Children's Rights in Roald Dahl’s Selected Young People's Fiction

Abstract

This study investigates Roald Dahl’s ideas about the rights of the children which are assumed to be blended in ten selected Dahlian stories for the children: James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Magic Finger (1966), The Enormous Crocodile (1978), The Twits (1980), George’s Marvelous Medicine (1981), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), Matilda (1988), and The Minpins (1991). Tracing the author’s personal life, it was found that Roald Dahl was mistreated by his school masters and older school boys when attending British boarding schools. In addition, the Dahlian children’s books were written in the second half of the twentieth century. The campaigns for equality and liberty from the marginalized groups such as black people, gays and lesbians, women, and children were vigorously launched during this period. For these reasons, the research topic has been established on the ground that Dahl’s writings for the young people were inspired by both the biographical legacy and sociopolitical events.

Psychologically, the oppressed children whose rights are violated must adjust and respond appropriately in order to survive and live on. Besides, they have to employ dreams or fantasy to help them to get away from miseries caused by oppression or the violations of their rights. That’s why Roald Dahl whose rights used to be violated had to adjust himself by dreaming of the world which rights, equality, freedom and privileges are endowed to the children. In other words, we can say that the children are equal to or better than the adults in Roald Dahl’s world. At the same time, the selected Dahlian children’s stories can be deemed the writer’s opposition against the violations of the rights of the children while functioning as a healing potion to cure the writer himself from his childhood pain. Thus, it is discernible that the selected Dahlian young people’s books have been used by their writer to voice for the rights of the children.

The chosen Dahlian stories have been created in the second half of the twentieth century, from 1964 to 1991. The period is called postmodernism. Therefore, the philosophical ideas of Postmodernism impact on these Dahlian books. Postmodern concepts have been created as the reactions against pre-modernism and modernism. Based on these logics, many literary aspects in the Dahlian children’s books have been created to be different from those found in the traditional children’s stories, particularly, the child protagonists and the social institutions such as school and family.

The investigation unveils that children’s oppression dominates other issues in all ten selected Dahlian books for the young people. Oppression violates the rights of the children. In Dahl’s works, children’s oppression and the calamities of the violations of the rights of the children have been condemned whereas the adult antagonists who are children’s rights violators have been severely punished. In parallel with the core principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, these issues that the child protagonists encounter in books are identical to those mentioned in the Convention. Children’s rights to survival, development and protection have been harmoniously projected in all ten selected Dahlian children’s stories.

By using his stories to manifest the adverse effects of children’s oppression or the violations of the rights of the children, Roald Dahl expects to gain sympathy for the oppressed children from his readers. Reading Dahl’s stories for the children, readers will be very well-aware of the rights of the children. With an awareness of children’s rights, the children who have been oppressed for a long period of time will be treated better. Moreover, the matters concerning the well-being, safety, liberty and overall development of the children will be seriously taken into account by the society.

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