The wonderful story of Henry Sugar door Roald Dahl

1. Title: The wonderful story of Henry Sugar

2. Author: Roald Dahl

3. Notes on the author, his life, work, time:

Roald Dahl was born on September 13, 1916 in Cardiff, Wales. He was the third of four children and the only son of Harald and Sofie Dahl. Harald was a prosperous ship-broker. In January 1920, Roald's sister Astri died of appendicitis at the age of seven. Two months later, Harald died of pneumonia. Many around him believed that he died of a broken heart. After finishing high school in 1934, Roald went to work for the Shell Oil Company. He underwent training in England for three years, after which he was sent to East Africa (Wonderful 189). Dahl relished his time in Africa. He was in his mid twenties and in the mood for an adventure. He went to Kenya, Dar-es-Salaam, where h was to be based, the capital of Tanganyika (now Tanzania) and Zanzibar along the way. He would later recount his adventures at Shell and his subsequent experiences as an RAF pilot in his 1986 book, Going Solo.

For me personally, Roald Dahl has always been one of my favourite writers. I was reading his books when I was 10/11 years and I enjoyed them very much. Dahl can interest you very easily and pull you into a story, that you can’t stop reading. I also liked his sense of humor. At this moment I haven’t read any books of Roald Dahl for a few years, until I saw this English book. As soon as I started reading I recognised his typical way of writing immediately, and I enjoyed it a lot.

4. Edition published by: Heinemann / New windmills
Year of first publication: 1977
Number of pages: 221
Hardback @ paperback O
Part of a series of matching novels yes O no @

5. Genre:

novel O novelette O Short story(ies) @
drama O poetry O non-fiction O

6. Structure of the work

a) division into chapters O acts @
books O scenes O
episodes O parts O

-From here on, all the questions are answered for two stories out of this book. The first answer is always about the story ‘The boy who could talk with animals’, the second answer is about ‘the hitch-hiker’.

b) introduction

* social setting:
1) -The I-person is a normal person from England, having vacation in Jamaica
-Mr.Edwards is the owner of the hotel at Jamaica. He will be pretty rich.
-The boy who is protecting the turtle is just a boy from England, on vacation with his parents.
2)-The I-person is a writer from England. He will probably be successful, because he has just bought a BMW.
-The hitch-hiker is an unemployed person who steels stuff from people.

*geographical setting:
1) The whole story takes place at the coast of Jamaica.
2) The story takes places on the way to London. (so probably at less than 100 miles distance from London)

*historical setting:
1) This story takes place ‘not so long ago’, so that means it has been between 1950 and 1977.
2)
It’s a sunny day in summer. The writer doesn’t say when it takes place, but the main person drives a new BMW 3.3, which doesn’t say much, but we can conclude it will also have been between 1950/1960 and 1977.

c) initial incident:
1) The story starts on the day that the turtle has been catched on the beach in Jamaica.
2) The story starts at the moment that the driver of the car sees the hitch-hiker and decides to give him a lift.

d) climax:
1) The climax is at the moment that the fishermen come to tell that the boy is gone sitting on the back of the turtle.
2) The moment that the driver thinks they’re in big trouble, and the hitch-hiker shows the small book of the policeman. For me this was the ultimate climax.

7 Account for the title:

‘The wonderful story of Henry Sugar’ is of course the title of one of the story inside the book. This story is about a man, Henry Sugar, who discovered miracles. It is described at the end of this book-report.

8 Theme(s) of the work:

1) The theme here I would describe like ‘animal love’ or ‘adventure’. Nobody understands the feelings of this boy and at the end the boy is the lucky one, and everyone else is left frustrated.
2) The theme here could be ‘good-hearted’ or ‘unreal magic’. The hitch hiker is like Robin Hood: he steels from the rich to give it to the poor. The way he steels is like magic, but it isn’t magic in real, because it’s no trick.

