Editor's Choice
Is "Boy" by Roald Dahl an autobiography or a biography, and why?
Quick answer:
"Boy" by Roald Dahl is an autobiography because it is a factual account of Dahl's own life, written by him. Although Dahl himself claims in the preface that it is "not an autobiography," he recounts significant childhood events and memories. This aligns with the definition of an autobiography, where the author narrates their own life story. In contrast, a biography is written by someone else about another person's life.
Boy by Roald Dahl is an autobiography because it is a factual account of his own life. A biography is also a factual account of a person's life but written by someone other than the subject.
In Boy, Roald Dahl describes his life from his birth in Wales to his first job at Shell. His father and sister died when he was only three years old, and he was brought up by his mother. Many of his early memories are full of life and color. He talks about the sweets he enjoyed as a kid, the Great Mouse Plot of 1924, and his times at a boarding school in Weston Super Mare. He struggled to cope at Repton College, a renowned British public school, where he describes some of the behavior by his teachers and the older boys as sadistic.
Boy was followed by another autobiography called Going Solo that...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
picks up from where Dahl left off and includes details about his time in the air force during the Second World War.
This is a great question to ask, because in his preface to this excellent work, Dahl himself says that this is "not an autobiography." However, let us be aware of how he defines autobiography:
An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.
Dahl claims that this novel is not an autobiography because he would never "write a history" of himself. However, at the same time he says he will communicate a series of incidents from his life that have remained firmly in his mind. The final words in the preface are that "All are true." The definition of an autobiography is a text that tells the life of a person that is written by that person. So, in spite of Dahl's protestations otherwise, this is an autobiography, and an excellent example of one. A biography is a text based on a person's life that is not told by that person.
How is Boy by Roald Dahl both an autobiography and a biography?
It is not possible for a book to be both an autobiography and a biography. An autobiography is a work written by someone in which they are telling you the story of their own life. A biography, on the other hand, is when somebody is telling you the story of someone else's life.
In other words, if I had to write a book about Roald Dahl's life, it would be a biography. However, as this great book was written by Roald Dahl himself, it is an autobiography and is, in my opinion, one of the funniest and most sincere autobiographies you will ever read.
Dahl does not take us on a chronological journey through his life. Rather, his autobiography is a series of significant and amusing anecdotes from this childhood.
Your question indicates your confusion regarding the two separate and different terms of autobiography and biography. Let us be very clear about the differences between these two words: an autobiography is the life of a person written by that same person, whereas a biography is the life of a person written by somebody else and not by the character that is the subject of this work. Therefore your question is an impossibility as a work of literature is not able to simultaneously be an autobiography and a biography.
However, it is important to realise that Dahl writes this not as a traditional autobiography which systematically goes through his entire life. In his preface, he makes his intention clear. He does not wish to bore his readers and thus selects a series of events that he talks about that are not necessarily thematically united. However, this does not detract from the fact that this work can only be considered as an autobiography. It can never be considered as a biography, for the reasons outlined above.