The BGF
Roald Dahl
Jennifer Pierpoint


The BFG, famously written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake is a fictional fantasy story about a young girl who finds friendship in an unexpected place. It is a prime example of the way in which a simple story can engage the imagination of the younger reader. Visual and linguistic stimuli can be used to great effect, in this case to give the characters personalities that children can easily relate to. The use of language also effectively and inventively describes the setting or the story in a fast-moving and fantastical landscape. The feeling of isolation and loneliness experienced by both Sophie and the BFG and this draws them both together. The idea of innocence and compassion portrayed by Sophie and the BFG wining out against ignorance and cruelty (portrayed by the other giants and on occasion some of the human adults) is an important part of the development of a child’s understanding of morality.
The BFG’s character develops throughout the story with a different characteristic evinced each time we encounter him. For example, compassion and sympathy on the BFG’s part are shown when Sophie tells him about the orphanage she lives in. Humility is shown when Sophie keeps correcting his grammar. Humour is also provided to give the giant a sense of warmth. All these characteristics have the effect of making the character of the BFG as likeable as possible so that children also befriend him. Roald Dahl effectively turns the idea of a traditional monster on its head. The rest of the giant race reflects the base and animalistic side of human nature. They are presented as antagonistic and totally opposed to the BFG’s altruistic nature. The names of the large giants in the book are aptronym’s. For example names such as ‘Bonecruncher’ and ‘Blood bottler’ allow the child to easily imagine and understand their role within the story and to provide a stark contrast to the character of the BFG. These names add an element of fear and excitement to the child’s experience. The two extremes allow for the idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘right’ and wrong’ to become polarised. These themes are often explored in day-to-day lesson planning and behavioural management in a current multi-cultural curriculum.
The description of the giants’ appearance deepens the dichotomy between themselves and the BFG. There is powerful use of exaggeration throughout the story. For example when describing the ‘Bloodbottler’, his finger is described as large as a ‘tree trunk’. The use of similes, alliteration and onomatopoeia throughout the novel gives the child a way of understanding the text so they can really immerse themselves in the book. Adults are depicted in the book as typical for their social status. The military general for example is portrayed as a stereotypical, overbearing and a ruthless military commander. The language that the commander uses such as ‘shoot ‘em on the spot, that’s what I say” is an example of this stereotypical portrayal found in the book.
The first sentences in each chapter are often simple statements which provide immediate access into the scene/story. For example the first sentence ‘Sophie couldn’t sleep’ not only introduces the character but also provokes a series of questions about the scene presented. This plays to the inquisitive nature of children. Chapters are short which allows the book to be read in manageable portions and the illustrations break up the text on alternate pages. These structures accommodate a child’s attention span.
Throughout the book there is continual use of descriptive and original language. ‘Giant land’ is described as a desolate wasteland with large blue rocks and dead trees. The description gives the child a real sense of ‘Giant world’ being a true fantasy world and promotes and encourages the child to use their own imagination. The description and portrayal of a fantasy world is intensified by the presence of characters such as the Queen that create a sense of surrealism and wonder in the human world. She also provides the maternal comfort that Sophie has not fully experienced. Adjectives and adverbs also help the action within the scenes to develop in an exciting and energetic way. When the BFG goes from the human world to the ‘giant world’ attention is paid to the speed in which he runs. His speed is emphasised by the repeated image created of the ground becoming blurred and Sophie’s reaction to it. (Sophie is our eyes and ears-what we expect to experience is shown by her response).
tA young reader would enjoy this novel as it engages with and stimulates all the senses in an exciting way and endures in a child’s memory as an eccentric, fun and yet morally instructive journey. On my part, it was a delight to return to this well-loved story.
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Just as delightful as I remember! :)

