English Nationalism Theme Analysis

In one sense, Boy is an immigrant story. Roald’s mother and father both emigrated from Norway to Britain, where Roald’s father establishes a successful business and makes his fortune. Harald’s dying wish is for his children to attend English schools, insisting that he’s heard everywhere that they are the best possible education available. This decision leads to almost all of the discomfort and unhappiness that Roald experiences in Boy, although he never blames his father for it outright. Although the Dahls may not bear many external signs of foreignness in Britain, they are nonetheless foreigners—and none more so than Roald’s mother, who honors Harald’s wish without always buying in to English customs. When Roald is in dismay over his Repton school uniform, for instance, she cheers him up by pointing out that Englishmen enjoy wearing “eccentric” clothes, gently mocking the markers of English wealth while also reassuring Roald that emulating them is beneficial to him.

More seriously, Roald’s mother takes issue with Mr. Coombes’s caning of a seven-year-old Roald, and when Mr. Coombes tells her that his method of discipline is standard for British schooling and implies that she must not understand it because she’s a “foreigner,” she resolves to remove Roald from the school at the end of the year. Although Roald agrees with his mother in condemning the excessive corporal punishment that Mr. Coombes uses, it becomes clear by the end of Boy that Mr. Coombes was right about one thing: if Roald’s experiences are any indication, beating children does seem to be a major part of the British schools’ method of discipline. Despite this, Roald comes to directly argue against excessive corporal punishment, picking apart the contradictions that lie at the heart of this English practice. In these moments, Boy subtly attacks English nationalism, suggesting that the English are not as superior as they often claim to be.