Emma Stewart Writes

Writer, Proofreader, Editor and Cat Lady

Category: Writing Analysis

Posts covering analysis of writing and story-telling from media.

Fallout New Vegas – Act One

April 26, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Ain’t That A Kick In The Head

McMurphy, Benny and Jessup - opening cutscene of Fallout New Vegas
Mcmurphy, Benny and Jessup robbing the Courier

Fallout New Vegas’s act one makes a bold choice in the opening. Your character is shot in the head and buried in a shallow grave! Of course, you survive this otherwise the game would be pretty short and boring. It’s an interesting way to introduce the inciting incident, as discussed in my last post.

So Benny has robbed you, taking the Platinum Chip you were supposed to deliver to the Strip. You are a Courier and you are bound by contractual obligations to retrieve and deliver the Platinum Chip. Luckily your would-be killer wears a very snappy outfit, so you can ask about him.

Don’t Go That Way

You’re advised to head towards Vegas itself but cautioned against going straight north from Goodsprings. There are some nasty critters up there, such as cazadors and deathclaws. Not the kind of thing you want to tangle with until you’ve levelled up a bit and have some good weapons.

Some players may choose to go that way, and it can be done. Speedrunners of the game will do this, but it relies on luck, a stealth boy and some quick save spamming to succeed. If you want the full story experience, you’re going to follow the path south to Primm, east to Nipton then north east to reach Novac.

Making Friends (and Enemies)

On your way to Novac, you’ll encounter an NCR camp, some Powder Ganger camps and a group of Latin speaking cosplayers, Caesar’s Legion. As in any good RPG, asking around and talking to the NPCs you meet will help you learn more about the world you are in. You might even find some interesting side-quests to do.

We meet the New California Republic first, in Primm. NCR is a nation that grew out of Shady Sands and has expanded rapidly to the north and to the east. They’ve been in the Mojave for over a decade trying to hold Hoover Dam and establish territory and supply lines.

A lot of the troops hint at low morale. Commanding officers complain about the lack of resources and people. They are struggling to hold their territory, never mind deal with other problems.

Too Much Too Fast?

Act one of Fallout New Vegas introduces the major conflict, which is between NCR and Caesar’s Legion. NCR have camps and locations across the Mojave. The NCR Correctional Facility near Primm now belongs to the Powder Gangers. Subsequently, the NCR lost control of it, when some of the convicts used dynamite to stage a coup.

You reach the Mojave Outpost, an NCR checkpoint on the long 15. They don’t have enough people to run it. Caravans can’t move through. Every time you meet the NCR in Fallout New Vegas, evidently they are struggling, spread too thin. Consequently, informing Sgt Kilborn that the Legion has wiped out Nipton makes him completely lose hope.

Ave, True To Caesar

You reach Nipton and see several large fires and people lashed to crosses. A man runs up to you, excited to tell you he won the ‘lottery’ before running off. You get to the large town hall, and a group of Romans come out, led by a man with a dog’s head on his own head.

This is Vulpes Inculta, leader of the frumentarii and one of Caesar’s trusted advisors. He happily explains what happened to Nipton and why they killed and crucified most of the townspeople. Indeed, he wants you to tell someone about it, namely Sgt Kilborn and Ranger Ghost at the Mojave outpost.

Act One’s Conflict

Now that you’ve met the two major players in the ongoing conflict, clearly the Legion are the bad guys and the NCR are the good guys. It is obvious that the NCR has bitten off more than they can chew. This allows the Legion to operate right under their noses. Hope is dwindling and morale is in the toilet.

Why should you care? A big conflict is brewing, and the outcome will have a huge impact on the Mojave. You don’t matter to this conflict, yet. But you will by the end of the game. So take note of what you see, as you will be forced to choose a side.

No Vacancies

You reach Novac, easy to spot due to the giant dinosaur out front of the town. You learn where Benny went next, after helping out the town or reading a note on Manny Vargas’ terminal in his room. Manny was a Great Khan once, so he knows the guys Benny had with him.

This leads you to Boulder City, near Hoover Dam, where a hostage situation is ongoing. The Khans are enemies of the NCR, and they are holed up inside Boulder City. Resolving this situation will net you the details you need to finally find Benny.

