He walked around a double-decker bus which was standing upright in the middle of the road, and as he went past it he saw through the open glassless windows that the bus was full of people, all sitting in their places, silent, immobile, as though they were waiting for the bus to start again. But their faces were scorched and seared and half-melted and all of them had had their hats blown off their heads so that they sat there bald-headed, scorch-skinned, grotesque, but very upright in their seats.
Roald Dahl has always been a writer whose particular literary style opened himself up to descriptive terms like “macabre.” But in describing the aftereffects of nuclear devastation courtesy of a third world war, his imagery moves knee-deep into the sphere of gruesome. And the ravages so described here do stand in isolation. Dahl may be casually labeled a dark writer, but this tale is Dahl at his darkest and the usual softening technique of comic irony is either absent entirely or varnished with a thin veneer. He himself was notoriously harsh in his criticism of the book, even going so far as to question the intellectual validity of reissuing the text in paperback with the rhetorical caveat asking why anyone would want to carry around such a story in that portable medium.
“The situation,” said the Chief of the Air Marshalls again, “is serious. What the hell are we
going to do about it?”
“About what?” said the one who was excavating his ear.
“About Gremlins, of course.”
“We must fix them,” said the one who was scratching his back.
“We must take immediate action,” said the one who was cleaning his nails.
“We must issue the necessary orders,” said the one who was rustling a bag of coughdrops.
“Absolutely,” said the one who was looking out of the window and thinking of his lunch.
“Agreed,” said the Chief. He was more intelligent than the others. “But what shall we do
first, Sir Hubert,” he said, looking sternly at his deputy, “what do you suggest as the first
step?”
“Have lunch,” said Sir Hubert who was noted everywhere for his snap decisions.
With that the conference broke up.
The novel has been described as anti-war story. Published in 1948, that would make it not just the first novel about nuclear annihilation, but one of the first anti-war novels to come out of the experiences of World War II. Most of the novels which either preceded Dahl’s or came along immediately in its wake were perhaps conflicted views of the actual military experience, but most assuredly not definitely anti-war novels: The Naked and the Dead, The Young Lions, From Here to Eternity. And even when the anti-war takes on World War II finally did arrive, they were much more distinctly comic. That being said, there is a definite strain of humor running in this particular passage which strongly foreshadows the most famous anti-war novel that World War II produce. The rhythm, the satirical undermining of authority and the chaotic content with the abrupt ending written here by Dahl could quite easily be inserted into Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 without changing a word. One can only wonder if the tone of the entire book had mirror this excerpt would the novel have become a big enough commercial success that it would not have fallen out of print for over half a century.
He saw salvo upon salvo of huge thin missiles shaped like tall trees shooting up from the surface of the earth in the Eastern Hemisphere, up into the stratosphere and across the world at five thousand miles an hour; he saw them falling vertically downward to burst one over every city of Europe; he saw them bursting and he saw appearing clouds of deadly Virus Mist which floated a while and fell slowly down upon the heads of those below.
Instead of the robust Heller-esque comic burlesque satirizing those in authority, the book moves inexorably toward a tone much more in keeping with Dahl’s notorious misanthropic view toward humanity. Once it becomes evidence that that the narrative is on a fast track toward wiping out the entire human race and leaving the future of the planet in the hands of the underqualified Gremlins, the mood grows darker and darker. All attempts at undercutting the nihilistic sense of hopelessness with humor—even the biting ironic humor which characterizes so much of Dahl’s work—is thrown to the side. It becomes ever clearer that the author has adopted the elements of fantasy from which he would extract career success writing children’s story for the purpose of a bleak dystopic vision. And for most readers, the disconnect at play is probably too difficult to overcome. For others, however, it is a journey worth trying to track down.
