Against the Hegemony: An Interdisciplinary Reading of Roald Dahl’s Three Selected Novels

This paper is an attempt to study the development of children’s discourse in three selected stories by Roald Dahl (1916-1990). Danny, the Champion of the World (1975), George’s Marvelous Medicine (1981) and the BFG (1982) are analyzed in this paper to see how children are able to challenge adults’ ideologies and discourse. Being considered to be an anarchist in the realm of literature, Dahl is standing against the mainstream belief emphasizing the significance of didacticism in the dominant discourse of children’s literature. To him, children’s enjoyment in the process of reading is more important than inserting a moral lesson in the story. The present study draws on Louis Althusser’s theory of ISA which has a direct bearing on the way adults consciously or unconsciously inculcate certain concepts dictated by the ideological system in the minds of junior citizens. As such, Althusser’s ideas about education will be useful in offering the possibility for an interdisciplinary study and a better understanding of the role the education system plays in Dahl’s novels in promulgating adults’ ideologies and norms. Furthermore, with the help of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony this paper will shed further light on the way the protagonists in Dahl’s selected novels are able to challenge the power of adults and resist their hegemonic authoritarianism.