I think that all the love he had felt for my mother when she was alive he now lavished upon me. During my early years, I never had a moment’s unhappiness or illness and here I am on my fifth birthday.
At the beginning of the book, Danny comments on how his father raised him alone following Danny's mother's sudden, unexplained death. In this passage, Danny speculates that his father transferred to him all the love that had earlier gone to Danny's mother. The result is that although Danny's and his father's lives are marked by tragedy, they honor Danny's mother's memory by treating each other with love and kindness.
I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile, because it’s impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren’t feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I’ve also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it, so watch out, I say, when someone smiles at you with his mouth but the eyes stay the same. It’s sure to be bogus.
In this passage, Danny reveals his perceptiveness by describing the way his father smiles with not just his mouth but his eyes as well. Wise for a child, Danny has the ability to discern between a genuine smile like his father's and a false smile flashed by someone trying to deceive him. The passage is significant because it defines Danny's father as a genuinely kind-hearted man despite the illegal poaching activities he engages in.
You will learn as you get older, just as I learned that autumn, that no father is perfect. Grown-ups are complicated creatures, full of quirks and secrets. Some have quirkier quirks and deeper secrets than others, but all of them, including one’s own parents, have two or three private habits hidden up their sleeves that would probably make you gasp if you knew about them.
In a rare direct address to the reader, Danny's narration takes a turn as he delves into his father's secret habit of pheasant poaching. In this passage, Danny withholds the revelation, first making a general claim about the way a child's fantasy of their parent will inevitably be undermined by deeper truths as the child grows up.
"Your grandad," he said, "my own dad, was a magnificent and splendiferous poacher. It was he who taught me all about it. I caught the poaching fever from him when I was ten years old and I’ve never lost it since."
After the astonishing revelation that Danny's father, an otherwise upstanding man, has a secret habit of stealing wildlife from Hazell's Wood, Dahl continues to surprise Danny and the reader. In this passage, Danny's father explains that Danny comes from a long line of poachers, Danny's grandfather having been notorious for devising new methods of trapping pheasants without weapons. The information that Danny's father was inducted into the world of poaching at ten is significant, because it parallels the initiation Danny is receiving at nine.
“Mind you, in those days just about every man in our village was out in the woods at night poaching pheasants. And they did it not only because they loved the sport but because they needed food for their families. When I was a boy, times were bad for a lot of people in England. There was very little work to be had anywhere, and some families were literally starving. Yet a few miles away in the rich man’s wood, thousands of pheasants were being fed like kings twice a day. So can you blame my dad for going out occasionally and coming home with a bird or two for the family to eat?”
On top of the revelation that his grandfather and father are poachers, Danny learns that the entire community used to poach out of necessity, having to steal from the wealthy gentry to supplement the meager food they could buy. In this passage, Danny's father explains the injustice of a world in which humans starved while pheasants are "fed like kings" in the vicinity. The passage is significant because it builds on the themes of class antagonism and community solidarity, both of which motivate Danny's father and other townspeople to reclaim what should rightfully be shared.
"You could go to prison for poaching," my father said. There was a glint and a sparkle in his eyes now that I had never seen before.
In this passage, Danny notices how his father has a sparkle in his eye at the notion of being imprisoned for poaching. The incongruence between his statement and his body language suggests that Danny's father is thrilled by the danger inherent in poaching, something he does not just for meat but for sport. The passage is significant because it foreshadows the same thrill Danny will later experience as he is inducted into the world of poaching.
Mr. Victor Hazell was a roaring snob and he tried desperately to get in with what he believed were the right kind of people. He hunted with the hounds and gave shooting parties and wore fancy waistcoats. Every week-day he drove his enormous silver Rolls-Royce past our filling-station on his way to the brewery. As he flashed by we would sometimes catch a glimpse of the great glistening beery face above the wheel, pink as a ham, all soft and inflamed from drinking too much beer.
In this passage, Danny uses harsh, insulting language to introduce Mr. Hazell, the book's antagonist. A classic children's story villain, Hazell has no redeeming qualities. He behaves ostentatiously, looks grotesque, and aspires to be accepted by similarly deplorable people while treating honest folk like Danny's father with contempt. This passage is significant because it establishes how unsympathetic Hazell is, ensuring the reader is on Danny's side for their impending conflict.
"If only I could find a way of knocking off a couple of hundred birds all in one go, then Mr. Hazell’s party would be the biggest wash-out in history!"
After he falls in a pit dug as a trap in Hazell's Wood, Danny's father hopes to get revenge against the villainous landowner. He realizes Hazell's annual shooting party is coming up, and wonders how he could poach all the pheasants before the lords arrived to hunt them. The passage is significant because it prompts Danny to invent the most ingenious pheasant-trapping method in history.
It takes guts to do that, I thought. Terrific guts. If I’d been alone I would never have stayed there for one second. But my father was in a sort of poacher’s trance. For him, this was it. This was the moment of danger, the biggest thrill of all.
While flat on their bellies on the ground in Hazell's Wood, Danny and his father toss sleeping pill–laced raisins into a clearing full of pheasants. Danny watches nervously as his father locks into a trance-like state, unshaken by the presence of the nearby keeper. The passage is significant because it builds on the theme of defiance, showing how Danny's father gets a thrill out of doing things for which he could easily be caught.
Ah yes, and something else again. Because what I am trying to tell you…What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.
In the last paragraph of the book, Danny summarizes his feelings about his father, dubbing him "the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had." In this passage, Danny uses the hyperbolic language of a child to convey the affection he feels for a man who has never disappointed him, and who has remained resilient despite financial and emotional hardship. With this conclusion, Dahl conveys that the book is less about the excitement of poaching than it is about the strength of Danny and his father's bond.
