Queen Elizabeth II: Mother to a Nation Part 2

In The BFG, Sophie watches as the giants run away.  The Big Friendly Giant has told her that every night, while he travels the world bringing pleasant dreams to children, the other giants venture out and eat humans.  Although the BFG feels bad about this, he doesn’t see how he can convince them to change their ways.  The only plant that grows in their land is the Snozzcumber, and it tastes so revolting that none of the other giants will eat them.

But Sophie feels she must do something.  After all, tonight the giants are heading off to her country, to eat her fellow British citizens.

So she concocts a plan.  Using the BFG’s stores of collected dreams, Sophie has him mix a nightmare about giants snatching British citizens out of their homes and eating them.  Then she asks him to take her to Buckingham Palace.  Using his trumpet-like device, he blows this nightmare into the Queen’s bedroom.  Needless to say, when the Queen awakes, and Sophie tells her that her nightmare was true, the Queen bursts into action.

Queen Elizabeth II,
captured by renowned illustrator Quentin Blake

She calls the kings and queens of other countries.  She summons the heads of the British Army and Royal Air Force.  While she awaits their arrival, she sits down for breakfast and asks Sophie and the BFG to explain the situation, and suggest how she can remedy it. 

I'm glad the BFG enjoyed his breakfast,
but oh, that poor piano.
And those grandfather clocks!

Her butler organizes the staff, and he fashions a table and chair for the BFG.  Then he watches, aghast, as the giant eats up all the food the cooks serve up, until the royal pantries are emptied (and the BFG discovers that the humans’ food tastes infinitely better than those yucky Snozzcumbers).

When the heads of her military seem incapable of coming up with a means of capturing the other giants, the Queen turns to the BFG and Sophie, who offer her a solution.  The heads of the Army and Air Force don’t like it, but they agree to go along with this strange plan concocted by a giant and an orphan girl.  After all, they can’t really refuse a royal command.

While other authors might have portrayed the situation more realistically, Dahl never mentions the important roles that the Prime Minister, the other Ministers, or the Houses of Parliament play in the everyday running of the United Kingdom.  Instead, he has Sophie take her problems directly to Queen Elizabeth II.  Far from being remote and unconcerned, the Queen is horrified at the thought of her subjects’ needless deaths.  A politician, faced with the same situation, would gauge public reaction to various proposed remedies, and ensure he had the necessary support to weather any potential backlash before he committed himself to a particular plan.  But the Queen acts like a mother whose children are threatened, she immediately takes charge of the situation, and demonstrates how relevant she is to her country by her decisions. 

You know, maybe America really does need a Queen.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Links

Illustrator Quentin Blake, who the Queen recently awarded with a knighthood, has a wonderful website.  Check it out at quentinblake.com

Roald Dahl and the Bringer of Dreams

In The BFG by Roald Dahl, Sophie lays awake one night in the orphanage.  All the other children are asleep.  If only the moonlight were not shining on her, perhaps she might drift off!  So, even though she risks getting punished, she leaves her bed to draw the curtains. 

“In the silvery moonlight, the village street she knew so well seemed completely different.  The houses looked bent and crooked, like houses in a fairy tale.  Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white.”  

Then she sees a figure four times as tall as a human.  It is heading her way.

The giant peers into the upstairs windows of each house he passes.  He stops across the street, outside the Goochey family’s greengrocer shop.  He pours something from a jar into a long trumpet thing, pokes the instrument through the upstairs window (where the Goochey children are sleeping), and blows.

Then he turns, and she sees an “enormous long pale wrinkly face with the most enormous ears.  The nose was as sharp as a knife, and above the nose there were two bright flashing eyes, and the eyes were staring straight at Sophie.”

As she runs back to her bed, the giant reaches into her window, grabs her up in her blanket, and runs out of the village.  She peers through the edges of the blanket as the giant races across an unfamiliar landscape.  When the giant reaches a cave, he sets her down on a kitchen table, stares at her, and announces, “I is hungry.”

Sophie and the Giant
 by Quentin Blake

Thankfully, this giant is The BFG--the Big Friendly Giant--and he doesn't eat little girls.  Through talking with him, she gains his trust, and he tells her that he was blowing dreams into the Goochey’s bedroom.  Every day he goes out with his dream-net, and when he captures a dream, he stores it inside a jar.  But he makes sure that it’s a nice dream, one sure to delight children, before he returns at night to deliver it.

While most of my dreams seem mundane, my wife’s dreams often defy explanation.  For example, lately I’ve been musing about superheroes, and last night I dreamed about superheroes.  My wife, on the other hand, dreamed about attending a Gaelic church service.  We’ve never visited Ireland.  We’ve never studied the country's history or culture.  We’ve certainly never been interested in learning Gaelic, let alone attending a service conducted in that language! 

The dreams that flit through my subconscious mind sometimes mystify me, but what matters is that I translate my conscious dreams into reality.  Lately, I’ve been developing a guidebook to my fictional world.  In cataloguing all the ideas and concepts I invented during the creation stage, I can weigh the compatibility of each with all the rest.  For some reason, distractions afflict me more powerfully during this phase.  Nor do I feel as if I’m making progress, unlike during the writing of the rough draft, when I can compare the pages I’ve written with the novel’s completed length.  

An awe-inspiring sketch
from Dragon Dave

For some reason, I’ve also put off drawing pictures my major characters, which in this case are dragons.  These drawings are nowhere as good as Quentin Blake’s, and will never be published.  Yet making these drawings helps me better envision the characters’ shape, size, how they walk, what they eat, how they view the world, and how they interact with others.  Some day I’d like to take up Mike Bocianowski’s challenge, and draw something every day.  But at least (Finally!) I’m doing what I need to do, and visually defining (setting in stone) the appearance of my major characters.

Dreams can be wonderfully entertaining.  They can inspire you to create, or offer potential solutions to problems that have been troubling you.  But to translate a dream into tangible form--one that others can see, interact with, and derive benefit from—takes work.  Otherwise, no wonder how strange or mystifying or potentially awe-inspiring, dreams fade with time, until they’re forgotten.

Dragon Dave

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Mike Bocianowski’s Passion