Boy: Tales of Childhood

Prefects, known as Boazers, punish the younger boys for any misdemeanor, even an offense as small as a sock left on the floor, by beating them. The younger boys must serve the older boys to their liking to avoid beatings. The older boys often inspect the bottoms of the younger boys to see the marks left by the beatings, commenting happily on particularly impressive marks or blood drawn.

The Headmaster of Repton, who goes on to become the Archbishop of Canterbury and crown Queen Elizabeth II, is known for his particularly harsh beatings with the cane. Dahl’s friend Michael is made to lie with his pants down over the edge of the schoolmaster’s sofa as he is beaten. The Headmaster delivers an elegy on the importance of abstaining from sin as he beats Michael, and he supplies him with a basin of water and a sponge to clean off the blood before he pulls his pants back on. Fifty-five years later, Dahl can still feel the wounds inflicted by canings when he sits for prolonged periods.

Dahl happily remembers boxes of chocolates delivered by Cadbury to the school. The boys are required to taste a number of the chocolates, score them, and make comments on whether they like or dislike the chocolate bars. Dahl daydreams of working as an inventor in one of these inventing rooms and finding a delicious and groundbreaking new flavor. He reflects that these imaginings later inspire him to write his novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Unlike his recollections of most of his other schoolmasters, Dahl has fond memories of his mathematics teacher Corkers, who taught the boys very little mathematics, instead entertaining them with anecdotes, doing crosswords with the boys, and even bringing a snake into class one day. A favored routine in Corkers’s class occurs when he allegedly smells a fart from one of the boys, whereby the class is whipped into action, fanning the room with the door and opening windows.

To be a “fag” at Repton means to be a servant of the older Boazers. This is always a job allocated to younger boys, who are bossed around by the older students. Carleton, a Boazer who belongs to the same study as Dahl, orders Dahl and the two other young “fags” of his study to meticulously clean it once a week, flogging them if he finds even a speck of dust. Dahl becomes the favored “bog-warmer” of one senior boy, Wilberforce, which entails him sitting on a toilet of the outside, senior bathroom until Wilberforce comes to use it.

Dahl is a skilled sportsman at school, particularly at the games of Eton Fives, a handball-style game played in a concreted court containing shelves and outcrops, and squash racquets. Dahl becomes Captain of Fives, but both he and the Housemaster agree that he will not be a Boazer, although it is traditional for sports’ captains. Both Dahl and the Housemaster agree—to Dahl’s relief—that Dahl is not a leader; he is relieved at not being expected to mete out punishments to young “fags.” Dahl also excels at photography under the tutelage of Arthur Norris, his soft-spoken art teacher who introduces him to the works of famous artists. Dahl continues with photography when he leaves Repton, winning numerous awards for his photographs.

Dahl finishes school at Repton when he is 17, returning home on a motorbike that he bought the previous year and secretly takes out on the weekends. In his last term, he applies to a number of international companies, hoping to work overseas. His heart is set on working for Shell Company, and he is one of the seven successfully chosen out of 107 boys who interview for the roles. 

In the summer before beginning his job, Dahl doesn’t accompany his family to Norway as usual. Instead, he joins the Public Schools Exploring Society on an exploratory trip to the interior of Newfoundland. The trip is arduous; food is scarce, and the boys trek over huge distances with heavy packs.

Dahl spends a year commuting into London from his family’s home, now in Kent, to Shell’s offices, learning all that he will need to know to work in the field. He then works in other English locations, including delivering kerosene in the south of England. He is offered a position in Egypt but turns it down and is then offered a three-year position in East Africa, which he takes happily, excited at the prospect of a foreign land containing exotic animals. He leaves six days later from the London docks on a boat heading to Mombasa. In retrospect, Dahl realizes that his mother must have been upset at the prospect of her son, to whom she was very close, leaving for three years. He admires the way that she never let her grief show.

Dahl considers the experience invaluable and formative. Before his three-year stint with Shell in East Africa is complete, the Second World War breaks out in 1939, and Dahl joins the Royal Air Force as a fighter pilot. He shoots down several German planes and at one point is shot down himself, crash lands, and is rescued.