Sophie and the giant

This article describes the children's book. For the 2016 film, see BFG - Big Friendly Giant . For the TV film from 1989 see The great friendly giant .

Sophiechen and the Giant is a children's book by the English writer Roald Dahl . The English and American first edition was published in 1982 under the title “The BFG” by Jonathan Cape in London and by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York. The German edition in the translation by Adam Quidam was published in 1984 by Rowohlt Verlag in Reinbek near Hamburg. The black and white illustrations were created by Quentin Blake .

Sophiechen, a tough and courageous orphan girl, is kidnapped by a good giant in the giant country, where he lives among 9 other giants. The good giant collects dreams and blows them into the children's bedrooms at night, the other giants are man-eating monsters. Sophiechen devises a plan to neutralize the evil giants. With the assistance of the Queen of England, Sophiechen and the good giant put the plan into action and put an end to the goings-on of the bad giants.

action

Sophiechen is an orphan and lives in an English orphanage. One night around witching hour, the sleepless child sneaks to the dormitory window and curiously pokes his head out into the darkness. A thin black figure the size of four adult men is walking down the street - a giant! He spots the girl, seizes her and races off with giant strides to the land of giants. (The giant had to kidnap Sophiechen because she had watched him and he feared that he would be hunted and killed by humans.) He dragged Sophiechen into his cave, a huge hall surrounded by high shelves with thousands upon thousands of canning jars. Little Sophie shivers with fear, the giant will certainly eat her for breakfast!

The giant's 9 neighbors are ugly guys and twice his size. Every night they go on a hunt, drag people out of beds and eat them up. He is a good giant himself ("GuRie"), he reassures the trembling little Sophie, that he is a vegetarian and is therefore bullied by his neighbors. He feeds on disgusting puking cucumbers, the only plants that grow in this vast country, and he drinks bubble water so he can cut funny fart trees. His awkward speech ( gobble radio ), which makes Sophie smile, is excused by the fact that he never went to school.

GuRie explains to Sophie that the canning jars contain dreams that he cremated in dreamland. At night he goes to the cities, pours dreams into his trumpet, blows them into the children's bedrooms and brings them beautiful dreams. The giant takes Sophiechen on a dream hunt, and back in his cave he catalogs the captured dreams in his dream collection. Having been privy to the secrets of his system, Sophiechen comes up with a plan to neutralize the bad giants: The good giant should mix a dream for the Queen of England so that she can stop the bad giants.

The good giant goes with Sophiechen to London, where he blows his dream into the queen's bedroom. When the Queen wakes up, she has a sumptuous breakfast served for them and orders her senior military officers to catch the evil giants alive and bring them to London. There they are thrown into a deep pit and from then on they have to feed on vomit pickles. The queen has an extra tall house built for the good giant near her palace and a neat country house for Sophiechen. Sophiechen gives the giant tuition in speaking and writing. He becomes a master of the pen and writes his adventures down in a book - which the reader holds in his hands. Out of modesty, however, he does not publish the book under his own name, but uses a pseudonym.

people

People

• Sophiechen, an orphan (Sophie, an orphan).
• The Queen of England.
• Mary, the Queen's maid.
• Mister Tibbs, the Palace butler.
• The head of the army.
• The head of the Air Force.

Giants

• The good giant GuRie (The BFG)
• The Fleshlumpeater
• The Bonecruncher
• The Manhugger
• The Childchewer
• Der Hackepeter (The Meatdripper)
• The Gizzardgulper
• The Maidmasher
• The Bloodbottler
• The Butcher Boy

Emergence

As Roald Dahl's marital problems increased in the late 1970s, he sought solace in the company of his two youngest daughters, Ophelia and Lucy. He told them stories he'd made up, like the one about the Big Friendly Giant (BFG) who allegedly lived in their orchard. One night Dahl himself played the BFG and climbed a ladder up her room window, pretending to blow dreams into her room with a bamboo cane. Another trace of Roald Dahl's BFG fable can be found in one of his books of ideas: a man captures thoughts in glasses, in which they jump wildly. The BFG made its first literary appearance in Dahl's story " Danny or Die Fasanenjagd " (1975), in which a father tells his son a bedtime story about the BFG. The giant already wears the features of the later BFG and collects dreams, which he processes into powder and blows into the bedrooms for the children.