A 24-foot dirty old man creeps down the streets late at night, when all the grown-ups are asleep, peering in through little children's windows. No, not the subject of a court case, just a momentously popular piece of fiction by the much beloved Roald Dahl.
Anyway, returning to our story. . .
In one of his hands, the giant holds “what looks like a long thin trumpet”. He peers into the bedroom of two sleeping children, lifts his trumpet-like thing and whoof! - blows something mysterious into their room. Realising, however, that he has been spotted by our young heroine, Sophie, he creeps over to her room and, in a memorable chapter enigmatically entitled The Snatch, kidnaps her. Once in his grasp, Sophie experiences an exhilarating sensation, rather like flying, before finding herself imprisoned in his cave.
Some parents may, of course, be concerned about the predicament Sophie finds herself in, but Dahl take great pains to allay these fears. For a start, Sophie has no parents who will notice her disappearance, and has in fact been liberated from a quite frightful orphanage. What is more, her terror is short-lived and she grows to love her imprisoner, enraptured by the bizarre and wildly amusing anecdotes, to which she is such a patient listener, just as well as these take up approximately three-quarters of this classic modern fairytale.
A further criticism of Dahl is that he is actually not that original, nor particularly witty, nor in fact funny in the slightest. The BFG certainly puts those claims to rest! I like to imagine Oscar Wilde and Dorothy Parker turning green with envy as the BFG embarks on a series of scintillating witticisms concerning the taste of “human beans” (“Beans”, note, not “beings”!) from different countries: the Turks, for example, “is tasting of turkey”, the Greeks is “tasting greasy”, while those from Wales “taste fishy” - like those greatest of all fish, the whales!
As usual, the politically correct brigade will no doubt be sharpening their blue pencils at these supposed 'racist' stereotypes. I shall deal with these accusations later. For now, let us simply revel in the BFG's unique way with words: his spoonerisms, his neologisms, his malapropisms, his wonderjumbly mouthgurgles of stunning originality, given that Roald, as we know, spent all his waking hours in his famous hut and would never have seen Professor Stanley Unwin on the telly.
Dahl is, above all, a master of simile – he memorably describes the BFG in Chapter 3 as having “an arm as thick as a tree-trunk”; so memorably, indeed, that it instantly sprang back to my mind while reading Chapter 9's description of the Bloodbottler, with his “finger as large as a tree trunk” - a cunning way of establishing the difference in size between the two giants!
This brings me to the one matter which does bother me about the BFG. Having firmly established that this novel has no improper overtones, the exact mechanics of the kiss scene between the BFG and Sophie are still problematic. By my calculations, the BFG's mouth would have to be at least ten inches wide, possibly larger (according to Quentin Blake's illustrations, which Dahl of course approved, I'd reckon up to two feet). With a mouth considerably larger than Sophie's entire face, what exactly would this kiss have entailed? At the very least, one would have thought, it would have posed the threat of suffocation. Still, given the equally enormous dimensions of the BFG's tongue, we can certainly rule out any improprieties in this regard!
But we are leaping ahead. No account of this wonderful tale would be complete without a mention of the BFG's diet: the enormous and repugnant Snozzcumber. Those who wish to see indecent
suggestion in everything will no doubt make much of this long phallic vegetable, foul-tasting and “covered all over with coarse knobbles”. I can only feel sorry for these people, being unable to enjoy at face-value the hilarious scene as the BFG urgently entreats little Sophie to taste his snozzcumber, whereupon, having taken a reluctant nibble, she promptly spits it out, declaring that it tastes of “frogskins. . .and rotten fish”.
Sudden ejaculation is very much a part of the following chapter also, as the vile Bloodbottler is tricked into having his own chomp on the BFG's snozzcumber. For those who haven't yet had the pleasure of reading the book, I won't reveal exactly what happens next – other than that poor Sophie ends up “covered in snozzcumber and giant spit”. It's fortunate that this gruesome experience is soon followed by the delights of frobscottle and watching the dirty old giant blow off in front of her!
But the BFG is, of course, primarily a novel about dreams – the dreams the friendly giant catches, stores in jars, and blows into children's heads. After suffering the beastly attentions of the other giants, the BFG exacts a splendid revenge by bestowing a Trogglehumper on the Fleshlumpeater. However, the great coup de grace is saved for the climactic scenes of the novel, when the BFG enacts every little boy's fantasy by getting out his trumpet-like thing in the Queen's own bedroom and blowing a dream into the head of the Mother of the Nation.