9 Characters:

Main characters:
1) -the boy. He is a young boy with a very strong love for animals. He is willing to give his life if they want to kill the turtle.
2) -the hitch-hiker. He is the one who makes the story interesting, and because of him the story ends well. He is a man, looking very creepy, with a rat-face. He is a thief, but he doesn’t want to say this, he prefers to be seen as a sort of a Robin Hood-type.

10 Minor characters:

1) -Mr.Edwards, he is the hotel-owner who only wants two things: no trouble with his hotel (keeping a good name) and second as much money as possible.
-the I-person: we see everything through his eyes. He is a tourist on Jamaica, having a strange feeling since the moment he arrived on Jamaica.
2) -The driver, he is a man who has just bought a new car and is proud of it. He is a writer.
-The policeman, he stops them and tells them that they’re in trouble after they were driving too fast.

11 The way the stories are told:

I-narration @ Multiple narration O
Third person narration O The all-knowing narrator O

12 Type(s) of language used:

Formal language O everyday language @
(in some story’s Dahl used some ‘funny wrong’ language, in this typically Dahl-way)
Dialect O slang O

13 My own opinion about this book:

Like I already said, I like the style of writing of Roald Dahl very much. I have also read this book with pleasure. The book started very funny and interesting, most of the time when I began reading a story I didn’t like it very much, but after a few pages I was totally ‘into’ the story and read it with pleasure. Only the last two stories were less interesting, because it were non-fiction stories of Dahl, about his own life, and it was a bit difficult to understand the way everything with the airplane crash went.
I will mark the funny parts in my summary of the book, so that you understand a bit why I enjoy reading Dahl-language…

14 (short) summary:

The boy who could talk to animals
The I-person is on holidays in Jamaica. He feels uncomfortable. He hears that one Mr. Wasserman has been smashed to death by a coconut falling out of a tree. (funny: the
I-person always walks in a half circle around this tree. The girl who tided his room explained: ‘‘it’s of course not very smart to walk under a coconut tree, with a breeze blowing’’)
At once, fishermen have found an enormous turtle at the beach. All the tourists of the hotel are watching at it. At the moment that they are pulling the turtle with ropes to the hotel, there is an 8 year old boy, loudly screaming and being held by his parents. The boy is crazy about animals, says his father. The boy runs to the turtle and, in front of all shocked and scared people, puts his arms around the neck of the big (dangerous) turtle. Then the manager of the hotel, Mr. Edwards, comes out. He has bought the turtle from the fishermen, and wants to kill it. The father of the boy tries to tell the manager not to kill the turtle, because his son will become totally hysteric. The father manages to buy the turtle from Mr. Edwards and lets the fishermen put it back into the water. The next morning, there is big panic in the hotel, because the ‘turtle-boy’ disappeared. But then, while Mr. Edwards is talking to two policemen, the two fishermen come running totally hysteric from the boat. They tell that they’ve seen the boy, on the back of the back turtle.
One year later, there has only been one sign of the boy again, and that’s that a group of people at the Bahamas signalled an enormous turtle with a boy on its back…
The writer says that probably this boy is now the most happy person of all, and chances of returning will be very small…

The hitch-hiker
The I-person has just bought a new car, a BMW. He is driving to London in it. While driving he sees a hitch-hiker and stops to take him along. When they are driving, the hitch-hiker challenges the driver to prove that his car can go 129 miles per hour. At 120 Mph, they get catched by a policeman. He tells them that they (particularly the driver of course) are in big problems. When they are driving again, they starts talking about their jobs. The driver explains he is a writer. The hitch-hiker does a bit mysteric about his job. But then he shows a belt, a shoelace, a watch, an agenda, etc. They are all from the driver. He explains he has got ‘fantastic fingers’. The driver is impressed. He asks if he’s a pickpocket but he prefers to call himself a ‘fingersmith’.
(funny example: ‘’Listen, I could take false teeth out of your mouth if I wanted and you wouldn’t even catch me!’’ ‘’I don’t even have false teeth’’, I said. ‘’I know you don’t’’, he answered. ‘’Otherwise I’d ‘ave ‘ad ‘em out long ago!’’)
In the end, the fingersmith shows the book from the policeman, with all their names, addresses and the car number. ‘’Easiest job I ‘ave ever done’’, he announced proudly…

