The broken logic of using a linguistic band-aid for Roald Dahl

Yes, we should do something about Roald Dahl, but editing his books isn’t the answer

Photo by Pete Wright on Unsplash

When I was very young, my dad read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach to me. When I was slightly older, I read Matilda and The Witches. In high school, I read Roald Dahl short stories as part of my grade nine English class. Like so many kids, for several generations, I grew up with Roald Dahl’s words and the film adaptations of them as the cultural staples of the playground. As a child, I knew nothing about Roald Dahl the man. I could say the same about many authors whose work or names floated around my life, and whose personal behaviour and beliefs have caused me to question my relationship with their work. Examples of this would include Charles Dickens, Leo Tolstoy, and Alice Walker, the last of whom cannot rely on the leeway provided by the “different era” rationale as an excuse for the Antisemitic poems published on her website. 

The discussion of how we approach works that contain problematic language and themes or individuals who hold problematic views is one that I am not alone in struggling with. Conversations about whether to censor or explain Huckleberry Finn have been taking place for years now, and different answers are being reached all the time. That is, perhaps, why the decision to edit the language in Roald Dahl’s work to remove words like “fat” and to explain that witches are not the only ones who wear wigs is a controversial one. 

It’s controversial because of how incredibly selective it is. If a decision has been made that we are going to address Roald Dahl, then we need to actually address Roald Dahl. 

As was put so well by David Baddiel, if we are going to have a discussion about whether it is offensive or problematic to describe Augustus Gloop as “fat” in a work intended for children, but we aren’t going to engage in a conversation about Dahl’s sincerely held belief that Hitler must have chosen the Jews for a reason, then aren’t we sort of missing the point? We run the risks of embarking on a never-ending cycle of linguistic modification and beautification while simultaneously painting over the deeper conversation that needs to take place. 

The edits that are currently being made reflect the current standards of political correctness. Decisions like editing the fantasy section of Matilda to reference to Jane Austen, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway, individuals who also may not long be free from scrutiny themselves, parse with the way we now regard certain historical actions, in lieu of Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. The same could be said about the decision to edit language that reinforces a negative association with higher body weight referred to earlier, as we have changed the ways we talk about bodies image, particularly with children. The complication that arises from this, as hinted at with the potential future scrutiny of individuals like Ernest Hemingway, in particular, is that there is no end point. What is considered to be politically correct, or appropriate is an ever-moving target. Once we have opened the door to editing the language of our classic texts in order to keep them relevant with the times, the editing and replacing of words is potentially endless. 

Yet, at the same time, editing the language is band-aid mascarading as a cure. If we edit the words of Dahl, bring them up to the standard of how we would speak today, we can say that we have addressed the problem with him without getting to the larger issue. 

The question of separating artists from their art comes up over and over. For so many of us who are members of visible and invisible minorities, we must constantly make decisions about whether we are going to overlook racist, sexist, and homophobic inclinations of artists to allow us to consume their art. Dahl is an artist on this list. While his Antisemitism did not permeate his work, unlike that of T.S. Eliot or E.E. Cummings, it was certainly a belief that he felt comfortable sharing in other forums. Once the powers that be have finished, for now, the process of combing Dahl’s work for word-choice nits, it is entirely likely that they will wash their hands and declare the situation resolved. Except it won’t be. Instead, what will have happened is that a workaround will have been provided to avoid discussing Dahl’s Antisemitic views. 

There will undoubtedly be those who argue that Dahl wrote children’s books and it is too complicated for children to understand the nuance of an author being Antisemitic, so we are better to fix what we can: the language. But that argument falls flat for a number of reasons. Firstly, children experience Antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and many are likely capable of having a discussion about these things, at the very least on some level. And if they’re not, there are so many other children’s authors whose works could fill the place of Dahl’s in curricula and bedtime stories until a child is ready to engage in that conversation. Recall that I said at the beginning of this piece that I read Dahl’s short stories in high school, and by then young people are certainly mature enough to grasp that level of nuance. We have seen that very clearly in the way divided opinions about J.K. Rowling have been expressed online. 

I don’t believe in cancel culture, but I do believe David Baddiel was right when he said that we should either cancel Dahl entirely or leave his works alone. Either we are making a serious effort to engage in a discussion about the problematic elements of a beloved children’s author’s character or we’re not. Grasping for the low-hanging fruit isn’t an answer.