The very idea of going to the Queen to solve one's deepest problem is yet another example of the stunning originality of this remarkable book. One hopes it will not lead to thousands of people writing letters to Her Majesty, imploring her to help with every vexation from troublesome neighbours to unfair treatment at the hands of the inland revenue!
And what an affectionate and affecting portrait of our monarch Dahl has given us. I like to think of the great writer up in his private writing shed with a well-thumbed copy of Majesty and a box of tissues at the ready, as his old eye weeps at the thought of the grace and beauty of our sovereign. I imagine Swift turning green with envy as his cheap malevolent shots at royalty in Gulliver's Travels are superceded by Dahl's own take on the giant in the palace, with its wonderful evocation of the dignity and warmth of Elizabeth II, summed up so eloquently by the secret smile that flickers on her lips as the BFG lets fly at the breakfast table.
Much, however, has been made of the fact that Dahl portrays England and Sweden, quite accurately, as having constitutional monarchs, while Baghdad (i.e. Iraq), rather less accurately, has a “sultan” of a regime where “we are chopping off people's heads like you are chopping parsley”. For heaven's sake, I want to cry – exotic dark-skinned individuals have been a staple of children's fiction for centuries! Speaking of which, do we really have to defend the fact that the malevolent giants are also dark-skinned, have thick lips and wear nothing but loincloths? Dahl is simply creating suitable bogeymen to posit a fearful threat to the angelic English children, with their “inky-booky” flavour and Eton and Roedean educations. Only the most relentless PC obsessive could draw a parallel between this threat and the fear of being “swamped by an alien culture”, as Margaret Thatcher memorably described the fear of coloured immigration shortly before the Tory 1979 election campaign in which Dahl ardently assisted, shortly before writing The BFG.
Next the critics will be drawing a parallel between Mrs Thatcher's enthusiastic use of military force in the 1982 Falklands War and Dahl's employment of the British military establishment to subdue the giants! This, however, would completely ignore the friendly giant's homilies against the human race's internecine conflicts - “shootling guns and going up in aeroplanes to drop their bombs on each other every week”. Or maybe the critics think Dahl is merely a hypocrite given to sentimental moral platitudes while actively promoting a love of conflict, simplistic demonisation of the enemy and desire for violent revenge. Several million nine year olds will beg to differ!
Those given to pusillanimous nit-picking will no doubt take issue with Dahl's assertion that “human beans” are the only creatures that kill their own kind. Not strictly true, I'll warrant, or even true in the slightest, but we must remember that Dahl was already old when writing The BFG, had received a severe knock on the head when crash-landing in Libya, and, like his simple, uneducated hero was an endearingly dotty individual. If we really must pick holes in The BFG, we could also point out the BFG's homily against the eating of the poor “piggy-wiggies” followed by his enormous plate of sausages and bacon at the palace, or the fact that no-one allegedly noticed that the giants ate children in the early chapters, but were quite aware in the later ones, especially with the bones being left underneath the dormitory windows. Everybody in the publishing world knows, however, that it is the editors' job to spot these inconsistencies, so perhaps the critics will direct their fire to these wretched individuals – particularly the ones at Puffin who also rejected the first volume of my splendid House of Fun series.
I hope in this brief essay to have dealt effectively with the many absurd allegations that have been made against one of Dahl's finest works; in particular that the novel contains unseemly amatory undertones. One really should not judge this great children's writer on the basis of what we know of his adult fiction, which is only, I believe, obsessed with sex and violence because Dahl naturally wrote what he believed would please his audience – just as Dahl simply had to mention the lovely calves of the footmen in The BFG to bring a wry smile to Her Majesty!
Living in Dahl's place of birth, Cardiff, I often cycle down to Roald Dahl Plass, the former Oval Basin of the docks, now a magnificent public space flanked by the Millenium Centre. Imagine my surprise one day, approaching this place of homage, to find myself confronted by a vast billboard adorned by none other than the real-life Sophie, now fully-grown in every sense, giant-sized and entirely naked, advertising a perfume bearing the name of a well-known Class A drug. Aha! I thought – so dreams are still bottled and dispensed by big friendly giants. What a marvellously appropriate legacy for the master of modern fantasy!

