Switch Bitch door Roald Dahl

1. Description:
a. Title: Switch Bitch
Author: Roald Dahl
Date of publication: after 1996, not given precisely!
Number of pages: 140
Publisher: Penguin books

b. I have selected this book, because the title striked me, and after I had read the backside of the book and knew it would be all about sex, I made up my mind. I was also interested what Roald Dahl had written for adults.

c. Summary:

The visitor: An undefined person gets a large wooden case with lots of books in it. Those books are the diaries of his rich Uncle Oswald, a strange man. He wants to publish some of his stories, but isn’t allowed by Oswald’s last will. He finds a story in which nobody can be recognized, and you get to read that. It’s about the journey to the Sinai desert, where Oswald stops to fill his car, but they find out that his fan belt is broken. He has to wait till a new one arrives, but a nice, friendly man arrives in a Rolls Royce, and he invites Oswald to spend the night in his house. Grateful he accepts it, because Aziz seems to be at the same level in thinking as he is. He spends the rest of the day with Aziz’s family: his wife and his extraordinary beautiful daughter Diana. He is playing with both of them, and when he is lying in his bed, someone is coming in the room, and they have a very passionate night. The day after, he notices that both of the women are wearing a scarf, because one of them has a bite in their neck, he thinks. When he is driven to his car, Aziz tells him that he has another daughter. But because she has leprosy, he didn’t see her and only if he has had intimate contact, it would be contagious...
The great switcheroo: Jerry and Samantha are the neighbours of Victor Hammonds and his wife Mary. Jerry has the hots for Samantha, and he makes up a great plan to make love to her, without her noticing it. He tells a story to Jerry, who is quite liquored at the time, and after a day, Jerry comes to him and tells that he has the hots for Mary. They are scheming to switch from their role one night, and in that way make love to the other woman. They work out everything in detail, and then it’s D-Day. Everything is going the way it should. The day after Mary wants to talk to Victor. She explains she’d never enjoyed having sex with him, but she tells him last night was great, really amazing...
The last Act: Anna Cooper is happily married to Ed for 22 years. One day she gets to know he died in a car –accident, and her whole world comes down. For a long time she’s out of the running, and she gets a bit suicidal, even more after her children get out of the house. After a year and a half, a friend needs her at the office because of a real big flu epidemic, and she rolls into the business. Her life gets a new sense of living. One day, she needs to travel to Dallas, Texas for a fight. After she’d done she could, she lying on her bed and gets suicidal again. She remembers an old school boyfriend, and she calls him. He visits her, and after some talking they make love to each other. But when she screams that he has to stop, and he doesn’t, she gets very aggressive and Conrad Kreuger leaves. What has happened after that isn’t clear; it might indicate that Anna killed herself.
Bitch: Here is Uncle Oswald again! This time, a man he once met, calls him up because he had made the greatest invention ever! They give a flashback when he met Henry Biotte. Henry talked a lot about fragrances that make men wild, and in a way they get to rape every woman they see. He talks about some organs in your nose and the one he tells about special isn’t working anymore, and he wants to re-activate it again with a smell. Oswald gives him money for research and then we arrive to where we were. He has found the smell he needed and wants to show Oswald the results in a test. The result is marvelous, the testingperson gets mad, and afterwards he cannot remember a thing he did. Oswald gets one cc, and buys a gadget to make the president look like a fool. In the meantime, Henry’s assistant, Simone Gautier, has stolen all the left fragrance and that kills Henry, because he wasn’t the fittest anymore. When Oswald is working out his plan to make the president look like a fool, something goes wrong and he rapes the first lady.
d. It made me curious: especially with the great switcheroo it was like that. I constantly wondered if the plan was going to work.
For me it was also too recognizable sometimes. When you started reading about making the president look like a fool, I already knew it wouldn’t work out.
Surprising was the end of The visitor. It just gives another thing to the whole story. You get to think about it all the time.
Decent was the way they talked about sex and stuff; I’ve read on one of the first pages that these stories were published in Playboy at first. With that magazine, I’ve a different view of sex than is presented here. That made it a bit unreal for me to believe.

