The Joy of Flying
Everything about The Gremlins speaks to a love of flying. Not only is the story about RAF pilots; it was written by an RAF pilot. The plot of the story—such as it is—revolves around getting a pilot injured in a crash back into the cockpit without being grounded as unfit to fly. Even as the gremlins wreak havoc with their planes, the pilots still enthuse joy about the very act of flying. Even though the story takes place during the Battle of Britain in World War II, the pilots and gremlins still express an enthusiasm for being in flight.
Human Resistance to the Inexplicable
The gremlins are really a symbol for the inexplicable. Engine malfunctions and other unexplained mishaps and mayhem aboard planes in flight during World War II pitted pilots against ground crew as each naturally blamed the other for any inexplicable failures. Eventually the mysterious became metaphor and the idea of a gremlin was born not just for the sake of attributing blame, but to act as a cushion between any increasing friction between those in the air and those on the ground. Blaming “gremlins” became a way of dealing rationally with things that are not immediately understandable by creating an irrational culprit as the stand-in for the whomever might actually have been to blame.
Critique of Colonialism
Somewhat hidden beneath the more obvious themes is that of colonialism, a subject which appears again and again in post-WWI British fiction. While it may be seem surprising that this theme shows up in what is essentially a folk or fairy tale for children, keep in mind that very often themes are touched upon by authors without conscious intent. When describing the ancient history of the gremlins as “a tribe of funny little people who were quite different from the rest” who commit to creating havoc aboard plans as a revenge for being displaced from their ancestral home, the possibility that Dahl intended to plant this theme in his story and the possibility that he planted it without even being aware of it are equally plausible and equally likely. That anti-colonial sentiments are explored cannot be denied, however, when a flashback to the origin story includes notably observes the peaceful happiness of the gremlins “until the humans came…with no warning of the invasion” accompanied by “rumbling that shook their little houses and even the big tree” causing a mass native displacement that sounds to the invaders only like “rustling in the carpet of leaves on the forest floor.”