You need to get to the Strip, Benny is the leader of the Chairmen. The Chairment are a former tribe but they now run the Tops Casino. So that’s where you are likely to find Benny, and your lost package.

What Happens In Vegas…

Getting into the Strip involves a credit check. If you don’t have 2000 caps, then you will need to find another way to get in. Either way, you are met by your cheerful cowboy buddy, Victor. Victor opens the door to the Lucky 38 and invites you to go in to meet Mr House.

Mr House is the leader of the Strip, although basically nobody has met him. He’s a fascinating man, his backstory is worth a post all on it’s own. He is your client, so you need to find the Platinum Chip and bring it to him. So you go to the Tops.

At the casino, all your weapons are taken, but if you collected the pieces of evidence, you can talk Swank into helping you take Benny out. Benny is on the main casino floor with four body guards. You have several options to deal with Benny.

You can just straight up shoot him, but you risk the ire of the rest of the Chairmen, unless you’ve spoken to Swank first. Or you can convince him to meet you alone upstairs and kill him then. Finally, if you’re playing as a female Courier, you can use Black Widow to seduce him and sleep with him. This gives you the option to kill him in his sleep.

If you don’t kill Benny, and he either betrays you and runs, or if you just go to sleep after sex with him, he flees. To get the Chip, you need to go after him, and you find out the Legion got him. Luckily once you’ve dealt with Benny and House, you are invited to Caesar’s camp to meet him. The NCR also express a wish to work with you. Yes Man is in Benny’s suite and represents the fourth option.

Everyone Wants You

Why are all these important people suddenly interested in the Courier? Except Yes Man, he can’t say no to you. Essentially, these groups have heard about your journey and realise you are unusual. Not many people would be crazy enough to chase one man across the wasteland. Even for revenge. They see that you are someone who will get things done.

So you’re at a crossroads, the end of Act One. You must choose which side to take in the conflict. You will play a pivotal role in deciding the future of New Vegas. NCR is a democracy with a large military. The Legion is a dictatorship ruled with an iron fist and questionable morals. Mr House wants to bring back pre-war glory and capitalism. Yes Man does what you tell him, but he will help keep Vegas independent.

So we move into Act 2, which will be covered over the next few posts. I’ll cover each option seperately, as Act 2 is half of the story and there’s a lot to go through! I hope you’ll stick with me for that. As always, thoughts and opinions are always welcome. If you want to see more, I’m currently playing through the game and analysing it on my YouTube Channel. You can find the playlist here.

Fallout’s Inciting Incidents

April 17, 2024 / / 0 Comments
Fallout the whole story fallouts inciting incidents how to start a story

How To Start A Story

Today we’re going to look at Fallout’s inciting incidents, and how to motivate players and characters to follow the plot. The most important part of the beginning is the ‘inciting incident’. An event that sets your protagonist on the road to the main plotline. These can be major or minor events, but they have to trigger a change for your protagonist.

You can begin your story before, during or after this incident, but it’s important to at least tell the reader that it happened. In video games, this is usually handled via an introductory cutscene. In the early days of videogames, the backstory was often included in the game manual. Of course this is less common now, so the game has to give you the backstory.

So we’ll start at the beginning and work through the games in chronological order. Of course, we have to note that the series itself has a rather major inciting incident. The bombs. The nuclear war happened on the 23rd of October, 2077, wiping out 90% of life on the surface. A large number of people survived in underground Vaults. So bear this in mind, as it matters to every Fallout story we will be examining.

Fallout – The Water Chip

The first Fallout game came out in 1997. You begin with creating your character, known as “the Vault Dweller”, from Vault 13 located in southern California to the west of Shady Sands, a small town that would go on to be the capital of the New California Republic (NCR). The Vault is designed to support up to a thousand people, and will remain sealed for 200 years, to study the effects of prolonged isolation. It was supplied with an extra G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) instead of extra water chips, which were sent to Vault 8.

In 2161, the Vault’s water purification chip started to malfunction leading the Overseer of the Vault to send people out into the wasteland to find a replacement, to no avail. The overseer chooses your character for this job. On the 5th of December 2161, the Vault Dweller leaves their Vault for the wasteland.

