Essay Questions

How might this text be seen as a satire?

My Uncle Oswald is largely a humorous and satirical text about a man who is obsessed with sex. Arguably, the satire lies in Oswald's experiment, in which he tries to artificially inseminate women using the sperm of geniuses and artists. Through this silly plot, Dahl might be criticizing the idea of eugenics, which was partly employed by some countries at the time he was writing. Overall, he makes the idea of eugenics seem silly and farcical.

Why might we be surprised that Roald Dahl wrote this text?

Roald Dahl is the author of beloved children's books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Twits. Therefore, we might be surprised that he wrote My Uncle Oswald, which is chiefly about sexual intercourse and has some very obscene passages. This is an interesting point of discussion about this book and leads us to question whether famous authors are under pressure to produce similar texts in terms of audience and genre.