“Too ridiculous to be believed” – an Analysis of Fairy Tale Violence in Roald Dahl’s Children’s Fiction

The aim of this essay is to examine several categories of violence in Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction, with the background of fairy tale theory. Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction has raised criticism, and the grounds of it are reconsidered in this essay. Violence is a declining feature of children’s literature, and the sometimes-excessive use of it in Dahl’s fiction is conspicuous, therefore. If Dahl’s children’s fiction is located in the genre of fairy tales, however, and the violence analysed as a device inherited from this tradition, its function and effect become clear, as shown in this essay. In a study of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Witches (1985), and Matilda (1988), I find that violence in Dahl’s fiction has three main effects; cautionary, entertaining, and cathartic effects. I also find that the burlesque quality of violence in Dahl’s work makes the charges of criticism less meaningful.