Reflective Analysis: Roald Dahl's The BFG
Reflective Analysis: Roald Dahl’s The BFG.
When given this assignment, I found it challenging to try and remember a book I had read at least twenty years ago. Fortunately, my mum told me that I enjoyed The BFG. Instantly, I remembered that it was written by Roald Dahl, “one of England’s most famous children’s authors” (Wheeler, 2007:4). When I looked back at The BFG, I saw the giant on the front cover, and remembered how my imagination would come to light every time my mum would read it to me. I remember as a child, how creative my mind was when visualising this story and how much I enjoyed this book.
The BFG is a story of a little girl called Sophie, and a giant who she sees walking the streets one night. The giants takes Sophie after he realises that she has seen him looking in at the humans in the houses. The giant takes Sophie to his secret cave, and tells her of the other giants living in the ‘giant land’. He describes the other giants to Sophie who realises they are mean giants as they eat humans. The BFG though, is a friendly giant who gives humans dream by blowing through his trumpet. Sophie and the BFG team up with the queen and her military men to stop the mean giants eating the humans and capture them.
I remember thinking when I read The BFG my dreams came from the friendly giant himself and my nightmares stemmed from the mean giants. According to Appleyard (1991:16), “the young child’s intermittent grasp of the boundary between fantasy and actuality- exciting, but confusing and often scary- yields to the older child’s sense of control and identity as the central character of a timeless story about the conflict of good and evil”. My over active imagination made me believe there was another world with giants for a fraction of my childhood. As seen in my experience as I child reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG, the audience Dahl intended to capture was children. Hunt (1991:46) implies that “a text must ‘imply’ a reader; that is, the subject- matter,
When given this assignment, I found it challenging to try and remember a book I had read at least twenty years ago. Fortunately, my mum told me that I enjoyed The BFG. Instantly, I remembered that it was written by Roald Dahl, “one of England’s most famous children’s authors” (Wheeler, 2007:4). When I looked back at The BFG, I saw the giant on the front cover, and remembered how my imagination would come to light every time my mum would read it to me. I remember as a child, how creative my mind was when visualising this story and how much I enjoyed this book.
The BFG is a story of a little girl called Sophie, and a giant who she sees walking the streets one night. The giants takes Sophie after he realises that she has seen him looking in at the humans in the houses. The giant takes Sophie to his secret cave, and tells her of the other giants living in the ‘giant land’. He describes the other giants to Sophie who realises they are mean giants as they eat humans. The BFG though, is a friendly giant who gives humans dream by blowing through his trumpet. Sophie and the BFG team up with the queen and her military men to stop the mean giants eating the humans and capture them.
I remember thinking when I read The BFG my dreams came from the friendly giant himself and my nightmares stemmed from the mean giants. According to Appleyard (1991:16), “the young child’s intermittent grasp of the boundary between fantasy and actuality- exciting, but confusing and often scary- yields to the older child’s sense of control and identity as the central character of a timeless story about the conflict of good and evil”. My over active imagination made me believe there was another world with giants for a fraction of my childhood. As seen in my experience as I child reading Roald Dahl’s The BFG, the audience Dahl intended to capture was children. Hunt (1991:46) implies that “a text must ‘imply’ a reader; that is, the subject- matter,
References: Appleyard, S. J. “Introduction: Five roles readers”. Becoming a Reader: The experience of fiction from childhood to adulthood. Pp. 14-20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Print. Dahl, Roald. The BFG. 1982. London: Random House. Print. Hunt, Peter. “Defining Children’s Literature”. Critism, Theory and Children’s Literature. Pp.42-64. 1991. Oxford: Blackwell. Print. Wall, Barbara. “The narrator’s voice”. Introduction and exact from problems of audience. Pp.1-10. 1991. Hampshire: MacMillan. Print. Wheeler, Jill. C. Roald Dahl. 2007. USA: ABDO. Print.