Topic: science

“William and Mary”

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

Information

  • Original title:
    • “Abide with Me” (as per Treglown’s biography p. 122)
  • Connections:
    • The two main characters’ names are William and Mary, which are the same as the names of the white mice in The Witches

Plot Description

This is another of Dahl’s most famous short stories, and it’s been dramatized a number of times. Jeremy Treglown notes in his biography that Dahl did a great deal of neurosurgical research to make sure that experiment described would be as realistic as possible. Another interesting note: the names of the main characters, William and Mary, are the same as the two white mice in The Witches.

Spoiler warning! Mary Pearl’s husband William has passed away one week ago, and after the lawyer reads the Will, he gives her a letter from her dead husband. She returns home to read it, smoking a cigarette and admiring her new television set. She wonders what her demanding husband could possibly have to say to her. Maybe he’s finally decided to thank her for thirty years of dedication and service. Instead, she is shocked to discover twenty pages about a scientific experiment that an Oxford colleague convinced him to volunteer for. After his death from cancer, William’s brain was hooked up to an artificial heart machine and removed from his skull. It now resides in a basin of cerebrospinal fluid and only exists because the machines keep pumping it full of oxygenated blood. The doctor, Landy, has even managed to save one of William’s eyes, which is connected to his brain by the optic nerve and floats on top of the fluid in a plastic case. William urges her to put aside her revulsion and to come visit him to see how the experiment turned out. In a postscript he reminds her not to “drink cocktails… waste money… smoke cigarettes… buy a television apparatus.” Mary is appalled that a part of her husband is still alive and dictating commands to her. Her automatic sense of duty kicks in, though, and she heads to the laboratory to meet with Landy. He shows her William’s brain, conscious and alive in its basin, and she is surprised to feel a sort of affection for him in this state. “He looks so helpless and silent lying there,” she says. She announces to the doctor that she wants to take her husband home. He is astounded and tries to talk her out of her plan, but she is adamant. As he tries to get her to leave the lab, she leans down over the eye to say goodbye. She takes a puff of her cigarette and is delighted to see the pupil contract into a “minute black pinpoint of absolute fury.” The tables have turned and now Mary is in control. “Don’t look so cross, William,” she says. “It isn’t any good looking cross… Not anymore it isn’t. Because from now on, my pet, you’re going to do just exactly what Mary tells you.” Landy finally pulls her from the room as she exclaims, “Isn’t he sweet? Isn’t he darling? I just can’t wait to get him home.”

Reviews

Criticism and Analysis

“The Sound Machine”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews 

Information

Plot Description

Spoiler warning! Klausner is a man obsessed with sound. He has a theory that there are many, many sounds in the world that humans are just unable to hear due to their high frequencies. He explains to his doctor that he has invented a machine that will allow him to tune in to those frequencies and convert those pitches into audible sound. The first time he tries it out in his yard, he hears shrieking in his headphones as his neighbor cuts roses from her garden. Each time a flower is cut, he hears a shriek. The next day, he tries a bigger experiment. He takes an axe and swings it into a large beech tree. He is horrified to hear the deep and pathetic moan that the tree makes in response. Klausner rushes back to the house and calls his doctor. “Please come. Come quickly. I want someone to hear it. It’s driving me mad!” he says. The doctor agrees to come over and listen to the headphones, but just as Klausner takes a second swing at the tree a large branch crashes down between them and destroys the machine. Klausner is deeply shaken and asks the doctor to paint the tree’s cuts with iodine. The doctor claims not to have heard anything, but he agrees to Klausner’s demands and dresses the wounds.

Reviews

“The Last Act”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews

Information

  • First published:
  • Also published:

Plot Description

This is not a nice story. In fact, it’s probably my least favorite Dahl story of all. It should not be read by any children. It’s full of disturbing violence and sexual content, so I’m going to keep this synopsis as vague as possible. Read at your own risk.

