No animal is half so vile
As Crocky-Wock the crocodile.
On Saturdays he likes to crunch
Six juicy children for his lunch.
The opening to this entry calls to mind another work by Dahl. The Enormous Crocodile is a book about the same animal except that he has name. He is merely referred to as Enormous Crocodile, but his story is about the day he decides to put some clever plans and strategies to work in order to lure children from a nearby town into waiting maw. He merely wants to eat children for lunch—and is stymied by other jungle animals at every turn. Crocky-Wock is apparently quite successful because this poem is very informative about his diet. For instance, who knew that mustard doesn’t go well with girls, but butterscotch and caramel really intensifies their flavor?
“I sat. I screamed. I jumped a foot!
Would you believe that I had put
That tender little rump of mind
Upon a giant porcupine!”
The title of the collection is Dirty Beasts. And within the collection are poems titled “The Pig,” “The Toad and the Snail,” and “The Tummy Beast.” In every case, the beast—or animal if one prefers—plays a major role in the story. Usually, in fact, the dirty beasts are quite proactive participants in the narrative. The singular exception to this structural framework is “The Porcupine” in which the titular beats appears only when the young narrator mistakes it for a rock and sits down upon it. The bulk of the poem is notably beast-less as it details the attempts made to remove the quills from the young girl. On the other hand, the job of removing the quills falls to a dentist who is rather zealous in the enjoyment of the unusual task assigned him, so perhaps the poem is not as light on the beastly element as it may at first seem.
(Some people in the U.S.A.
Have trouble with the words they say.
However hard they try, they can’t
Pronounce simple words like AUNT.
Instead of AUNT, they call it ANT,
Instead of CAN’T, they call it KANT.)
Ostensibly, this poem tells the story of spoiled young boy in San Francisco whose indulgent parents don’t say not to his absurd request to have an anteater as a pet. It is not the healthiest or most robust example of the species, but even so the boy heartlessly directs the animal to find his own ants even though none are to be found. It just so happens that the boy’s Aunt Dorothy is visiting at the same time and Roy is eager to introduce her to his new pet and vice versa. The key point in the text is made through this parenthetical aside which reveals the real purpose of the poem is to aim a satirical arrow toward American speech habits. The result of pronouncing Aunt so that it sounds like ant rather than thymes with Kant dooms both Dorothy and her nephew.
“Admit it right away, you’ve lied!
You’re simply trying to produce
A silly asinine excuse!
You are the greedy guzzling brat!
And that is why you’re always fat!”
There is also a fat little kid in the “The Tummy Beast” but he is not nearly as spoiled and repulsive as the kid with the anteater. He very innocently is trying to get an answer from his mother that will explain the person in his tummy who is always demanding food. From the mother’s reply quoted above, it is clear that she does view his inquiry as entirely innocent, but, indeed, devious. Just after she punishes him for his supposed lie by sending him to bed, the truth is reveal as the tummy beast makes his presence tangibly and literally known to the point that the shocked mum faints dead away. The cruelty that is expressed in this quote and in the mother’s demeanor throughout is not unique to the adults in this collection. In fact, the negative portrait of adult behavior toward children is one of the defining traits of the entire body of work that Dahl produced for kids. Anyone who has read the memoir of his childhood—titled Boy: Tales of Childhood—will not be surprised.
