53 Little Thwaites seemed to lift about a foot into the air and he yelled ‘Ow-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w!’ and straightened up like elastic. ‘Arder!’ shrieked7 a voice from over in the corner. Now it was our turn to jump. We looked round and there, sitting in one of Mr Coombes’s big leather armchairs, was the tiny loathsome8 figure of Mrs Pratchett! ‘Lay it into ‘im!’ she was shrieking. ‘Let ‘im ‘ave it! Teach ‘im a lesson!’ ‘Get down, boy!’ Mr Coombes ordered. ‘And stay down! You get an extra one every time you straighten up!’ ‘That’s tellin’ ‘im!’ shrieked Mrs Pratchett. ‘That’s tellin’ the little blighter9!’ I could hardly believe what I was seeing. It was like some awful pantomime. The violence was bad enough, and being made to watch it was even worse, but with Mrs Pratchett in the audience the whole thing became a nightmare. 1 How do you think the boys felt when they were called to the Headmaster’s office? 2 What is your impression of Mr Coombes and Mrs Pratchett? 3 Why do you think Roald Dahl wrote Mrs Pratchett’s way of talking the way he did? 4 Which words does Dahl use to show the reader what a horrible experience this was for the boys? 5 Why do you think Roald Dahl can remember this event so well? Now read on and discuss the questions below. 2 That evening, as I was about to step into the bathtub, I heard a horrified gasp from my mother behind me. ‘What’s this?’ she gasped. ‘What’s happened to you?’ She was staring at my bottom. When I took a look at one of my buttocks, I saw the scarlet stripes and the deep blue bruising in between. ‘Who did this?’ my mother cried. ‘Tell me at once!’ In the end I had to tell her the whole story. My mother heard me out in silence. She asked no questions. She just let me talk, and when I had finished, she said, ‘I’m going out.’ If I had had the slightest idea of what she was going to do next, I would have tried to stop her, but I hadn’t. She went straight downstairs and put on her hat. Then she marched out of the house, down the drive and on to the road. I saw as she went out of the gates, and I remember calling out to her to come back, come back, come back. But she took no notice of me. She was walking very quickly, with her head held high, and by the look of things I figured that Mr Coombes was in for a hard time. 1 What do you think Roald Dahl’s mother is going to do? 2 How might Roald Dahl have felt about his mother going to see Mr Coombes, and why? Choose one of these activities to do in class or at home. 1 Write down questions you would like to ask the characters in the extracts. 2 Write a story about a time when you got in trouble at school and what the consequences were. 3 Make up a short dialogue with a partner in which one of you is Dahl’s mother and the other is Mr Coombes. What would they say to one another? Perform the dialogue for the class. 4 For schoolboys in the UK in the 1920s, caning (being hit with a thin stick) was not an unusual punishment. Corporal punishment10 still takes place in schools in some other countries. Do research on when corporal punishment was forbidden in Austria and in the UK. 5 Some people have criticised Roald Dahl’s work for including racist and sexist stereotypes. Do you think it’s OK to use extracts from controversial authors in a school textbook? Discuss in pairs. If you want to find out more about Roald Dahl’s childhood, and if you want to discover how he lost his nose, read the book: Boy: Tales of Childhood. 3 7 to shriek: kreischen 8 loathsome: verhasst 9 blighter: Lümmel, Nichtsnutz 10 corporal punishment: körperliche Züchtigung Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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