The Mildenhall treasure
On one day, a farmer called Gordon Butcher, drives in the morning to the land of a man called Ford. Gordon has to plough up the land for him with his tractor. For the first time this piece of land would be ploughed for twelve inches deep, because there will be sugar-beets in it. While Gordon is ploughing the land, something happens that makes him stop the tractor and take a look. He sees some blue-green metal. At that moment, Gordon runs away and decides to get Ford to the place. Together with Ford, who is totally excited, they start digging. In the end they have found 34 dishes, bowls, goblets etc.
The law in England says that if you find silver or gold, you have to report it to the police and give it to the state as soon as possible. The state will pay you then. Ford is worrying because the law also says that the FINDER gets the reward, in case that the finder is hired by someone. (and this is the case now)
But Ford is very selfish. He decides to tell Gordon that it’s just some old stuff, and sends Gordon home. Gordon doesn’t realise at all that this stuff could be worth millions and goes home.
Ford spends years and years for cleaning those pieces and takes very much care of everything. He has to keep everything for himself, because if someone would discover it, the story will become public and he would lose everything. But then, at one day, dr. Hugh Aderson Fawcett comes to visit Ford. He is an archeologist who visits Ford once in 7 or 8 years normally. Before he is leaving again, he sees two silver spoons and is totally astonished. Ford hopes that he doesn’t see them, but it’s already too late. He wants to know everything about them, and Ford knows that he has to go to the police to report everything now.
The jury (court) decides in the end that a measure of compensation will be paid to both (Gordon and Ford). They receive both two thousand pounds. This is typically for the story now: Gordon is totally happy with the 2000 pounds he received unexpected, while Ford is totally depressed because he has lost his treasure that could be worth millions…

The wonderful story of Henry Sugar
Henry Sugar is a 41-yeas old wealthy man. He isn’t married. He stays most pf the time at places with other rich men, trying to get more and more money. At one day he is with some other rich men at the house of Sir William Wyndham. When the men are playing cards, he noses around in the library. He finds a small book, which fascinates him very much. The story goes like this:
Imhrat Kan is a man who says he is able to see without his eyes. He proves a lot of times that he isn’t only saying this, but to show that it is true indeed. Imhrat Kan gets in contact with a doctor. This doctor is ‘flabbergasted’ by his tricks. He asks Imhrat to tell him how he learned to do this. Normally he wouldn’t tell this story, but because he trusts this doctor very much he tells him. He was born in India, and was obsessed by a professor Moor. But he finds out that it’s not magic, what this professor shows, but trickery. He is disappointed and goes looking for a ‘yogi’ who can teach him real magic. He goes to find yogi Banerjee. It seems that when he is praying (alone), he lifts up from the ground. After a while Imhrat finds him. He asks him if he could be a disciple of him. The yogi says that’s impossible. Every evening, Imhrat is going to watch the yogi secretly until the yogi finds out about this and gets furious. After a few times the yogi has got enough of it, and writes a letter for sending Imhrat to an other yogi. Imhrat goes to visit this ‘yogi of Hardwar’. He learns to concentrate deeply. Three years long he is practising every evening. In Dacca, he gets his chance then: he can be a fire-walking volunteer in front of a big public. He tries it with big concentration, and shows that it’s no problem for him. Everyone is impressed. After this, he remembers something that Yogi of Hardwar said to him: ‘’Certain holy people have been known to develop so great a concentration that they could see without using their eyes.’’ He started exercising this and after a while he managed in this. He showed to the doctor that he could see with all the pieces of his body. The day after this, the doctor came to the theatre to watch his show, but everything was empty. Imhrat died on that night. Nobody will ever exactly know how he did it. This is were this book ends.
Henry, who has just read the book, is astonished. He is thinking. What will happen when he can see through cards? He will win millions in every casino! From that moment on, Henry starts practising every day twice to concentrate on a candle holder and on his own face. After 3 years and 3 months he is able to read a card within 4 seconds. He goes to the casino, where he finds out that it’s more difficult not to win than to win with blackjack and roulette.
Roald Dahl gives an example of how the story COULD end, before he starts telling the real story. Henry wakes up the next morning, and decides he doesn’t want the money that he won the day before. He starts throwing the money from his balcony down the street, and in no-time there is a big chaos in his street. A policeman arrives and starts to question Henry about his stupid behaviour. The policeman told him angry and full of emotions that he could better give his money to and orphanage then. This was something that put Henry thinking. Henry realised this idea wasn’t so bad at all and called his trusted accountant, John Winston, to talk about how they could do this best immediately. John Winston agreed with Henry. He moved with his family to Switzerland as soon as possible, and Henry started to go to casinos every day. Everything went well for years. But then, a few people marked that Henry was winning very much in 3 casinos of the same owner within a very short time. Henry escaped and realised he had to do something. He decided to hire a Hollywood visagist called Max. From that moment, Henry had an other personality every evening, so that he couldn’t be recognised.
Their company Orphanages S.A. grew with millions a year. At the age of 63, Henry died. At that moment, he had made one hundred and forty four million pounds. The writer of this story, had been called personally by John Winston after the dead of Henry. John and Max told him to write every word down on paper. Without calling Henry’s real name.
And that is exactly what the writer did.

