Essay Questions

Why does the little boy's mother believe that he is telling lies about the voice in his stomach?

The little boy is constantly hungry, and even when he is not hungry anymore is still eating because he is a greedy little boy who is very fat because he eats too much cake and too much candy. She thinks that he is making up a story because he is not allowed any food, and he is trying to manipulate her into letting him have some.

She is also certain he is making up stories because tummies do not generally converse using actual speech, and so his claim of having a creature in his stomach with a fairly good grasp of the English language does seem extremely unlikely.

How does Dahl disguise the goriness of his poems?

Many of Dahl's poems are brutally bloodthirsty. Characters generally meet a sticky end when they are eaten by another character, such as little boys and girls who are munched to death by Crocky-Wocky the crocodile, and Farmer Bland is eaten by Piggy in a pre-emptive strike once he realizes that the farmer is probably going to eat him for lunch. However, the fact that the poems rhyme and nave a pleasant, bouncy rhythm to them seems to make what is written more amusing than nauseating, and the stories have a jocular tone that seems to contradict the subject matter.