The in-depth analysis

a. Affective: 48. Person: Mary Hammond.
Sunday.
Dear diary, tonight has been the most sensual night I ever had. I really have no idea why Vic changed in our lovemaking routine, but I must confess it was worth it! It made me feel so... liberating. Now I at least know what it’s all about. Maybe it’s because Vic was planning for it or something. That might also be a reason to be less home than he used to. Hope he didn’t tell everything to Jerry, those two seem so close the last period. Some tips exchanged or something? You’ll never know! But there’s is just one thing spinning in my mind... why did Vic react so cool under it, when I told him this? It must have been some sort of liberation for him too... right? Well, anyway, I think I got to go and tell this to Samantha, I just feel like it. We share so many things, I think I shouldn’t hide these kind of things for her. Anyway, I got to take the children to church. Love, Mary.

Cognitive: 25.

Person: Oswald Cornelius.

Problem: curiosity who he is sleeping with, page 48, about the half of the page.
Not solved, because there suddenly came a third possibility, which isn’t that positive if it’s the second daughter he made love to, because of her leprosy.

Person: Anna Cooper

Problem: getting over the death of her husband, pages 82 and 83.
Not solved entirely, because when she is making love to someone else after two years, she is getting really hysterical and the book indicates that she sets herself to suicide.
Meta-cognitive: 21

Artist: Bloodhound gang. Song: the bad touch

Lyrics:
Sweat baby, sweat baby
Sex is a Texas drought
Me and you do the kind of stuff
That only Prince would sing about
So put your hands down my pants
And I bet you'll feel nuts
Yes I'm Siskel, yes I'm Ebert
And you're getting two thumbs up
You've had enough of two-hand touch
You want it rough, you're out of bounds
I want you smothered, want you covered
Like my Waffle House hashbrowns
Comin' quicker than Fed Ex
Never reach an apex
Just like Coca-Cola stock
You are inclined to make me rise an hour early
Just like daylight savings time
Do it now
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
Do it again now
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
So let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
Gettin' horny now
Love the kind, you clean up
with a mop and bucket
like the lost catacombs of Egypt
Only God knows where we stuck it
Hieroglyphics? Let me be Pacific
I wanna go down in your South Seas
But I got this notion
That the motion of your ocean means
"Small Craft Advisory"
So if I capsize on your thighs
High tide B-5 you sunk my battleship
Please turn me on
I'm Mr. Coffee
With an automatic drip
So show me yours, I'll show you mine
"Tool Time"
You'll Lovelett just like Lyle
And then we'll do it doggy style
So we can both watch "X-Files"
You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals
so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel
do it again now

Explanation:

the song is about sex. That’s point number one, because the whole book is about sex. There are also things in it that you can connect to the last story, because it’s about fast lovemaking and stuff. I don’t know how to explain it all, but I just thought about it. It popped into my mind and when you read my summary and the lyrics of this song, there just is a connection.

b. Title:

the title is a combination of two titles in the book: ‘The great switcheroo’ and ‘bitch’. It’s as simple as that. In ‘the great switcheroo’ two men are scheming about ‘switching their bitches’. They do this on the pages 58-63. Quote from page 58: ‘This man, the one I had lunch with today had a terrific letch after the wife of his friend who lived nearby. And his friend had an equally big letch after the wife of the man I had lunch with. (...) What happened was that these two randy sods cooked up a plan which made it possible for each of them to ravish the other’s wife without the wives ever knowing it.’

Genre: it’s not so easy to define. I think it’s an adventure-novel, because there are no historical, psychological etc. things in the book. It’s a book to read just for fun.

Theme: I think the theme is love and especially sex. It returns in every story. In one sentence: sex rules the world. Or something like that.

Point of view: the visitor: first undefined person, then Uncle Oswald. It’s difficult to decide if it’s trustful or not, they are quite flat characters. But I think it can be trusted because it’s written in diaries.

The great switcheroo: the story is told by Victor Hammonds, he was in the story and equal to the other persons named. That might be a bit distrustful because it’s just one point of view. But I think it can be trusted.

The last act: There is some sort of telling person above her. He knows everything. In that way it can be trusted, because he seems to know everything.

Bitch: It’s the same as it was in the visitor: first the undefined person, after that Uncle Oswald. Same conclusion too: it can be trusted because it’s written in diaries.

