Topic: cannibalism

“Pig”

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Information

  • Note: Sometimes confused with Stanley Ellin’s famous short story “Specialty of the House,” which is about a restaurant that serves a very special lamb dish. Ellin’s story was published in 1948, whereas Dahl’s didn’t appear until 1960.

Plot Description

This is a pretty gruesome story and it’s not one of my favorites. I think Dahl was probably trying to comment on the way this cruel world takes innocents like Lexington and basically puts them through the meat-grinder. Except in this case… it’s literal. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this one for the kiddies.

Spoiler warning! Once upon a time, a boy named Lexington is born in New York City. Unfortunately he is soon orphaned when his parents are accidentally shot by the police, who mistake them for robbers. Lexington is sent to live with his Aunt Glosspan out in her cottage high in the Blue Ridge Mountains. She is an eccentric old woman who schools him herself and raises him to be a strict vegetarian. As he grows older, Lexington starts to exhibit a talent for cooking and Aunt Glosspan encourages him to write a cookbook. By the time he is 17, he has invented over 9,000 different dishes. He is shocked when Aunt Glosspan suddenly dies, though, and he buries her himself behind the cowshed. The next day he finds a letter she has left him instructing him to go to New York and meet with her lawyer. Apparently the lawyer will read her Will and then give Lexington money to pursue his cooking ambitions. Unfortunately for the boy, the lawyer is an unscrupulous man who takes advantage of Lexington’s trusting nature and ends up giving him just $15,000 out of the $500,000 his Aunt left for him. Upon leaving the office, Lexington decides he is hungry and heads to the nearest restaurant for some dinner. To his surprise, he is served pork for the first time in his life and he finds it delicious. Eager to learn about this new food for his book, he bribes the waiter to take him back into the kitchen to meet the chef. The chef tells him though, that he can’t be sure it was pig’s meat. “There’s just a chance,” he says, “that it might have been a piece of human stuff.” He tells Lexington that they’ve been getting an awful lot of it from the butcher lately. He’s pretty sure that the piece Lexington had was pork though, so the boy asks him to show him how to prepare it. The cook says that it all begins with a properly butchered pig. Wanting to see how this is done, Lexington takes off for the packing-house in the Bronx. When he gets there he is ushered into a waiting room to await the Guided Tour. He watches as others go through the doors before him: a mother with two little boys, a young couple, and a pale woman with long white gloves. Finally his turn is called, and he is led to the “schackling area” where the pigs are grabbed, looped about the ankle with a chain, and then dragged up through a hole in the roof. While he is watching, one of the workers slips a chain around Lexington’s ankle and before he knows what is happening he is being dragged along the path as well. “Help!” he cries. “There’s been a frightful mistake!” But no one stops the engine, and he’s carried along to the sticker, who slices open the boy’s jugular vein with a knife. As the belt moves on and Lexington begins to feel faint, he sees the pigs ahead being dropped into a large cauldron of boiling water. One of the pigs seems to be wearing white gloves. Lexington’s strong heart pumps out the last of his blood, and he passes on “out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.”

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“In the Ruins”

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Information

  • First published:
    • Program of the World Book Fair, June 1964
  • Also published:
    • March 1965 issue of King
  • Trivia: According to Dahl collector Richard Walker, this story was originally meant to be published in the collection Kiss Kiss, even to the point of being included in the setting copy for the printers, but dropped at the last minute.

Plot Description

This is a very short and gruesome little story. It’s only been reprinted a few times and one of the most difficult stories for me to track down.

Spoiler warning! The narrator is walking through “the ruins”, presumably some village after it has been ravaged by war. He comes across a man sitting on the ground and sawing off his own leg. The man has a hypodermic needle next to him, which obviously contained some sort of an anesthetic. This “doctor” offers the narrator “some”. The narrator is crazy with hunger and accepts. The doctor says he will share as long as the narrator promises to “produce the next meal”. He also assures the narrator that he is “uncontaminated”. He explains that the hypodermic was a “caudal injection”, which is applied to the base of the spine. “You don’t feel a thing.” The narrator gathers some wood and makes a fire. He begins to roast the meat. A little girl comes up, drawn by the smoke and smell of cooking. The doctor offers her some of the meat, but tells her that she will have to “pay it back later”. The doctor observes that with the three of them, they should be able to survive for quite a long time. “I want my mummy,” the child begins to cry. “Sit down,” the doctor told her. “I’ll take care of you.”

(If you didn’t get it, they were eating the doctor’s leg. His plan to survive is that they will each provide body parts for food.)

Fun Stuff

“Georgy Porgy”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews | Criticism and Analysis

Information

Plot Description

This story is actually quite disturbing, if you ask me. I’d definitely think twice before letting an impressionable child read it. It has some very vivid passages that can only be described as a Freudian nightmare come to life.

Spoiler warning! George is a vicar in a small country parish and has quite a problem with women. On one hand he is mad about them – the mere sight of a lady in high heels is enough excite him enormously. On the other hand, he can’t bear to touch them or be in close proximity to them. George doesn’t understand the reason for this paradox, but Dahl gives the reader an additional insight – George’s memories of his mother. She was apparently quite a free spirit and took pleasure in teaching her soon the “realities” of life. He quite simply adored her. One night, after a week’s worth of discussions about sex, she took him to the garage to see their rabbit Josephine give birth. As they marvelled at the miracle of life, Josephine began to swallow her new children whole. George screamed, and as he turned to his mother her large open mouth loomed over him and he fled shrieking into the night. She chased him across a highway and was struck by a car and killed. (Undoubtedly this incident affected George deeply and resulted in his subconscious attraction/revulsions towards all women.) Now grown, George tries everything to elude the parish widowers who constantly stalk him. They are persistent though, and George grows more and more desperate with each attempt to seduce him. Finally Miss Roach gets him drunk at a tennis party and catches him in an embrace out in the garden. He is too lightheaded to resist. As she goes to kiss him, though, he sees her large open mouth and begins to scream as she swallows him whole. He continues to narrate from his new home in her digestive system, although we the readers know that he has just simply gone mad. The padded room that he believes is located somewhere near her right kidney is actually in an asylum.

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