What is Roald Dahl's writing style in his children's stories?
Roald Dahl has a humorous writing style for children. He is very creative, using unique adjectives in his descriptive writing. Dahl uses figures of speech in his writing:
He uses specific names and figures of speech which compliments the different character in his or her personality and features. Such as Augustus Gloop to name a fat and greedy boy in the story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. These exaggerate the characters traits as such making them seem either more evil or a better hero.
Also, Dahl makes the characters come alive on every page. He can create characters that are enjoyable and humorous:
Roald Dahl's has a creative and humorous style when it comes to writing children's books such as James and the giant peach or The Twits. With lots of sound words, interesting adjectives and humorous poems, it makes his books an interesting and enjoyable experience for young...
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readers.
Roald Dahl is more than humorous. He uses certain characters to teach a lesson about how the other children are not being respectful and obedient. He puts a twist on his words and arranges the sentence structure to a point of wackiness at times:
He also loves to twist words and play around with the sentence structure such as using "Vitches" in dialogs instead of witches to portray the high pitch, screeching voice of the witches. His humorous poems, which sound sadistic at times, are mostly found in children’s books. This adds a touch of wackiness to the stories. Such can be found in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he uses them to make fun of the characters when they meet with different accidents.
Dahl uses various literary devices to create vivid images and sounds for his his characters and readers. Through personification, Dahl creates human-like animals. These animals have a mind of their own and can speak like a real human.
Many children and adults will be reading books by Dahl for enjoyment for years to come. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one book that will remembered and cherished for years to come:
The book is especially effective when read aloud and is frequently used by teachers who read to their classes. This is partially due to Dahl's playful use of language, featuring rhymes, puns, and hyperbole.
What is Roald Dahl's writing style?
Roald Dahl has a very refreshing and irreverent writing style, which is partly the reason that children love it so much and respond to his books so enthusiastically. For example, in his book of 'Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes' and his fairytales, he gives the heroines some very sophisticated and quite grown up attitudes. This is very funny for children to read, as they enjoy slightly risque stories of damsels not in distress, but who are giving back what they get in terms of bullying! There is one who hides a pistol among her petticoats, and another who is very rude and dismissive to her rather hopeless and ineffectual Prince Charming, dispatching home with great efficiency and in cold blood. The ugly sisters are priceless!
As he is a writer of fiction and, more specifically of children's fantasy fiction, Roald Dahl's writing style is a mix of Plain and Sweet, according to Walker Gibson's Style Machine.
Most of Dahl's narration is Plain:
-high frequency words
-monosyllabic words
-contractions, articles
-1st person pronouns
-action verbs, active tense
-colloquial
-Anglo-Saxon words
-simple sentences
-short, choppy
-compound sentences (lots of coordinating conjunctions “and”)
Occassionally, Dahl moves to Sweet (like Dr. Seuss), especially when his Ooompa Loompas are singing:
-2nd person pronouns
-fragments
-imperatives
-questions
-2nd Person (You-oriented)
-subjective
-pathos (emotional)
-listener-oriented
-visually-oriented
-little reasoning needed
-rhyming
-slogans, catch-phrases
-assonance
Here's a sample from "My Grandmother":
"I myself had two separate encounters with witches before I was eight years old. From the first I escaped unharmed, but in the second occasion I was not so lucky. Things happened to me that will probably make you scream when you read about them. That can't be helped. The truth must be told. The fact that I am still here and able to speak to you (however peculiar I may look) is due entirely to my wonderful grandmother."
Notice the Plain Style: the first person pronouns, intimate voice, simple sentences, contractions, monosyllabic words, high frequency words, lots of articles (Plain style is the language of fiction, confession)
Notice the Sweet Style: use of parentheses, 2nd person pronouns; the last two or three sentences read like a movie promo (Sweet Style is the language of advertising)
Are there any resources about Roald Dahl's writing style?
Because of today's technology, academic research is becoming easier and more available to more people every day. Your two biggest options for Roald Dahl research are the Internet and the good old fashioned public library.
On the Internet, I have found Google Scholar to be one of the best seach engines currently available for scholarly journal article searches. If you go to www.googlescholar.com, you can try different key word searches that often produce full text articles which are available to view for free. The link below will actually take you directly to a search that was done using the keywords [Roald]+[Dahl]+[criticism]. I usually advise students to try a few different searches with different key words and allow your results to guide your next search.
In the library, you are going to want to look for Roald Dahl criticism among the non-fiction literature books. Certainly you will find most of his fictional works if you simply type [Roald Dahl] into a search engine. But if your public library is lacking in books of criticism, you might see what collegiate libraries are available for your use. Many public libraries in towns and cities boasting of major universities have reciprocity with the university library, which means you can often utilize their services for free. If you must travel outside your county for such a library, you may not be able to check anything out, but certainly you could find books and photocopy necessary information.
Good luck.