At that point, the Vault has only 150 days of water reserves, which does put a time limit on success for the Vault Dweller. The game does implement this time limit as well, although you can extend the time limit through your actions in the Wasteland.

Motivation?

So what is the motivation? Vaults are generally safe and secure, if there’s no horrific experiment going on. The limited living space means that everyone needs to contribute to the community to ensure their survival. Your character has lived their whole life in this Vault, and may well have friends and family, but they want to help their Vault. Water is essential for life, after all, and in a radioactive wasteland, water purification is vital. So it makes sense to keep looking for a replacement water chip, to save their community, doesn’t it?

Fallout 2 – Finding the Garden of Eden

Fallout 2 takes place 80 years after the first game, in a village called Arroyo, in Oregon. Arroyo is suffering from a famine and a drought. The village was founded by the Vault Dweller, after they were exiled from Vault 13 due to spending too much time outside. A serious drought in 2241 leads the village elder to ask your character, the Chosen One to find a G.E.C.K. The Chosen One is a direct descendant of the Vault Dweller.

The G.E.C.K. is a terraforming device that is capable of sustaining life in the wasteland, including seed, soil supplements, a cold fusion power-generator, matter-energy replicators, atmospheric chemical stabilisers and water purifiers. Each vault has two as standard (in the West Coast, at least) and the Elder believes that only a G.E.C.K. can save the village of Arroyo from starvation.

Motivation?

Again, your character’s motivation is very similar to Fallout’s protagonist. Your people are suffering from a shortage of an essential resource and are relying on you finding the one thing that could save them. It’s all about the preservation of life, and saving your community. Pretty motivating reasons to embark on this quest.

Fallout 3 – Following in Daddy’s Footsteps

Like Fallout, you start off as a vault dweller, but we’re on the East Coast of the USA, near Washington DC. You live in Vault 101, and you have a kind of prologue in this one, building your character through experiencing various events of your childhood. The game does actually start with your birth, and your mother dies shortly after. The protagonist is referred to as the Lone Wanderer.

So, it’s just you and your dad, living in the Vault. Your father is the Vault’s doctor. One day, when you’re about 19 or so, your friend Amata wakes you up to tell you that the Vault’s security are looking for you because your father has left the vault. Vault 101 was to remain sealed forever. The experiment was to study the role of the overseer in a completely isolated community.

Despite this, the Vault has opened a few times. The Vault did not have a G.E.C.K. but it was designed to be self-sustaining indefinitely. You have no idea why your dad left the vault, but after learning security are after you,  you end up escaping the vault to go and find him.

Like previous Fallouts, you are leaving the safety of your home in search of something important. In this case, your only living family. He leaves a note with his friend Jonas, who you find dead during your escape. The note tells you not to follow him, and he hopes the Overseer will blame him entirely. That isn’t what happens though.

Motivation?

So what is your motivation here? You’ve left your home, given no real choice in that, so it’s only logical you would pursue the only person you know, your father. What else would you do? Fallout 3 is the series first open-world game, so you can absolutely find plenty to do other than follow the main story, but it’s only by searching for your dad that you’ll get into the nitty gritty of the main story, and learn about Project Purity and the major players.

Fallout New Vegas: They Went That-a-way!

Back to the west, this time we’re in Nevada, the Mojave wasteland. A desert with a brightly lit and bustling city now known as New Vegas. New Vegas is still Vegas, with casinos, exotic dancers and a bunch of reformed tribals running the place, with Mr House overseeing it all. The year is 2281, four years after the events of Fallout 3.

You are the Courier, employed by the Mojave Express to deliver a Platinum Chip to the Strip. On route, a man in a snappy suit kidnaps you, aided by some Great Khans. Benny steals the chip, shoots you in the head and buries you in a shallow grave.

Certainly, an interesting way to start a video game by killing the main character in the opening cutscene! Okay, not quite, a cheerful cowboy robot finds you and takes you to the local doctor for treatment. You are under contract to retrieve your lost package and deliver it to the client. That means you need to find this man, so you begin to follow his trail, asking people you meet along the way if they’ve seen him.

In the background of all of this, seemingly unrelated to your situation, there’s obviously going to be a battle coming between the NCR and Caesar’s Legion. There’s talk of political issues in NCR’s home territory, but everyone wants control of Hoover Dam and the electricity it can provide. But first, you need to find Benny.

