how Roald Dahl himself adapted his work fifty years ago

There was a stir in literary circles – and on social media – after the rights holders and publisher of Roald Dahl’s children’s books made some ‘woke’ tweaks to the texts. Yet this is not the first time that Dahl’s work has been adapted to social sensitivities.

Roald Dahl died in 1990, so no one can be sure what he himself would think of the new changes to his work. Yet the past shows that the writer himself, already 50 years ago, adjusted his work after criticism from social pressure groups. Even if it wasn’t instantaneous or without a fight.

pygmies

In Dahl’s children’s novel Charlie and the chocolate factory children visit the mysterious factory of chocolatier Willie Wonka. The sweets turn out to be made by Oompa-Loompas: little figures who replaced the chocolate factory’s former employees, as they were constantly infiltrated by spies who wanted to steal Wonka’s recipes.

Perhaps the most famous version of the Oompa-Loompas is from the classic film adaptation. Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory (1971), with Gene Wilder. They are depicted as men with orange skin, white eyebrows and Beethoven’s green hairstyle, played by actors with dwarfism.

But that is not how Roald Dahl originally described the Oompa-Loompas in the first edition of Charlie and the chocolate factory in 1964. Initially, the Oompa-Loompas were “pygmies” whom Willy Wonka had “found in the deepest and darkest part of the African jungle, where no white man had ever been.” The chocolatier shipped the Oompa-Loompas, “almost starving” in the jungle, to its English factory in “large packing boxes” with air holes. This is where they lived and were paid in cocoa beans – chocolate was their favorite food. The original illustrations accompanying the book reflected this Oompa-Loompas origin story.

“Nazi Practices”

The “African” version of the Oompa-Loompas caused resentment in the United States during plans for a film adaptation in the late 1960s. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), one of the oldest civic movements in the United States, was concerned about the stereotypical portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas. She recognized echoes of the colonial and slavery periods and threatened to protest. This is one of the reasons why the Oompa-Loompas in the film version got their orange peel and were no longer from Africa but from the fictional “Loompa country”.

The way Roald Dahl himself reacted to criticism from the NAACP is striking. At first he thought it was unreasonable: “The book was banned by the NAACP. They thought I was subtle anti-nigger written manual. But such a thing had never occurred to me,” he wrote to his editor. In another letter, he even called the NAACP’s attitude “genuine Nazi practices.”

However, the Oompa-Loompas of the second edition of Charlie and the chocolate factory (1973) are completely different. In the edition, reworked by Dahl, the Oompa-Loompas no longer came from Africa, but – just like in the film – from the fictional ‘Loompaland’. They were still small, but they had light skin, long curly hair and beards – a sort of hippie figure. The illustrations have also been adapted accordingly.

fantastic creatures

Also in later illustrated versions of Charlie and the chocolate factory were the wild-haired white Oompa-Loompas characters. The famous Dahl illustrator Quentin Blake also depicted them in this way.

In 1988, Dahl told linguistics professor Mark West, who wrote a book on censorship of children’s literature: “I created a group of fantastic little creatures. I saw them as charming little creatures, whereas the white children in the books were… very unpleasant. It didn’t occur to me that my depiction of the Oompa-Loompas was racist, but it did occur to the NAACP and others… After listening to the criticisms, I found myself sympathizing with them, which is why I bought the book review. ‘