29 pages • 58 minutes read
Beware of the Dog
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Background
Authorial Context: Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl is a complex figure—a product of both privilege and hardship. Born in Wales in 1916 to an affluent family, Dahl’s life was nevertheless punctuated by misfortune. His childhood was marred by the deaths of his sister and father, the traumas of British boarding school, and a car accident that almost severed his nose.
By the time WWII began, Dahl was no stranger to disaster. In 1940, he was considered one of the British Royal Air Force’s “most promising pilots” but was shot down on his first official flight, suffering spine, nose, and eye injuries before “his airplane’s machine guns, stoked by the heat, started shooting at him” (Anderson, Sam. “Big Sometimes Friendly Giant.” New York Magazine, 3 Sept. 2010).
Undeterred, Dahl returned to the war and flew multiple missions as a fighter pilot. During the war, he began to write about his experiences. “Beware of the Dog” emerged from this initial phase of his career, in which Dahl wrote suspenseful short stories, many of them based on his own experiences in combat. The protagonist in “Beware of the Dog” is an RAF fighter pilot who is shot down during battle—something Dahl claimed happened to him as well, though his 1940 crash was caused by an accident, not enemy fire.
Dahl was, by all accounts, a survivor, and in “Beware of the Dog,” he likely drew on his intimate knowledge of death and near-death experiences. Peter experiences a gruesome injury before the story begins. Still, he comes out of it alive, with the opening paragraphs of the story describing the violence in a morbidly flippant tone. Throughout his life, Dahl was known for being both “nasty” and “charming” (“Big Sometimes Friendly Giant”), traits that often manifest as dark humor in his writing. In “Beware of the Dog,” detached flippancy gives way to fear and vulnerability, revealing the true impact of Peter’s physical and psychological trauma, and perhaps providing a glimpse into Dahl’s own attempts to grapple with violence and war.
Literary and Historical Context: Modernism and WWII
Written and set during World War II, “Beware of the Dog” is one of Roald Dahl’s earliest works, a product of a time in his career when he still aspired to become an “important novelist” like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ernest Hemingway (“Big Sometimes Friendly Giant”), both of whom were influenced by the Modernist Movement in literature.
Modernism was a multidisciplinary artistic movement that emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s in the wake of rapid industrialization as a conscious rejection of traditional forms and values. Modernist artists broke from their predecessors with new techniques that attempted to respond to destabilizing, disorienting, and swiftly changing times.
The height of Modernism was bookended by World War I and II, two global conflicts that caused massive devastation and upheaval across societies. While early Modernist Literature and its precursors sometimes expressed elements of utopianism, interwar Modernism was often characterized by anxiety, uncertainty, and mistrust of institutions. The movement explored existential questions about identity and isolation, contemplating what it meant to be an individual adrift in a fragmented society. Reacting to new developments in the field of psychology, literary Modernism utilized techniques such as unreliable narration, stream of consciousness, and a focus on interior monologue to explore the emotions and the psyche.
Even though “Beware of the Dog” was published toward the end of the Modernist Movement, it is apparent that Dahl still heavily drew from Modernist techniques to create a story that deviates from the conventions of the war-fiction genre. Dahl’s protagonist is a vulnerable victim rather than an infallible hero. Instead of focusing on the action of battle, Dahl emphasizes Peter’s psychological and emotional journey. As the pilot struggles to piece together his reality from the sensory fragments of his surroundings, he grapples with confusion, the complexities of loyalty, and a moral dilemma. In this way, the story takes a distinctly Modernist approach to the horrors of war.
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