Who presents a more effective viewpoint in "The Wish," the narrator or the child, and why? Is the story more about overcoming fear or about greed?
In "The Wish," a boy pulls a scab painlessly off his knee and flings it away. It lands in the distance on a carpet in the hall of his house that is in a pattern of red, black, and yellow.
The boy decides that the red parts of the carpet are burning coals and the black parts snakes. He decides that only the yellow areas are safe and makes up a story that if he can get to the front door walking only on the yellow parts, avoiding the coals and the snakes, he will be rewarded with a puppy. He is doing well when he loses his balance and his hand falls on a black "snake." He cries out.
The story ends cryptically with his mother looking for him behind the house. Because of the ending, some critics interpret the story not as a boy crossing a carpet pretending...
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it is a dangerous swamp but as a boy gathering courage to cross a swamp by pretending it is a carpet.
The child presents a more interesting view for the reader because he is so imaginative. The scene before him as witnessed through his emotionally invested mind is vivid and suspenseful. For example, we feel as if we are with the boy in an immediate way in the following passage as we experience it through his consciousness:
the snake stirred as though sensing his nearness, and raised its head and gazed at the foot with bright beady eyes, watching to see if it was going to touch. "I'm not touching you! You mustn't bite me! You know I'm not touching you!"
This is a story about self-confidence overcoming fear. We could argue that the boy is motivated by greed—wanting the dog—but that seems secondary to the desire to face and overcome a challenges. The boy, after all, knows that he is not really going to be rewarded with a puppy.
Is "The Wish" a story about self-confidence overcoming fear or about greed?
Roald Dahl's "The Wish" is about self-confidence overcoming fear rather than about greed.
Admittedly, "greed," the desire for a puppy, is a motivating factor. However, the puppy motivator is a fantasy that boy has made up to help him overcome his fear of crossing the treacherous carpet. He says to himself,
if I get across safely, without being burnt and without being bitten, I will be given a puppy for my birthday tomorrow
We have no way of knowing if it is even his birthday tomorrow or if the birthday is part of a fantasy world that involves turning the patterned carpet in his hallway into a dangerous landscape of hot coals and snakes he must cross. We do know that no adult has promised him a puppy for crossing the carpet.
What chiefly motivates the boy is overcoming the challenge he has set for himself. He is intensely focused on his journey, as is emphasized by the use of exclamation points:
There! He had started! His bright oval face was curiously intent.
We see him primarily facing his fears:
he felt that old sudden sickening surge of panic in his chest—like last Easter time, that afternoon when he got lost all alone in the darkest part of Piper's Wood.
Even the puppy becomes part of his project of overcoming fears to achieve a goal:
But the fear of not getting the puppy compelled him to go on.
This tale enters into the mind of an imaginative child and reflects the child's ability to turn something as commonplace as a patterned carpet into a scene of adventure and challenge in which he can act out his fears in a safe environment.