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Beauty and Imagination
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Boy, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Boy reveals the humor and awkwardness of adolescence while also demonstrating respect for children and childhood, underlining the importance of young people’s stories. Roald recalls his own naivety and misbehavior with wry humor and very little self-deprecation. When he describes childhood adventures like the dead mouse prank on Mrs. Pratchett, for instance, he narrates the action through the eyes of his younger self and lays out his seven-year-old reasoning quite seriously. Most of his stories are comical, but when it comes to moments of pain and suffering, such as the first time that he was caned, or his keen homesickness at St. Paul’s, Roald affords himself sympathy and more straightforward narration. He is also observant of the children around him, and his asides about other boys’ behavior—such as when a student continues to feed the frog he keeps in his trunk even after Matron has forbidden the boys from accessing their things—sometimes reveal their kindness and nobility. Given that Dahl would later become a successful children’s book author, it makes sense that he would be particularly attentive to the perspectives of the children. Ultimately, the book suggests that while children’s lives can look silly to adults, they’re also full of genuine pathos. Moreover, Boy argues that the minor details that may look silly are important, too.
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Growing Up ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Growing Up appears in each chapter of Boy. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Growing Up Quotes in Boy
Below you will find the important quotes in Boy related to the theme of Growing Up.
3. The Bicycle and the Sweet Shop
Quotes
It was my first term and I was walking home alone across the village green after school when suddenly one of the senior twelve-year-old boys came riding full speed down the road on his bicycle […] At the same time, he took his hands off the handlebars and folded them casually across his chest. I stopped dead and stared after him. How wonderful he was! […] One day, I told myself, one glorious day I will have a bike like that and I will wear long trousers with bicycle-clips and my school cap will sit jaunty on my head and I will go whizzing down the hill pedalling backwards with no hands on the handlebars!
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6. Mrs Pratchett’s Revenge
Quotes
About an hour later, my mother returned and came upstairs to kiss us all goodnight.
‘I wish you hadn’t done that,’ I said to her. ‘It makes me look silly.’
‘They don’t beat small children like that where I come from,’ she said. ‘I won’t allow it.’
‘What did Mr. Coombes say to you, Mama?’
‘He told me that I was a foreigner and I didn’t understand how British schools were run,’ she said.
‘Did he get ratty with you?’
‘Very ratty,’ she said. ‘He told me that if I didn’t like his methods I could take you away.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I would, as soon as the school year is finished. I shall find you an English school this time,’ she said. ‘Your father was right. English schools are the best in the world.’
12. The Matron
Quotes
If I looked out of the dormitory window I could see the Channel itself, and the big city of Cardiff with Llandaff alongside it lay almost directly across the water but slightly to the north. Therefore, if I turned towards the window I would be facing home. I wriggled round in my bed and faced my home and my family.
From then on, during all the time I was at St. Peter’s, I never went to sleep with back to my family. Different beds in different dormitories required the working out of new directions, but the Bristol Channel was always my guide and I was always able to draw an imaginary line from my bed to our house over in Wales. Never once did I go to sleep looking away from my family. It was a great comfort to do this.
25. Goodbye School
Quotes
Although I didn’t know it at the time, I was sailing away for a good deal longer than three years because the Second World War was to come along in the middle of it all. But before that happened, I got my African adventure all right.
