The Swan by Roald Dahl, 1977
The magic trick:
A fictional world of clearly delineated good and evil
We close our week of movie stories with Roald Dahl’s fairly brutal “The Swan,” published in 1977 as part of The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar collection and similarly linked to Henry Sugar in 2023 as one of the four short films Wes Anderson made from Dahl stories.
I find everything in Dahl’s written world – even the classic kids stuff – to be mean-spirited verging on sickening. But even within that expectation, “The Swan” is particularly harsh.
Two bullies accost a bookish classmate birdwatching near a lake. They proceed to harass him to the point of life-threatening torture. It’s not pleasant to read, though surely it’s not supposed to be.
The story is extraordinary for its black and white ethics; its painfully clear line between good and evil. As a reader, you soon find that you give up hope for justice. You just want escape. It’s perhaps a cruel feeling to seek to create as an author. But it’s raw and real and effective.
And that’s quite a trick on Dahl’s part.
The selection:
They were hooligans, these two, and from what Peter read in his father’s newspaper nearly every day, they were not by any means on their own. It seemed the whole country was full of hooligans. They wrecked the interiors of trains, they fought pitched battles in the streets with knives and bicycle chains and metal clubs, they attacked pedestrians, especially other young boys walking alone, and they smashed up roadside cafés. Ernie and Raymond, though perhaps not quite yet fully qualified hooligans, were most definitely on their way.
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