British author Roald Dahl’s popular children’s books have been revised to exclude offensive language, with the goal of creating a more ‘inclusive’ fictional community that all people can continue to enjoy today.
Hundreds of the novelist’s words have been changed as Puffin, a children’s paperback publisher and the publishing house of Dahl’s books, hired sensitivity writers to edit vivid descriptions of his characters’ physical attributes. Based on a report from the Daily Telegraph, words such as ‘fat’ and ‘ugly’ have been eliminated from the newest edition of Dahl’s books.
In ‘James and the Giant Peach’, Miss Sponge is not recognized as the fat one anymore. ‘In ‘The Twits’, Mrs. Twit is no longer described as fearfully ugly while in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, Augustus Gloop is not labeled as fat, but ‘enormous’ instead, and the Oompa-Loompas have gone gender-neutral– dubbing them ‘small people’ instead of ‘small men.’
Aside from word alterations, some passages, that are not written in the original text have been added. In ‘The Witches’, a brand-new paragraph has been included in the excerpt, explaining that ‘witches are bald beneath their wigs’ in a more sensitive way: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.”
Moreover, in the previous versions of James and the Giant Peach, the Centipede sings: “Aunt Sponge was terrifically fat/ And tremendously flabby at that, and “Aunt Spiker was thin as a wire / And dry as a bone, only drier.” These verses have been replaced by these rhyming lines: “Aunt Sponge was a nasty old brute / And deserved to be squashed by the fruit,” and “Aunt Spiker was much of the same / And deserves half of the blame.”
However, some avid readers of Dahl’s collection expressed their opinions about the removal of terminologies that were deemed ‘offensive’. In a Facebook post on 9 News, a TV show in Australia, people flocked to the comment section, flooding it with disappointed statements as they believed that rewriting Dahl’s masterpieces is an ‘insult’ to his credibility as a well-known writer.
“People need to get over themselves. If they’re offended by Roald Dahl – God help the world,” one said.
“Yes, let’s remove verbs (edit: adjectives) from everything, what an absurd movement,” another added.
Below are more comments on the issue:
Nevertheless, Roald Dahl Story Company addressed that reviewing the language of his books and novels to produce new editions was ‘not unusual’ and any changes made were ‘small’ and ‘carefully considered.’
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