Motivation?

So, what’s your motivation here? Well, there’s two things. The first is your contract for the job. It’s pretty clear that if the package is stolen from you, you must get it back and ensure it gets delivered, and your employer will take no responsibility for any injuries, loss of life or costs of this. If you don’t complete the delivery, you won’t get paid, but you may also be hunted by mercenaries to recover the debt. You need money to live, after all.

The other motivation is personal revenge. Being robbed and shot in the head is pretty unpleasant, one assumes, and it’s perfectly reasonable to be angry about it. So, perhaps you want revenge on Benny for doing this to you. Or maybe you want to understand why he did it. If you’re playing as a female character, perhaps you found this whole experience a turn-on? Not judging, I promise, but sleeping with Benny is absolutely an option when you do track him down, for a female character.

Fallout 4: Out of Time

Fallout 4 is next and we’re back on the East Coast, namely the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or just the Commonwealth. Boston is an important city in the history of the US, as well as being home of several major universities. Nearby Salem is famous too. Interestingly, this game has a prologue set on the day the bombs fell. The protagonist has a set backstory, an army veteran for the male, or a lawyer for the female.

You begin the game in a cosy family home, taking care of your infant son, Shaun, when the bombs come and force you to the Vault, Vault 111. Where you’re all cryogenically frozen. At some point, you are defrosted to witness someone in a hazmat suit and a grizzled merc take your baby and shoot your spouse. You’re then refrozen, for an unknown period of time, but likely 60 or so years, then defrosted again.

Motivation?

Everyone else in the Vault is dead, leaving you, the Sole Survivor, to get out of the Vault and go off in search of your missing child. That’s your motivation, revenge for your dead spouse, and to find your kidnapped child. Which makes sense, and the game tries really, really hard to evoke some emotions about this whole situation.

For me, it kind of falls flat, we know so little about our spouse, and it’s hard to feel a strong connection to a baby that can’t even talk, when you’ve spent basically no time living in this version of the world. The voice acting is a bit overdone, especially the male protagonist, and by the time you get to the point of finding the mercenary, even they have all but stopped talking about Shaun. The opening of Fallout 4 is probably the least effective at highlighting the inciting incident and making the player want to follow the story, but don’t let that put you off, it does get much better once you get into the meat of the story, I promise.

Who Did It Best?

So, who did it best? I think for me, Fallout 3 and New Vegas pulled it off the best. Fallout 3, you’re kind of forced to leave the Vault. I remember in my first playthrough, I really wanted to know why my dad left the Vault. So I followed along to get some answers.

My first time playing Fallout New Vegas, the opening was quite a shock. It was definitely a bold choice, having your main character be shot at point blank range like that. So again, I wanted answers. Why did Benny feel the need to kill me, when he’d already stolen what he wanted from me? What was so special about the Platinum Chip?

I haven’t played 1 and 2 as much, the games are so old now, it takes a bit of work to get them to run on newer machines, and I haven’t managed to set them up on my new PC yet. But I do feel the inciting incidents set up the games pretty well, to get you into the story.

What I didn’t like

For me, Fallout 4 is the weakest in this regard. My first playthrough, I felt the urgency when the report of the bombs falling came through and the rush to the Vault. I wasn’t surprised by the cryopods in the Vault, but it sets up the twist with Shaun. You don’t know how much time has passed. After learning that, I found it quite difficult to really care that much about him. So it doesn’t work as well to motivate me to find this baby. There’s settlements to help, farms to build, raiders to kill, settlements to help and of course settlements to help. Yeah, I know, it’s an old meme, but Preston Garvey is really pushy about his radiant quests, that never end. You get sidetracked and distracted.

What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear other people’s perspectives on it. I am going to hold off talking about the TV series on Prime for now, just to avoid spoilers since it’s so new. But I loved it, and I’m rewatching it as I write this. So once it’s been out a while, I’ll definitely talk about it.

Thanks For Reading!

Thanks for reading, congratulations for making it to the end of this long post about Fallout’s inciting incidents. I hope it was interesting. I am going through Fallout New Vegas on my Youtube channel and analysing the story in depth, so if you’d like to join me on there to hear me talk about the games, you can find it here.

