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A JOURNEY FROM INNOCENCE TO EXPERIENCE: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES IN ROALD DAHL’S FICTION
Innocence refers to a state of purity, simplicity often associated with lack of knowledge and experience is the accumulation of knowledge gained through challenges. In this paper, I would like to talk about the Children who were transformed from innocence to experience in the select novels of Roald Dahl. Roald Dahl’s The BFG, The Magic Finger, The Enormous Crocodile, The Witches also explore the theme of innocence to experience, through all his novels though it presents the journey in an exclusive way. Dahl regularly places child protagonists in strange or dangerous situations where they challenge moral and existential questions, developing maturity resilience as they face these challenges. In the novel The BFG, Sophie the protagonist, is a young orphan who lives in an innocent cramped world until she’s kidnapped by the Big Friendly Giant (BFG). Her journey from innocence to experience begins when she reaches a place known Giant Country, place of danger and magic inhabited by child-eating giants. In The Witches of Dahl, the boy unnamed undergoes one of the most intense transitions from innocence to experience. He starts with a naïve, childlike view of the world but soon moves away from the world into a terrifying reality upon learning that witches exist and are planning to harm children. When the boy is changed as a mouse, now he must navigate life in a new form, by being brave and using resourcefulness and intelligence.
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