Sweets and imagination: Roald Dahl’s case

Have you ever asked yourself why children go mad or remain hypnotized when they see a sweet? Certainly their sweet savour plays an important role, but sweets have a strong appeal for children not only because of their taste: usually children only need to look at them and immediately sweets have the power to catch their attention. And also the most important chefs know well that, when they serve a dish, the disposition of ingredients is very important, and the presentation of dishes plays a major role in the appreciation of food. Why should that be different for children? Moreover sweets, and all the sweet producers and retailers know it well, usually have a really tempting look – and in many cases not only for little consumers – which can make them look like toys and excite children’s imagination.

We may claim that sweets excite not only children’s appetite, but also their imagination! Coloured or animal-shaped sweets, or sweets shaped like teeth that you can put into your mouth to look like a lycanthrope, or with a glittering wrapping, or brightly coloured to raise people’s spirits … even the most disciplined child cannot resist these temptations. And if a writer like Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and of many other children’s books, drew inspiration from sweets to create some beautiful tales, we must believe that sweets can really unleash the imagination of children and grown-ups. The case of Roald Dahl, in this sense, is really emblematic: when you read the novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory you certainly get the impression that it is written by an author with a rich imagination, who perfectly knows how to catch his readers’ attention by setting his story in a factory where all types of fanciful sweets are produced. But the author of this very famous novel is also the child that many years before daydreamed about the sweet pots that were exhibited in the shop near where he lived. You only need to read Boy, a sort of collection of autobiographical tales by Roald Dahl, to connect dots and find a link between the childhood of a greedy child with a rich imagination and the reality of a successful writer, one of the most appreciated by children. Roald Dahl explains in a very vivid and colourful way that his schoolmates and he believed that the sweets of the shops hid incredible stories, sometimes horrifying: for example, he claims to have been persuaded that liquorice was made of pressed mouse blood.

An outstanding example of how sweets can really have a strong effect on children’s imagination and stick in the minds of adults, as well as an emblematic case that clearly explains that children are not only interested in the savour of sweets, but often also in their look and in the possibility that they give to set imagination in motion.