Storytelling in Gaming – Introduction

April 8, 2024 / / 0 Comments

The Three-Act Structure

I’m starting a new series of posts about storytelling in gaming. A lot of RPG plots follow the classic three-act structure of storytelling. This is for a good reason, as the structure is a common way to build and pace a story, regardless of the format it will be published in. Additionally, they often follow a version of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ plot structure.

Video games provide a unique form of storytelling, as it is absolutely a ‘choose your own adventure’ kind of thing, especially with roleplaying games (RPGs). Many games have diverging storylines too, depending on choices made by the player. There’s varying degrees of success with this.

The three act structure is laid out as the beginning, middle and end. The beginning is the first quarter of the plot and serves to introduce the world and the main character, as well as introducing the conflict and beginning to build the tension. It should end with a major event that pushes the main character to commit to the story.

The middle part is the second and third quarters of the plot, and the ‘meat’ of the story. Tensions build and the stakes are raised, with a major event at the midpoint of the story. There’s often a period of recovery after this, before a third major event that forces both sides to decide to pursue the final confrontation.

The third act is your ending. This is where we get the climax or resolution which answers the story question. The final confrontation happens and we find out if the main character achieves their story goal. There will then be some kind of winding down of the story afterwards. It is important that the ending makes sense and doesn’t rely on out of character behaviour or a deus ex machina solution.

How to Evaluate A Storyline

Over the next few posts, we are going to dive into the plots of some of my favourite RPGs, looking at how the game follows this structure. As well as evaluating and analysing the plot. We’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of each plot, and how well the game tells the story.

The questions to answer are about the main character, what their goal is and how it shifts as the story progresses. How do we work out who the villain is? How the plot answers the overall themes of the game. What are the consequences of the final resolution?

We’ll look at motivation, for both the main character and the player. How well each game follows the “show, don’t tell” rule of writing. How we learn the information needed to decide how to approach the game.

We’ll evaluate issues with the plot, like contrived circumstances forcing the player to do something they may not wish to do. Deciding who are the good guys and the bad guys. Whether the main character, the protagonist, is a hero or not. Does the player have the freedom to roleplay morality the way they want to.

Which Games Are You Going to Cover?

Glad you asked! I’ll be starting with my two favourite franchises, Fallout and Dragon Age. I love these games for different reasons, but I love them both a lot. Fallout has such a rich background and so much freedom of choice and how to shape the post-apocalyptic world. Dragon Age has some really amazing well-developed characters. So hopefully you’ll join me on this journey.

I’ll be starting with the Fallout series, as the TV show is just around the corner and I’m very excited about it. I have an introductory video on my YouTube channel and I will be supplementing this blog with videos talking about some of the things I’ll be writing about so if you’re interested, I hope you’ll join me. My channel can be found here.

Controversy and Sensitivity

August 26, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Sensitivity readers and controversy. Like any other famous person who has become a household name, controversy is almost an inevitability. Being so well known means that every single word and action that is made public, is available for scrutiny and criticism. Roald Dahl is no different to many other authors. He has been accused of anti-semitism and racism during his lifetime. Other well known authors have faced the same, and some of them deserve it more than others perhaps.

Some of these things are easily debatable, some less so. The issue I’m going to discuss today is something that happened earlier this year, back in February. The publisher of Roald Dahl’s works, Puffin Books, hired sensitivity readers to review all of his books and edit them. This has been met with both support and criticism, and certainly from what we know, Roald Dahl himself would not have been happy about the majority of these changes.

What is a Sensitivity Reader?

Sensitivity readers are hired to review works of literature for anything that could cause offence or be considered stereotypes or bias and recommend edits to remove these. See here for the Wikipedia definition. When I first heard of this, I was pretty upset. I am by no means saying that we shouldn’t be careful of bias and stereotyping in writing, and anything that is blatantly racist or discriminatory should be edited. However, upon seeing the revisions made, I found myself quite angry about some of them.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a few things that are problematic, especially when seen through a modern lens. They’ve always been problematic, but now it is easier to call out these issues and address them. That said, there’s a line, and crossing that line can lead you into ‘performative activism’ territory. Making changes to look like you care and you’re doing something, but you’re not really changing things. Like trying too hard to show you’re not racist or ableist or homophobic to the point of singling out the people in these marginalised communities.