This story is one of the most interesting ones, I remember reading it every day before bed. It talks about friendship, helping one another, and is a fun-to-read book!

Beautifully woven fantasy which takes you to another world where exist no humans but giants, all but one nasty, fearsome, ugly, fifty feet long brutes!

This is the story of The BFG aka The Big Friendly Giant, a 24-foot giant who only eats snozzcumbers and glugs frobscottle. BFG lives up to his name being kind, caring, loving, and really friendly as the name suggests.

The little girl Sophie awake in the witching hour had no idea she had a new adventure her way. The protagonist is a mature girl for her age who acts pretty wise and thinks well before she does something.

7.5/10
Late night, you can’t sleep. Moonlight hits your eyes so you get up to close the curtains. What do you see? Probably nothing, you just close the curtains and return to bed. That’s not the case for Sophie. She saw something, she saw him
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When the giant grubs her with his big arms she’s certain that he will eat her. She was wrong, not that giants don’t eat kids it’s just that this giant doesn’t eat kids or humans in general. Because this giant, this giant is the BFG (Big friendly giant). He takes her to his home and although he is a very nice guy he can’t let her go because he is afraid that she will tell everybody that giants exist and people will hunt them. However he protects her from the other 9 man eating giants.

When Sophie tells the Bfg that they must stop the other giants from eating people he sais that this can’t be done. Weird right? I mean he is a good guy why wont he help? The answer is simple, not only there are 9 of them, their all are twice the size of him.

What Sophie and the Bfg will do? They…. Come on, im not going to tell you, read it

Kidnapped and raced away to Giant Land by the BFG (Big Friendly Giant) Sophie was frightened. She’d gone to bed in the orphanage in London and now she didn’t know what was happening. But it was the other nine gigantic giants she was terrified of – the Childchewer, Bonecruncher, Fleshlumpeater and more. The BFG hid her successfully and as Sophie learned more about the giants with the BFG’s confusing talk – well, confusing to her – she found she was a human bean who would have to eat disgusting snozzcumbers if she stayed with him. She found the BFG had learned his words through reading Dahl’s Chickens and that he collected dreams to give to the children – unlike the other giants.

Would Sophie find a way to stop the bad giants from gobbling human beans?

The BFG by Roald Dahl is a delightful story with an eight-year-old heroine and a heartwarming giant forming a strong team. A classic children’s tale, originally published in 1982 and loved by children far and wide, I found the complete annihilation of the English language by the BFG extremely well done. Recommended.

I LOVE the vernacular! Whizzbangers, snozcombers...

I've read this out loud to my children any number of times and I get very, very into the voices, so they love it. This time I listened to Natasha Richards read it and she did a beautiful job! Of course, she's English so was a natural. No non-English person can "be" the Queen as well as an English person, but leaving that aside, she was perfect!

Dahl is a master at weaving these wonderfully empowering tales using nonsense. Not only his situations are nonsense, but so is the vocabulary he uses. Doesn't matter. Children are always the hero and children reading his books feel there must be a hero inside of them as well. That's the beauty of his work.

I am a bit hesitant to see the movie because I have very vivid images of Sophie and the BFG in my mind, and have for years, but I just keep telling myself that no movie will take those images away. Here's hoping it won't.

I love the BFG's speech - so original. The tale is loads of fun. The fact that the giant gives people good dreams is enough to convince me he is a Big friendly Giant. There are beautiful moments in this story and I am impressed by how unique the story is. James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the chocolate factory are better, but not by much. This is a fantastic story.

I remember my brother read this as a kid while I was reading Matilda. I thought about reading the story too, but I didn't because I didn't like the title. What was a BFG, I thought? Seriously, that was my reasoning I missed out on this great story as a kid. Too bad I didn't have reading friends to talk books and someone could have told me to read it. I sure wasn't going to listen to my brother back then.

Full review.
I read it because of the upcoming film and the trailer seemed really magical.

This book was very cute and in my opinion was a lot better than The Witches. It showed real emotions that a child might feel as fear, happiness and anger and sure, most of the events are really unlikely to happen, but they were fairy tale-ish enough to believe them.

And this story wasn't dark, because there weren't much of descriptions of the really scary things, which makes me feel like it would be a good tale for children.

I was a little disappointed by the ending, because of the promising premise and idea of the story - how humans are eating animals and that is alright for them, yet when giants eat humans it is basically the same thing, yet that somehow is not ok. I expected some better solution out of it all, but this was a black and white book. Especially it seemed really sad when the BFG ate bacon and eggs and it seemed to somehow justify humans eating animals, yet still putting giants eating humans in a bad light.

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Every year I plan to write a blog post to celebrate Roald Dahl Day and every year time runs away with me and I somehow end up missing it. But this year we're celebrating 100 years since his birth so I guess that makes it a perfect time to talk about how much Roald Dahl's books meant to me as a child.

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I used to reread all of his books over and over again but The BFG was always my favourite, I just loved everything about it from the friendship that forms between Sophie and the BFG, to the adventures they have together along with all of the crazy new words you discover along the way. Don't you just think that we should use words like scrumdiddlyumptious, gobblefunking and whiffswiddle in every day conversation? Not to mention the fact that I'm still waiting for someone to invent a real life version of frobscottle so I can practise my whizzpopping LOL.

The BFG is just the ultimate adventure story, I loved the idea of dreams being real things that you could capture and I desperately wanted to visit the land of dreams so I could find my own. I wanted a giant friend who could run so fast with me hiding in their pocket that it felt like I was flying and I even wanted to have breakfast with the Queen. Roald Dahl's stories always have a darker side to them and the giants terrified me but you get to see justice served in the end which was incredibly satisfying.

