Smoked Cheese
Smoked Cheese is a short story by the British writer Roald Dahl (1916–1990). It was published in November 1945 in the American magazine The Atlantic . This short story has not yet been published in German.
Roald Dahl transformed the short story Smoked Cheese into a more contemporary version, written for children. This children's version, titled The Upsidedown Mice , was first released in 1974.
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In Smoked Cheese the poor but happy pilot Bipou lives alone in a house infested with mice. Initially, Bipou tolerated the mice. However, after increasing numbers, he wants to get rid of them. He sticks mousetraps on the ceiling and puts smoked cheese in the traps. When the mice come out of their holes in the night and see the mousetraps on the ceiling, they bump into each other and burst into great laughter. When Bipou sees that not a single mouse has fallen into a trap, he sticks a chair, a table, a floor lamp, a radio and a carpet upside down on the ceiling. When the mice come out of their holes the next night, they are still making fun of what they saw the night before. But when they look at the ceiling, they suddenly stop laughing and are all shocked. Since they think they can see the floor above them, they think they are standing on the ceiling. A particularly clever mouse, with a face like a politician and bushy eyebrows like John L. Lewis , gives the instruction that all mice should turn upside down and then turn back in the supposedly correct direction towards the “ground” stand. The mice all turn upside down and eventually all of them perish because of the accumulation of blood in the brain. The next morning, Bipou sees that the whole floor is covered with dead mice. He claps his hands and says, "I knew you were into smoked cheese."
Key differences between Smoked Cheese and The Upsidedown Mice
The choice of words, the sentences and the plot in the short story The Upsidedown Mice , which was first published in 1974, almost 30 years later, are almost identical to Smoked Cheese . Roald Dahl had the short story Smoked Cheese , which was intended for adults, rewritten for children and renamed the title. In the 1945 version, the main character is a pilot and not an 87-year-old man, and a radio is stuck to the ceiling instead of the TV in the later version. In Smoked Cheese Dahl compares the appearance of the main mouse with the living union president John L. Lewis (1880-1969), who is not mentioned in the children's story. In addition, all mice die at the end and not only become unconscious like in children's stories. In the 1974 version, Dahl probably didn't want the target readers to face the cruel death of the mice. The motto at the end of the story is not yet included in the 1945 version.
Standing upside down and sticking on - another occurrence at Dahl
In Dahl's children's novel Die Zwicks stand upside down (first published in 1980; original title The Twits , first published in 1979) the monkey Muggle-Wump sticks upside down a carpet, chairs and tables as well as other things from the house of the Zwick couple with the help of the birds the ceiling. When the Zwicks look at the ceiling, they - like mice - think the ceiling is the floor. In order to stand in the supposedly correct direction towards the “ground” again, they stand on their head and stick to the ground because of the glue that two birds had previously secretly attached to the heads of the Zwicks.