When we are combating prejudice and bias, it is vitally important to make sure we are not silencing the people that we are supposed to be supporting. As a white person, I cannot understand what it is like to be black, and I cannot truly understand racism from the perspective of someone who has experienced that. Often these performative activist types are doing just that, claiming they know better and diminishing the voices of the people who are facing these discriminations and prejudices.

The Revisions

The Oompa Loompas have been one of the bigger controversies. They are the workers in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. They were originally written as black African Pygmies and obviously there are serious overtones of colonialism and slavery. Dahl did rewrite them as white skinned in 1972. This, I have no problem with, and I would hope nobody else does. That’s a change that needed to be made.

African Tortoises

However, in Esio Trot, a story that centres around a tortoise, the author’s note at the beginning talks about how garden tortoises were very common pets when Dahl’s children were young. It mentions how they were imported into England by the thousand until a few years ago when this was made illegal. It states that most of them were from North Africa, and this was apparently changed to ‘all over the world’, citing racism.

The problem for me? That’s not racism. It’s a fact. A lot of them came from the Mediterranean, including Egypt (which is in North Africa). Species like the Leopard Tortoise, the Greek Tortoise (also known as the common tortoise and the spur-thighed tortoise) which are found all across North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

Gender

Another one I found very odd was in the Fantastic Mr Fox, where the character of Small Fox was changed from male to female. Small Fox being Mr Fox’s child. This just seems baffling to me, because it makes no difference to the narrative, and just sounds like performative anti-sexism to me. They also removed the adjective ‘black’ from the description of a couple of tractors. I could understand if it was used in reference to a person, but tractors? Why is that problematic? Did a John Deere complain about racially profiling farming machinery?

Final Thoughts

I agree that there needs to be sensitivity in literature and authors and publishers do need to be cautious. However, I definitely believe a lot of these revisions are performative, unhelpful and pointless. Changing to gender neutral language and removing the word ‘queer’, which has obviously changed definition since these books were written, absolutely. But randomly switching the gender of a character for no reason? Avoiding saying anything came from Africa in case it is seen as racist?

It’s a step too far in my opinion. Especially given that Roald Dahl is no longer around to have any involvement in these decisions. They waited over 30 years to do this, as he died in 1990. We need to be aware of situations where people may be offended, but we also need to listen to the people who actually belong to the groups who are being discriminated against. Let the LGBTQIA+ community speak for themselves, let BIPOC people speak for themselves. Those of us who are not these people should be elevating their voices, not talking over them.

Language is always evolving. Society is always changing too, not always for the better. Things are better but there is still a long way to go, and we have moved backwards. Instead of focusing on literature and changing nursery rhymes, perhaps we should be focusing more on dealing with the inherent issues. For an interesting take on tokenism, I’d recommend watching South Park Season 25 Episode 2: “The Big Fix.”

Conclusion

Thanks for reading. I know this is a controversial topic and I don’t claim to have all the answers or know everything. Feel free to join the conversation and tell me what you think. Subscribe for more updates and find me on my social channels.

grilled meat on black ceramic plate

A Little Dark – Roald Dahl’s Work

August 23, 2023 / / 0 Comments
grilled meat on black ceramic plate

One thing I mentioned on Monday was about how some of the subject matter of Roald Dahl’s work is a little dark. Even in the children’s books, he didn’t shy away from showing that not everything in the world is sunshine and rainbows.

The other giants in the BFG literally eat children. Miss Trunchbull threw a child over a fence by her hair. The Grand High Witch sings an entire son about how her poison would result in hundreds of children being turned into mice, being killed by mouse traps and the teachers sweeping them up.

A Product of Our Time

My generation is no stranger to this kind of darkness. Bambi, the Lion King, Watership Down, anyone? Parents may want to shelter their children from this kind of thing, but it’s important to remember that in real life, horrible things happen all the time. People die, disasters happen, cruelty exists in our world.

I will never forget coming home from school on September the 11th, 2001 to find my dad watching the news on TV. Seeing those towers collapse, watching the rising death toll as rescue efforts continued. Hard to believe that was almost 22 years ago now.

