Hoover 1

William Hoover
Mrs. Day
British Literature/ Composition
Period 5
War of Imagination
Roald Dahl is an English writer born on 1916 in Wales to Norwegian parents and as a
child he was rambunctious and resented rules and authority and didnt excel as a student. He had
a wild imagination and wanted to explore the world and once he graduated from college he went
on an expedition to Newfoundland and took a job for Shell Oil Company and stayed in Africa
until 1939. Yearning for more adventures he joined the Royal Air Force during the Second World
War and became an ace, but when he crash landed he became an intelligence officer and went to
Washington D.C. and became an assistant air attach. When he met C.S. Forrester, he told him to
write and when he did it opened up his imagination to a whole new level. As he wrote more and
more his stories became less realistic and more fantastic. When Roald Dahl wrote his stories he
wrote them through life experiences and sometimes how he felt as a child using fanatical
happenings to express his suppressed imagination.
Shot Down Over Libya is a short story written by Dahl in 1942 and was about his life as a
Royal Air Force Fighter and his plane crash. In the story the unknown narrator is trying to
remember who he is and how he ended up in the hospital and recollects what had happened
through a flashback. He had gone through a strafing run in an Italian airbase and had been hit by
anti-air fire and had hit his planes elevators. At first he thought he could make it back, but then

Hoover 2
the elevators had flown off and his plane drove straight into the ground, messing up his face and
back. This story is a direct story to what happened to Dahl as he served as a pilot for the Royal
Air Force in World War 2. Even though Dahl had been hurt in the war, he recovered and flew
again later on.
Dahl had gone through the strafing run in the story and was also hit by anti-air fire and
had also crashed with injuries in the story. It was his first published work and he wrote about his
crash and wrote it as the way it had happened to him. He talks about what had happened to him
and how things went. This crash could have changed his point of view on life and seeing how the
unknown narrator talked you could possibly see how he was as a younger man during a time of
war. This experience with a near brush with death helped expand his imaginative mind for the
later stories that were to come that he wrote. His time in the hospital also helped him partially
discover his writing abilities as he wrote about his crash in Libya and it was a really good story.
It was his beginning of becoming a writer and expanding to fanatical stories.
In the story of The Boy Who Talked With Animals, which was written in 1977, a young
boy named David was on a resort beach in Jamaica with his parents and this story has quite the
imagination. A turtle had landed on the island and the people on the island wanted to kill the
turtle for its meat, David freaks out and tries to save the turtle. The parents tell the people that he
is quite sensitive to animals and they tell David that they can buy a turtle from the owner of the
resort. As the parents are haggling for a price the boy tells the turtle to swim away and the turtle
just looks on at first. Then the boy starts talking in a soft, intimate voice and says Good bye old
man, swim away far this time the turtle does so, but crawls slowly to the ocean. When it finally
hits water, it swims away with such grace and beauty. The boy is then missing, but fishermen say
that they saw him on the shell of the turtle swimming riding away.

Hoover 3
In this story of The Boy Who Talked With Animals it shows how he was as a child, being
rebellious and against authority, mainly towards parents and adults. David went off on his own
with the turtle after it swam away. Its like how after Dahl graduated he went of his own to an
expedition on a boat to Newfoundland and then to Africa. David also went against what the
adults wanted by wanting to let the turtle go than to make it in to turtle steaks. Its like how Dahl
didnt like the rules in his school and didnt really want to go to school and just wanted to go on
with his imaginative mind. This story also shows the fantastical happenings in his childrens
short stories and shows off the imagination he had as a child and why his stories did so well with
children as children also have an expansive imagination.
The ending which had the child riding on the shell of the turtle showed Dahls
imaginative mind that children could relate well with and the rebellion to parental authority
which many children wish to do. Like the stories of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or James
and the Giant Peach, which had stories of children also doing amazing things with unrealistic
things does well with children. Dahl wrote many children stories with Imaginative things which
could be due to his parents making him go to schools with strict rules and policies. The schools
could have restricted his imagination and when he finally left to go live a life of his own he let it
all out. When he started writing it was a way for him to release that imagination of his that was
kept locked up for the longest time and it was the imagination of a child which many children
could relate with. His parents restricting his imagination could be what had helped him be so
successful in writing stories, especially children stories, which he became popular and known for
in writing.

Hoover 4
The two stories have very similar ways and styles of being written and how they end. In
The Boy Who Talked With Animals, it starts with the young boy at the beach and how it starts off
there in Jamaica, like in Shot Down Over Libya, it starts with the narrator in a hospital where he
has to find out how he got there. They both then start in their journeys of trying to fight against
those in charge, like the boy trying to save the turtle and the pilot who attacks an Italian airbase
who is controlling the area. Then at the end they both end in dream-like situations where the boy
is riding on the turtles shell and the pilot vaguely remembering being roughly carried by his
friend and two infantrymen. This has his writings with Jungian archetypes where the child is the
caregiver to the turtle and is a child as he is innocent and doesnt know that killing the turtle is to
eat it and the turtle is the wise old man as he is old and is wise. In Shot Down Over Libya the
hero is the pilots friend who lands to come and take care of him and his injuries and the planes
damage is the trickster as it seems as if he can make it back to base and the damage becomes
worse, causing him to crash.
Roald Dahls stories are written with the help of his life experiences and his suppressed
imagination as a child growing up. In Shot Down Over Libya, he writes about his plane crash
when he was in the Royal Air Force and writes about what had happened through an unknown
narrator. The Boy Who Talked With Animals showed his imagination that he had as a child and it
also showed why his children stories do well with children. In the story, the boy is innocent in
the ways of killing animals for food and defies his parents and adults to save the turtle. The
imagination comes in the end when the boy is seen riding the turtle which as child would
imagine. It shows that he had quite the imagination and children could relate to it.

Hoover 5
Works cited
Shot Down Over Libya, Roald Dahl
The Boy Who Talked With Animals, Roald Dahl