I still have my original copy of this book from 1985 and it's one of my most treasured and reread books. The illustrations by Quentin Blake compliment the story perfectly and make it something to be treasured.

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My brother was never much of a reader (I'm pretty convinced he must be a changeling because surely we can't be related! LOL) but he absolutely adored the animated version of The BFG and would make us watch it over and over again. I think I've probably seen this adaptation of the story even more times than I've read the book and I have to say it's pretty perfect. It completely captures the feel of the story with it's laugh out loud humour but also the more heartwarming moments between Sophie and the BFG as well as the fearsome man eating giants to add tension. I love the music too and can remember singing along with my brother when he we were kids.

This animation may have been created in 1989 but it's still utterly brilliant and when we watched it with my 12 year old nephew a few months ago he loved it just as much as we did.

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Being such a huge fan of the story I had incredibly high hopes for the new Disney version directed by Steven Spielberg. We made a family outing of it a few weeks ago and I think my Dad, brother and I were probably even more excited than my nephew was. There is no denying that the visual effects in the new movie are stunning, the land of dreams in particular was spectacular and the giants looked impressive.

The opening scene where Sophie first sees the BFG and the way he manages to sneak down the streets and avoid being spotted by anyone else was very cleverly done. The young actress who played Sophie did a brilliant job and there was one moment in particular that made me laugh so hard I had tears rolling down my face. I wasn't the only one either and pretty much the entire audience was laughing hysterically.

Unfortunately even though there were things I loved about the movie it didn't manage to live up to expectations and we all agreed that the animated version that is nearly 30 years old was better. The new movie stays pretty faithful to the book but it managed to be boring in spite of that, there were actually times when I was just wishing it was over so we could leave the cinema and no matter how good the graphics were or how humourous those few stand out moments were it just didn't make up for the poor pacing.

The new movie may have been a slight disappointment but that hasn't decreased my love of The BFG. I have so many happy childhood memories wrapped up in reading Roald Dahl stories and it's easy to see why they're still so popular today.
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Found my original copy from 1985! I can't even tell you how many times I've read this book, it's got to be well into double figures though :-)

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WHAT A BOOK IT WAS! What an ending it was!
I can't control my emotions. I haven't felt anything like this before. I haven't read a children book like this. I am soo happy by reading this. I am soo in love with the characters. Or writing. Or everything which this book offered me. It took me little long to finish this because of my exams. Otherwise this book was soo good that I wanted to finish it in one sitting. Nevertheless, I am finished with this and I am very happy. I think if I will be in the mood of re-reading, I will choose this book.

OVERVIEW
Sophie, an orphan, is taken away by a giant named BFG (Big Friendly Giant) as she sees him in the witching hour (a time when everyone is sleeping and giants show up). He takes her away because he is afraid that she will tell everyone and he will be in danger. BFG is a good giant. But his fellows aren't. They eat humans. But BFG don't. He considers it immoral. When Sophie learns this, she makes a plan with BFG to stop them.


THINGS I LIKED
=> BFG. I loved him. He is uneducated. Can't speak English correctly. No giant can as they have no means of education. But I loved how BFG speaks. That's what makes him soo cute and funny.
=> I liked that giants called human beings: 'Human Beans' hehehe...
=> Giants don't eat Greek people because they taste like grease hehehe...
=> I liked the chapter named 'Dream'. That was pretty hilarious. I was laughing out loud while reading this chapter.
=> BFG called helicopters 'Bellypoppers' hehehe...
=> I liked how they captured the giants. That was pretty interesting.


THINGS I COULDN'T LIKE
=> This point is not much important but I felt little bad about it. I didn't like the history of giants. But I didn't care much about it after that ending. Still it should have been better.
There are no female giants. Just males. How they were born? We don't know exactly. They just appear. What will be their end? We don't know exactly about it either. They will just disappear and nobody will know.
Regardless, I adored this book even with this fact.

I highly recommend this book to everyone. Especially children must read this book.

The matter with human beans,’ the BFG went on, ‘is that they is absolutely refusing to believe in anything unless they is actually seeing it right in front of their own schnozzles

April 10, 2017

Fantastic tale overbrimming with Roald Dahl's language invention has the BFG and Sophie saving the kids and humans of the world from maneating giants. Queen E is pulled into the machinations and is up to it. Had me laughing out loud! I enjoyed this in audiobook format and the extras in the performance were a delight!!!