The year was 1985. The last decade had been a turbulent one for England. Economic deprivation had and a sense of hopelessness about things getting better had stimulated the nihilism of the punk rock movement. The pervasive sense of racial tension, rioting and fear is perfectly captured in the classics song by The Specials, “Ghost Town.” The IRA and the British government continually traded violence for violence. And on September 11, the man who gave what is often considered the most racist speech on the subject of immigration back in 1968 stepped forward to announce that everything he had warned about in that screed was coming to pass. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. And Roald Dahl published The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me.
He would later observe that the intent was wrote something akin to his previous book The Enormous Crocodile, "but I didn't quite bring it off. It's too long. It's a nice book, but it's not another Crocodile.” Many critics agreed both to the negative and positive. Those who enjoy this book found it refreshingly free of Dahl’s usual tendency to introduce darkness into his stories. Those who didn’t like found it not just up to the speed of The Enormous Crocodile but utterly lacking teeth. A good less in teamwork, perhaps, but at the risk of losing readers before the lesson was learned. The general consensus among those praising the book and those writing more lukewarm reviews is that the dominant failure characterizing The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me is its lack of controversial content, a rare bird in the world of Roald Dahl.
In reality, one can extrapolate a certain allegorical context from the story thanks to the period of national upheaval in which it was composed that would actually, ironically, make it one of Dahl’s most controversial stories. When reading Dahl’s books for children, one eventually notices a recurrence of what might be termed nationalist pride or xenophobia depending upon one’s perspective. Dahl is not shy about criticizing citizen of other countries within the context of comparison to the British. Usually, this is pretty much outright with no veil of symbolism or allegory, but on one level there is a deeply symbolic and allegorical reading of this particular book that seems deeply concerned with the issue of changes to England in the post-war society resulting from the influx of immigrants into the United Kingdom.
The giraffe, pelican and monkey can be viewed as symbolic representatives of foreign cultures who move into and completely transform a building which has been apparently been abandoned since the war. In renovating what was once a candy store they quite literally throw out everything including the kitchen sink!
The fortunes of these animals whose ability to talk is never once questioned changed after revealing they are solid citizens by thwarting the attempted robbery of a Duke. Grateful for having his wife’s expensive jewelry collection protected from being stolen by a notorious burglar known as the Cobra, the Duke offers the animals a place to live on his estate in exchange for cleaning his windows and harvesting fruit from his orchards. To do this, they must close down their privately owned business and thus become wards of the estate. As in wards of the state. As in receiving government assistance while meeting a minimum requirement of applied labor.
One can read this seemingly benign and controversy-free Dahl book published in the wake of massive social upheaval dedicated to dismantling the welfare state and reforming the country’s immigration policies—should one so desire—as a blistering critique of the entire social structure of post-WWII British history up to the election of Margaret Thatcher.