The Covid pandemic has been a huge collective trauma for all of us. Just last week there were massive wildfires causing horrific destruction in Hawaii. Floods, earthquakes, nuclear disasters like in Fukushima. War. Murders, sexual assaults, women and children going missing from Native American communities. Political unrest.

Dark Humour

Some people will find humour amid the darkness in our lives, others will be highly offended by it. Dark humour is a coping mechanism though, and it can be a way for some people to self-regulate their emotions to cope when things are stressful or upsetting. I have a very dark sense of humour, and many of my former colleagues in veterinary medicine do too. When you work in such a stressful, demanding and emotionally charged environment, a little dark humour can make it easier to cope.

That brings me to the particular short story I want to talk about today. This comes from a compilation of Roald Dahls short stories called ‘Tales of the Unexpected Volume 1.’ I have had this book for years, and I first read the story in English class in high school. It’s called ‘Lamb to the Slaughter.’

Lamb to the Slaughter

I’ll summarise the story briefly, but you can read it here. A housewife is preparing for her husbands arrival home from work. It is established early on that her husband is a senior policeman and that she is pregnant. He is very dismissive of her and he tells her something. It is not outright stated what he says but it is implied that he plans to leave her.

She decides to prepare the evening meal, despite his protests, and fetches a leg of lamb from the freezer. He tells her again not to make supper for him and she swings the frozen leg of lamb at the back of his head, killing him. She puts the meat in the oven, tidies up her appearance and goes to the grocery shop to purchase vegetables and a dessert. She returns home to find him dead, and calls the police. They investigate and ask her questions, even going to the grocery shop to ask the shopkeeper.

The detectives inform her that her husband was killed by a large blunt object, almost certainly made of steel. They search for the weapon but find nothing. One of the detectives notices the meat still in the oven. She persuades them to eat the meal, all the while discussing the weapon and how it must still be here somewhere. Hearing this from the other room, she begins to giggle.

My Thoughts

I love this story. It is darkly funny, amusing that she manages to get the police officers to help her dispose of the evidence. Throughout the story, we get to see her thoughts as she deals with the events of the story. She goes into autopilot, after learning that her husband was planning to leave her while she was pregnant. After she kills him, she becomes very cold and calculating, planning everything just right to give herself an alibi.

When the police come and investigate, they are kind to her and she seems to be banking on them not suspecting a woman such as her to be capable of striking a killing blow. Her alibi checked out, so they think it unlikely to be her.

The ending is left vague, on purpose, to my mind. It ends with one of the officers stating ‘”Probably right under our very noses. What do you think, Jack?” And in the other room, Mary Maloney began to giggle.’

So what happened next? Did they hear her? Did they realise she could have done it with the frozen leg of lamb? That she had talked them into disposing of the murder weapon for her? That’s for the reader to decide. Was she justified in what she did?

You could argue she was. She clearly loved him, and was very much blindsided by what he told her. We don’t find out why he was leaving her, whether he was having an affair or there was another reason. When she returns home from the shop, she becomes genuinely upset, her tears are real and that makes her innocence more believable to the police. Yet, by the end, she is laughing.

Conclusion

That about covers this short story. I’m not sure what it says about me as a person, but it demonstrates how effective well written short stories can be. I am far from the only person to be entertained by these darker stories either. Horror is a very popular genre in books, movies and video games. True crime is also incredibly popular. We shouldn’t completely shy away from these dark topics. What are your thoughts?

On Friday, we’ll be digging into a controversial topic about Roald Dahl’s work from earlier this year. In the meantime, I’ve got plenty of other content on the blog to keep you going, and you can find me on my social media channels as well. Don’t forget to subscribe to get an email when each new blog post goes live. Until next time!

stack of books on brown wooden table

Roald Dahl – A Childhood Favourite

August 21, 2023 / / 0 Comments
stack of books on brown wooden table

A Childhood Favourite

Roald Dahl, a childhood favourite. I’ve always been a big reader. As a child, I consumed so many books. Like many people my age, my first foray into the horror genre was the Goosebumps books by RL Stine. My particular favourite author was Roald Dahl. I’ve certainly read every children’s book he ever wrote, and a fair amount of his adult short stories too. My favourites were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, its sequel, the Great Glass Elevator, The Witches and the BFG. I actually wore out my first copy of the BFG and needed a replacement.

