“Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The
difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but
in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth…Even the most
civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.” This quote by Karl von Clausewitz fully
exemplifies what Mark I. West is trying to say in his critical essay called
“Mastering the Macabre.” This review is
about how all the short stories of the author Roald Dahl have a distinguishing
configuration in that the main characters do not respond well to pressure. Once evil characteristics such as fear,
greed, and anger are experienced, the passion of civilized men overtakes the
well-mannered surface. The innate
passion combined with these feelings lead to poor judgment, savage, immoral
behavior, and bad outcomes.
Many
of Roald Dahl’s stories, including “Man From the South,” are composed together
in a collection called Someone Like You. These stories start out with the characters
being average, every day, civilized people.
However, West argues that in all of them, once faced with pressure,
these people drastically can change. In
“Man From the South,” the naval cadet could obviously see that the old man
willing to give him a car in exchange for the cadet’s finger off a mere bet was
irrational. The sailor’s initial
judgment is that the man is crazy, but in the end his greed takes over. A once well-behaved naval cadet is now completely
reckless and accepts the bet, merely because he could not handle the pressure.
Another
one of Dahl’s stories in this collection is called “Lamb to Slaughter.” This story is about an average married couple
that eats dinner together every night.
One night, as the woman is preparing the meal, the man confesses to be
having an affair and wanting a divorce.
The woman takes a frozen lamb leg and kills the man with a bash over the
head. The rest of the story she cleverly
is able to hide that she was the murderer.
This savage behavior is brought on by the feelings of fear and anger. Fear that her husband is leaving her coupled
with anger that he is cheating on her, causes the woman to respond in a way no
one would have expected. Also, the fact
that she is able to hide the murder like she was a trained assassin brings to
thought if she was ever really civilized to being with. Or if she had murder potential in her the
whole time, and had just been able to suppress this aspect of herself until the
pressure was too intense.
Through various examples of short
stories by Roald Dahl, West clearly displays the underlying theme in all of
them. The theme that no matter how
educated and gentleman-like a person may appear, they are still capable of evil
deeds when confronted with difficulties.
Whether the main characters experienced a feeling of greed, of
jealously, anger, or fear, an innate characteristic came out in them that
caused them to act uncivilized. West is
trying to show Dahl’s readers that his main message in his stories was to never
believe what you see, as there is always more to people than seen at first
glance. He is also teaching readers a
little about themselves by telling them to keep their emotions in check and try
to avoid bad situations, as anyone can do something out of character if they
give into evil characteristics.
Works Cited
West, Mark I. "Mastering the
Macabre." Roald Dahl. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. 36-59.
Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg
and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 173. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource
Center. Web. 27 Sep. 2011.
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