3. Evaluation

a. The subject: for the visitor it’s probably the travelling through the Sinai desert, because the biggest part of the story is what happens to Oswald, especially the visiting at the castle. For the great switcheroo the subject is, obviously, the switch between the two men. Then, the subject of the last act. I think that will be overcoming someone’s death. And, last but not least: the subject of bitch is surely ‘bitch’, the discovery of the perfume. I think that those subjects are quite interesting, they all lead to the theme of the whole book, which is sex and love. That interests me, and it’s not just because I’m a teenager. I also want to know a lot about it if it’s possible for me to become a sexologist. It’s also something that goes trough my mind. I mean, I’d like to have a house, children and stuff like that when I’m married. It’s like that too in the two stories that aren’t about Uncle Oswald. The vision used for marriage and the switching, like it’s not bad, isn’t like mine: I think they should stick to their own women. I think monogamy should be called more in those stories, because I think it might have had its consequences for some marriages. The writer has written the stories with a bit of a deeper thought, but not every story. For example the visitor: it made me think about safe sex and I think the writer suggested something like that with the story. But the last act was quite ‘flat’ to me.
The events: The event that really made an impact on me, was the one that Mr. Aziz tells to Oswald that he has another daughter, with leprosy. I mean, why don’t you tell that immediately if you already tell that you have a very beautiful daughter, while it’s a stranger? I think in that case you must have some sort of plan in the back of your head that you mislead people to sleep over at your house, and to infect them with leprosy if you don’t like the way he treats your wife and other daughter. Do you know what I mean? The events about the suicidal thoughts of Anna are a point to discuss: because in the end you don’t really get to know what happens. You aren’t sure if they’re necessary to the topic. I hope I can get myself clear in explaining this! I think that the events of the cousin getting the books from Oswald might be superfluous, because it has no further storyline. It wasn’t interesting me too; it made the reading of the book start off a bit slowly. With the great switcheroo I think the thoughts of Victor had the main role, in the last act were the events the most important. Most of the events were worth trusting, they weren’t unbelievable or something. It appears to me that the events were also switching between told detailed and flat. It’s just what happens? Is it interesting? Well, let’s write it that way. That’s the way the writers’ thoughts appear to me.

The characters:

Oswald’s problems are that he doesn’t know whom he had slept with, and that he doesn’t know how to make more of ‘bitch’. But he doesn’t seem to develop or change trough the two stories. Victor wants to sleep with his friend’s wife, and reaches for a way to make that happen. He doesn’t develop in the story; it’s way too short for that. Anna is trying to overcome her husband’s death; she is the only one that really is changing a bit. I want to go in detail about Victor and Oswald. Let’s start with Oswald. He is ‘a wealthy bachelor with unsavoury but glamorous habits who steadfastly refused to have anything to do with his own relatives’ (page 8). ‘If it were regarded solely as a chronicle of a man’s amorous adventures, then without a doubt there was nothing to touch it. Casanova’s Memoirs read like a Parish Magazine in comparison, and the famous lover himself, beside Oswald, appears positively undersexed.’ (Page 9). Oswalds looks: ‘he was a tall, narrow person with a friendly and faintly aesthetic air. His voice was soft, his manner was courteous, and at first sight he seemed more like a gentleman-in-waiting to the queen than a celebrated rapscallion.’ (Page 11). I don’t really identify with him. He seems like a nice man to talk to, but more than that: No way! I can stick to my partners for more than a day, for example. Then we have Victor Hammond. His characteristics aren’t told literally in the book, so I must think of some words myself. Surely he’s not monogamous. He is also a very good talker, or improviser, because he makes up the story about the guy he had lunch with, so that he can bring the idea to Jerry. He some sort of smooth operator. I think he’s also a bit of a go-getter, he makes up lots of things to get what he wants. His looks: he is ‘five foot eleven’ (Page 61), ‘weights 184 pounds’ (page 62). There are no more descriptions about him in the rest of the story. (I read it all over again). I don’t identify with him either. He’s not really monogamous and I am. And I also don’t lie for those kinds of things. There really is no similarity between us.
Structure: The structure of all stories is chronological. The stories about Oswald aren’t right next to each other; they’re the beginning and the end of the whole book. The middle stories are some sort of break, it appears to me. The structure is quite simple: no difficult flashbacks or something like that. I like that; especially because it’s an English book and I don’t understand everything. But it also fits to the stories. The stories are like one event, that is the easy thing about them. You see the events through the eyes of one person, at least in the single stories. That’s also making the book easier with no difficult switching. And I really, really liked that. But with the first and the third story, you still have some questions that aren’t answered. It gives an extra dimension to the story.

b. I liked working on the assignments, but it was difficult to find some that were possible to do. Like reading a book that has been filmed. And at first, I wasn’t able to think of a song that had the same theme as the book did, but just surfing through the web gave me the idea.
The assignments didn’t really help me to understand the story better, because they were quite easy to understand.