I’m Not Alone

I know I’m not alone in loving these stories. They are immensely popular and a real institution in popular media. There have been movies made of most of these books, with varying degrees of success. Matilda has a successful movie, West End and Broadway musical, and a movie of the musical. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has had two brilliant, yet very different movies made. I liked the Tim Burton and Johnny Depp film, and I will die on this hill.

Roald Dahls books have a particular appeal, and I think now, as an adult, I can understand why. I don’t know if these books shaped my sense of humour and personality, or I liked them because they aligned with these aspects of myself. What I do know is that there is often some dark undertones in these books. They don’t paint adults as these perfect people who are always right and should be respected automatically because they are older.

There’s a dark humour in a lot of the stories. Bad things can happen, and it’s sometimes funny when a bad person has something horrible happen to them. Particularly the rewrites of classic nursery rhymes and fairy tales with vastly different endings.

Messages

There’s a common theme in all of his children’s books. People who are abusive, gluttonous, greedy or cruel get what they deserve at the hands of the good child protagonist, often helped by a ‘good’ adult. The antagonists are usually adults, although children who start to show these dislikeable qualities are often punished for this in some way. Let’s look at an example.

Matilda

Let’s look at Matilda. Matilda is immediately shown as different from her family. Her father is a dishonest salesman who cheats people to make money. Her mother is spoiled and enjoys a lavish lifestyle. They show clear favouritism to their son, Michael, because he’s like them. They don’t have time for books or learning. Matilda loves reading and she has to do it in secret. Her family treat her like an outcast. They don’t even let her go to school until she insists on it.

At school, Matilda shows that she is exceptionally gifted and bright. She learns of the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, the main antagonist of the story. Miss Trunchbull is the worst kind of teacher, she hates children and is mentally and physically abusive towards them. Extreme punishments for the most minor infractions to her extremely strict school rules.

Contrast her with Miss Honey, Matilda’s teacher. She’s the good adult, who takes Matilda under her wing and allows her to thrive. Yet, she lives in fear of Miss Trunchbull, her aunt, who raised her. Matilda discovers her telekinetic abilities, and uses them to great effect to get revenge on Miss Trunchbull, scaring her off and allowing Miss Honey to reclaim her family home and live a happier life. Matilda convinces Miss Honey to adopt her so she can leave her family and stay, going on to live a good life.

Interpretation

So what can we learn from this? Not all adults are good people. Plenty of them are cruel and horrible. We should learn to accept people for who they are, and encourage their talents and abilities, not force them to suppress them. Everyone has a fear or weakness. You should stay with people who care about you and want to help you, and walk away from those who mistreat you.

Children are often told to listen and obey, do what they’re told without question and have respect for their elders, no matter what. Roald Dahl is showing us a different side, that we shouldn’t have to remain stuck in the status quo, and accept these things without question. It’s a powerful message, dressed up in a fantastical story about a girl with special abilities.

It certainly had a big impact on me, I saw a lot of myself in Matilda as a child. I loved reading and learning, and was made to feel like an outcast because of it. I endured years of bullying at school, because I had a teacher who singled me out as being smarter than everyone else in my class. This experience has had a lasting impact on me, but these books were a huge comfort. Now, as an adult, I am trying to find myself again and learning to be proud of who I am and my abilities.

Conclusion

I’ll leave you with this thought for now. I’d like to dig a little deeper into this and look at more of Roald Dahl’s work, including my favourite adult short story of his, A Lamb to the Slaughter. I also plan to address the recent controversy surrounding his work and give my perspective on it. The revisions made for ‘sensitivity’ by the publisher, and why I think the majority of changes are utterly ridiculous and performative. So be prepared for that later this week. To learn more, check out the Wikipedia page here. To read up on this years controversy regarding the revisions made to these classic books, check here.

Feel free to weigh in on this, I’m interested to see how others have interpreted these stories and what other people think of it. Comments are open. To read more, you can subscribe via email below, and as always, my social media channels are there if you want more. See you next time!

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