Spoiler warning! When Anna Cooper finds out that her beloved husband Ed has been killed in a car accident, it nearly drives her crazy. They were so completely in love that she doesn’t think she can survive without him. Her children manage to convince her to carry on, but soon they’re all moved out and busy with their own lives. Anna misses Ed so much that she decides to kill herself. Before she can do it, though, her friend Liz talks her into helping out at Liz’s adoption society office. Anna discovers that hard work makes her feel needed and that life is once again worth living. After a year and a half of this, she feels that she’s “back in the swim” once again. It’s then that she has to take a business trip to Dallas, Texas to deal with a particularly difficult adoption case. In the hotel, Anna starts to feel frightened and alone. She remembers conversations she had with Ed about Texas. She needs a friend. Suddenly she remembers that Conrad Kreuger lives in Dallas. Conrad was her high school sweetheart and they had planned to get married. Then, of course, Anna had met Ed and left Conrad, and Conrad had married another girl named Araminty. She decides to call him up and, to her surprise, he suggests meeting her at the hotel for a drink. Anna is nervous about this, but feels her psychiatrist back home would be pleased (as he’s always telling her that she needs to “physically replace” Ed). She meets Conrad and is happy to see that he looks as handsome as ever. When she orders a gin martini, he frowns and tells her why gin is not good for women. That’s when Anna discovers that Conrad is now a gynaecologist. She and Conrad talk and she learns that his marriage only lasted two years and that he has almost no contact with his son. She commiserates and tells him the whole story of Ed’s death and her suicidal tendencies. After another discussion of how mentholated cigarettes are bad for women, Conrad lets it slip that he is still bitter about the way Anna jilted him. She is surprised, but he tells her that he was wildly in love with her. Then he suggests that the two of them might… “have a bit of unfinished business.” Anna isn’t sure how she feels about sleeping with another man. After a third martini, though, she’s floating and allows herself to be led back up to her hotel room. She and Conrad kiss for a while, and Anna begins to feel excited about being with him. He continues to make odd medical references, but she shushes him. Conrad is strangely clinical as he removes his clothes and prepares to make love to her. In the middle of the act, though, he feels an obstruction and she begins to feel sick. She wants him to leave but instead he pins her down and begins telling her precisely what is medically wrong with her. She’s nearly hysterical now and struggles to get him off her. Finally she begins to scream and he pushes her to the floor. She staggers to the bathroom crying “Ed!… Ed!… Ed!…” Conrad hears the click of the medicine cabinet being opened. Quickly he dresses himself, wipes the lipstick off his face, and leaves the room.

Reviews

“The Great Automatic Grammatizator”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews

Information

Plot Description

This angry little satire is very “meta” and constantly draws attention to itself as a work of fiction. Take the main character’s name for example: Adolph Knipe. Not only is it hard to say (and has unfortunate associations with Adolf Hitler), it also bears a suspicious resemblance to one of Dahl’s own publishers, Alfred Knopf. But Knopf was the company that published Someone Like You, the anthology that contained this story! Is Dahl trying to tell us something here?

Another example is the paragraph where Knipe explains that nearly every writer makes a practice of inserting one long archaic word into each story to make himself sound smarter. When Mr. Bohlen asks where these words are stored, Knipe “epexegetically” answers “in the ‘word-memory’ section.” It took me at least three readings to notice that Dahl was making a subtle joke simply with that one word, which I repeatedly skimmed over. (It means “by way of explanation,” in case you’re wondering.) It could also be a clue that this story itself – regardless of the first-person section at the end – was actually created on the Great Automatic Grammatizator.

Spoiler warning! Adoph Knipe is a computer genius but has always longed to be a writer. He convinces his boss, Mr. Bohlen, to let him build a computer that will write stories. Knipe succeeds and sets up a publishing company as a front for this new mass-produced literature. Later they modify the machine to write novels and begin making thousands of dollars. The final step in their domination of the publishing industry is to buy out real authors and pay them to never write again. The surprise in the story comes at the end, when the narrator reveals that “over half of all the novels and stories published in the English language” are now created by Adolph Knipe on the Great Automatic Grammatizator. The conclusion of the story is written in first-person, as a struggling writer listens to his nine hungry children cry and tries to resist the lure of Knipe’s “golden contract.” “Give us strength, Oh Lord,” he prays for all true artists, “to let our children starve.”

Reviews

“B***h”

Sections: Information | Plot Description | Reviews

Information

Plot Description

This very adult story is from Dahl’s book Switch B***h and probably shouldn’t be read by any children without the consent of their parents. With that in mind, I’m going to keep the plot/description rather simple and vague.

Spoiler warning! Oswald meets up with an olfactory chemist (a scientist of smells) who wants to isolate the human sex pheromone. They accomplish this feat and successfully test the new perfume, which they label “B***h.” Unfortunately the scientist’s lab assistant steals almost all of their supply and then Henri, the scientist, dies of a heart attack during exertions brought on by the pheromone. Armed with only a small remainder and unable to make more, Uncle Oswald decides to have some fun. He plants the liquid in a large flower corsage to be worn by an obnoxious woman sitting next to the President on live television. His plans derail, however, when she unknowingly releases the perfume in his presence in her hotel room. A spectacularly surreal sex scene concludes the story.

Reviews