture boys in between beating them, and Roald struggles to reconcile this sadism with the Headmaster’s eventual ascent to become the Archbishop of Canterbury. The dissonance plants doubt in his mind about Christianity.

Some aspects of Repton life are whimsical and fun. The Cadbury chocolate factory sends the boys chocolate to review, an experience that will later inspire Roald’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Roald’s eccentric mathematics teacher, Corkers, avoids teaching mathematics and seeks instead to entertain his classes or skip them entirely. On the other hand, Repton’s Boazers enforce a tradition of “fagging,” a derogatorily named tradition in which younger boys are at the beck and call of older boys. Roald “fags” for several boys, cleaning rooms and warming toilet seats.

Roald dreams of traveling the world and having grand adventures, so he applies to jobs that give him the opportunity to travel after graduation. He ends up securing a competitive role at Shell. At first, he’s assigned to work in Egypt, but he manages to get a posting in East Africa instead. Roald is thrilled at the prospect of adventure, and his mother is supportive. With World War II on the horizon, Roald sets out to see the world.