Essay Questions

What does Miss Trefusis mean by “going barmy?”

“Going barmy” in this case is the British slang equivalent to the more familiar phrase “going native.” When she tells Dahl that “People go quite barmy when they live too long in Africa” what she means is that they tend to lose quite a bit of those characteristics usually attributed to the British. Dahl’s immediate model for this idea is Major Griffiths and his wife running around the ship of the deck “naked as an ape” but Miss Trefusis rejects his premise with the rather surprising assertion about the Griffiths being “that’s normal.” The idea of “going barmy” is raised very soon in the narrative and comes quickly upon Dahl’s observation that British people who move to “foul and sweaty climate” can only maintain the sanity of being British in a world that distinctly isn’t by “ allowing themselves go slightly dotty” and “cultivate bizarre habits that would never be tolerated back home.”

How does Dahl's experiences in Going Solo show up in his later fiction written for children?

Some of the experiences Dahl writes about in this memoir later show up in fictional form relatively undisguised in his stories written for adults. “An African Story” is, for example, a fictionalized version of the story told here about the confrontation between a native man and a black mamba. In addition, many of his war stories related in this volume become the stimulus for the material showing up in a collection of wartime stories. Africa as a place—a concept and an idea—also becomes important in his stories for kids, however. The Enormous Crocodile is a children’s story that brings fully to life the romantic portrait of the continent which excited Dahl from the very beginning before he ever got there. In addition, African animals make up the title characters of The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me. Even the Oompa-Loompas working for Willy Wonka have an origin story which traces back to Dahl’s years in Africa.