Reviewing Roald Dahl Biography

Review of Roald Dahl’s

BiographyRachelle

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Analyzing the Extrinsic Element of the Story

Rachelle

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Roald Dahl was a famous writer and usually wrote children’s books. He produced a lot of works which included a lot of imagination and adventures. Not only that, Roald Dahl also wrote his own autobiography, sharing his childhood life to his loyal readers. Extrinsic element here meant the part of story that needs further explanation or further timeline. The extrinsic element here would be the past life of Roald Dahl and how it differ from the stories he made.

General Introduction

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Roald Dahl was the only boy from his father 2nd marriage. Roald’s father married 2 times and he died because of grief from losing one of his daughter, Astri. Roald’s mother than took care of 6 children, 2 from her husband’s 1st marriage and 4 of her own. Roald parents were Norwegian and they used to visit their grandma and grandpa in Norway. Roald loves his mother so much and he picture her as the Norwegian grandmother in “The Witches” story.

Childhood

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Roald Dahl was born on Llandaff, Wales on September 13th 1916. His father, Harald, and his mother, Sophie, were both Norwegian. Roald Dahl mother was the second wife of Harald. Harald got an accident which caused one of his hands to go loose. His dad and his sister, Astri, died when he was just 3 years old. His dad died because of grief for his daughter death. Sophie was now caring for her big family, which was her 4 own child and 2 other child from Harald 1st marriage. Following her husbands’ wish, she put Dahl on an English school which his father considered the best.

SchoolRachelle

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Llandaff Cathedral School

Rachelle

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om Roald Dahl first went to Llandaff Cathedral School. He had several

best friends and they used to walk to school and went home together. Every day, they passed a sweet shop. The shop owner was Mrs. Pratchett. She never smiled to them, even when they bought several sweets from her. One day during school, Roald and his friends found a dead rat inside a crack on the floor. Roald got an idea to put this rat on one of the candy jars on Mrs. Pratchett sweet-shop, the Gobstopper jar of candies. On the way back home, Roald and his friends went to the sweet-shop and Roald managed to put the rat inside the jar. They thought that they were safe and just need to prepare for the next incident. Unfortunately, Mrs. Pratchett then discovered Roald and his friends act. She fainted when she wanted to take a Gobstopper candy but instead took a rat. Mrs. Pratchett than accused Roald and his friends and they got punished by Mr. Coombes, the headmaster of Llandaff School. Roald and his friends got whacked with a cane. When Roald went home and took a bath, his mother saw the red rashes on his body. Mrs. Dahl walked to school and get angry to the headmaster. From that incident, Mrs. Dahl would move Roald to an English boarding school, just like what Mr. Dahl think was the best.

St. Peter School

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On St. Peter’s boarding school, Roald used to felt homesick. Not only that, the school doesn’t provide them enough food which was why the headmaster always talked to parents that it would be good if they could send homemade food for their children as often as possible. Roald mother usually send him a currant cake and several fruits (which was really expensive back then). At St. Peters, every Sunday morning, there will be letter-writing time. All students there need to spend at least 1 hour to write a letter for home. The headmaster always checked the letters, because he doesn’t want any bad comments about his school. But to hide his bad habit, he never allowed students to change wrong spellings in their letter; to make it seems that letters weren’t checked. One day, Roald went really homesick. Based on his past experience when he saw his older half-sister got appendicitis, he decide that he would act like he got appendicitis so that he could be sent home. A doctor was sent for Roald but the doctor sensed the trick. Fortunately, the doctor realized that Roald was really homesick and allow him to went back home.

Repton School

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When Roald and his mother went to shop for a new uniform to be used at Repton, they were shocked to see how fancy the uniform was. The uniform was horrible and even Roald’s sister cried out in confusion when they saw the uniform. Mrs. Dahl and Roald went to Repton School using a train. On Repton, Roald figured out that seniors were powerful. They could send you to sleep and other things. As the past headmasters on Roald past schools, Repton’s headmaster also like to beat students. Cadbury Chocolate Company used to send Roald’s school a box of Cadbury chocolates. There were 12 bars in total. 11 was new flavors which students need to taste and give comments and 1 was the bar that everybody knew well, an old flavor. The chocolates were Roald’s inspiration for his famous book, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

Family Times

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Holidays

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When Roald was small, his mother used to take him and his siblings on a holiday. Mrs. Dahl also brought a Nanny, in case she needed help to take care of her six children. They used to have a trip using boats and Nanny always stayed on the cabin because she was scared. Roald and his siblings usually rode a canoe with his mother around the lake to catch jelly-fish or any kind of fish. Then after the ride, they would bake the fish and eat them together.

Sister’s Engagement Trick

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Roald’s half-sister which was 12 years older than him was engaged to a man. The man went with them on a trip. When his sister weren’t engaged, all of the family always eat breakfast together, climbed rocks together and do things together. But thing was different now, his sister ate breakfast with her man and do things without her family. All the family started to blame the man to disturb their family relationship. Roald’s sister engaged man was smoking pipes. When he left the pipe on the ground, Roald took some goat’s poo and fill it in the place for the tobacco. When the man came back, he started to smoke his pipe and realize that something was different. Then, one of Roald’s younger sibling pointed out that the man was smoking goat’s tobacco and everyone in the family had watch Roald do this started to laugh.

Career

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When Roald was in his last year in Repton, his mother gave him 2 options for continuing school. Schools like Oxford and Cambridge were easy to get in to back then, at least you can pay. But Roald doesn’t want to continue school. He wanted to find a job that could bring him Africa and China; airplanes were rare during that time. He was accepted on Imperial Chemicals Company. But, Roald really wanted to get accepted on the Shell Company but his headmaster told him that it was impossible unless he was a Head of the School or Head of the House. When Roald was 18, he got accepted as being a Staff Trainee in the Shell Company. One day, he was asked to go to Egypt but he resist. On the next chance, he got his dream. He was sent off to East Africa. Roald was a pilot and he shot down many planes. But, he also got shot downed. He was cared in Alexandria Hospital. After he was well, he went back to fly again.

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