Lucky break – How I became a writer
The I-person is asking himself ‘how do become people a fiction-writer?’ He explains some things and gives answers to some questions. Then he starts to tell about his youth. At school where he, as an 8 years old boy, was treated violently. At prep school, the only thing he enjoyed, were the lessons in English literature on Saturday morning given by Mrs. O’Connor. He describes the new school he went to with 13 years old, where everything was even worse. After this period, he wants to travel abroad. This ambition could become true by working at the Shell Oil Company. At 21, he travelled by ship to East Africa. In 1938 he moved to Tanzania and lived there for two years. Then the war with Germany came. During this war he was in a plane that crashed down, this story will be told in the next and last story of this book. He managed to get out and survived it, but he had to stay in a hospital till April 1941. When he was 26-years old, after a lot of travelling, the famous writer C.S. Forester knocked on his door in Washington and asked him to tell his story about the war. While telling this, everything didn’t seem to go quite well. He offered Forester to send his story by mail. Forester agreed with this. Forester reacted totally enthusiastic because he was deeply impressed by his story. He sent it to the Saturday Evening Telegraph and it turned out to be a success. His career as a writer had started at that moment.
Even the president invited him on a day because his wife loved to read his stories to their children. Further he explains that he doesn’t like to write non-fiction. He also tells that as a writer you have to write your story down immediately on the moment that you get the ideas about something. That’s how he ends his story: he always needs to have a beginning plot in his notebook, before he starts to write this particular story.
(This was also the real-life story of Roald Dahl, I concluded after reading this)

A piece of cake
This is the story where Roald Dahl describes his flying adventures in the war. He tells about how they all got into the plane, and how the ‘Gladiator’ crashed down a few minutes later. When he got out of the plane, he saw Peter, who survived too. (funny: ‘’Peter, what happened to my nose?’’ ‘’It actually doesn’t seem to be there very much,’’ Peter answered…)
They started to paint funny pictures on the airplanes. Dahl and Peter were already found by English men and they were waiting for the Germans to attack them. They were closed down between the Germans and the Italians fighting. Then some things happen that are not very clear, his thoughts go a bit crazy, he describes that he is running and running because he can’t control his legs. It seems that he has been inconscious for a long time. He wakes up in a hospital in Alexandria. This is the end of his story.