Legacy

Roald Dahl’s life was marked with a love for children. He related to children on their level and was loved by many. He was dramatically affected by illnesses, his own and also illnesses of his loved-ones. During his life, he often visited children in the hospital and offered hope to the parent’s of the ill children (Hailliwell). Immediately after his death, his widow created the Roald Dahl Foundation. The goal of this charity is to provide medical help and literacy improvement to under privileged children (“History of the Charity”). His foundation also provides specialist nurses for seriously ill children (Halliwell).

Not only did he donate his time to visiting seriously ill children, he also created a medical device to aid them. When Dahl’s son was four months old, he was hit by a car and left with traumatic brain injury. He recovered, but was left with a condition called hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. The shunts inserted into the brain to drain the liquid would constantly get clogged with debris. Dahl collaborated with a friend who worked on hydraulic pumps to create a shunt that would not get clogged with debris (Buis and Ellen). He invented a medical device called the Wade-Dahl-Till valve that has helped treat thousands of children with hydrocephalus (“History of the Charity”). Profit was never taken for this device, the only charge to the family in need was the cost to produce the valve (“Big Sometimes Friendly Giant”).It is approximated that this valve helped three thousand children with hydrocephalus (Watts).

Since his death, numerous honors have been awarded to his name. The Roald Dahl Funny Prize is an award given to certain books that exhibit humor and enjoyableness in children’s books. This award ran from 2008 to 2013 (“Roald Dahl Funny Prize 2014”). Roald Dahl Day, September 13th, is a day set aside to honor the great man and his influence on children and children’s literature (“Roald Dahl Day”).

His legacy is not just marked by achievements, but also felt in the hearts and lives of those who have read his influential books. Roald Dahl wrote a total of thirty-nine works, he wrote children’s books as well as adult books and film screenplays (“Roald Dahl Titles”). Many of his books have been adapted to other areas of media, such as movies and musicals. Eleven of Dahl’s books have been adapted for film, the most well known include, The BFG, Matilda, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and The Witches (Van Bergen.) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda have been adapted to musicals and have been extremely successful (Taylor; Trueman).

Contributed by: Elizabeth Eberly.

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