In 1981 Roald Dahl began writing "The BFG". The hero of the first version was a boy named Jody, and the BFG hardly ever used his funny language. In the final version, Dahl replaced Jody with the girl Sophie (that was the name of his first grandchild) and let the BFG chatter extensively in his lovable gobble funk language. On October 7, 1981, he informed Dirk Bogarde with relief that he had finished "The BFG" the day before. He had spent six months writing it, 600 hours, seven days a week, and later he confessed to his editor that the book had worn him out quite a bit.

He sent the final version to Tom Maschler, the head of his English publishing house Jonathan Cape in London, and to Stephen Raxburgh, the chief editor of his American publishing house Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York. He let Raxburgh know that he was open to small improvements, but that he was unable to make major changes. The young Raxburgh was intimidated by the famous writer who was twice his age, but sent back an extensive list of suggested changes. Contrary to expectations, Roald Dahl was thrilled, because no one had examined his manuscripts so meticulously for 40 years, and he wrote back in the language of the BFG that he was "swishboggled and sloshbungled" (speechless and entranced). Dahl largely accepted Raxburgh's proposals. He also made his suggestion his own to take up the topic of "bubbling water and farting trees" at another point in the story, and added a fartling tree dance by the BFG to the breakfast scene with the queen.

Quentin Blake , who had already illustrated Dahl's last three children's books, was also to provide the illustrations for “The BFG”. Tom Maschler wanted to limit the number of pictures to 12, but bowed to the furious resistance of Roald Dahl, who vehemently demanded that his book be "adequately and fully" illustrated. Draftsman and author worked closely together. When Roald Dahl saw the unattractive figure of the BFG on Quentin's drafts, he gave his giant a friendlier appearance. He sent Quentin a pair of his huge Norwegian sandals as a template for the BFG's footwear, and the huge ears of a well-known building contractor were the inspiration for the fluttering ears.

Roald Dahl dedicated the book to his daughter Olivia, who died in 1962 at the age of 7 from complications from measles. In 1982 the first edition of the book was published by Jonathan Cape in London and by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York.

Gobble radio

prehistory

For Roald Dahl, language was a playing field on which he could let his imagination run wild. He was able to live out his soft spot in his children's books without being ridiculed as childish by adult readers. He could even assume that children remember their first bumpy attempts to walk with language well, and that the slip of the tongue of the good giant would make the children all the more likable.

Roald Dahl and Pat Neal, 1954 (photography by Carl van Vechten ).

In 1965, Dahl's first wife, Pat Neal, had a stroke. Like a child, she had to learn to speak from scratch. She later recalled mixing up the words and using words that didn't exist. Perhaps his wife's language difficulties increased Roald Dahl's tendency to play language games in his children's books.

In “The BFG” Roald Dahl took his linguistic inventiveness to extremes. His victim was the poor BFG, who hadn't attended school and had never learned to express himself correctly. He explains his weakness to Sophiechen:

“The words are always a ticklish thing for me. That's why you have to be patient with me and not improve on me. I already told you earlier, I know exactly what I want to say, but somehow my words get mixed up sometimes. "

The word gobble radio appears for the first time in “The BFG” when the giant Sophiechen explains which “tastes” of human sacrifices the evil giants prefer. Little Sophie can not help correcting him, to which the giant counters: "Don't gobblefunk around with words!". Although the giant actually wants to brand Sophiechens “word babble” with it, the word is used today to describe his funny gibberish.

vocabulary

When the reader opens the book, the first thing they will be confronted with is the gruesome fantasy names of the evil giants. They are made up of two words. One usually denotes a brutal action, for example “strangler” or “chew”, the other word indicates the object of the cruel event, for example “shreds of flesh” or “blood”. This gives rise to names such as "Fleischfetzenfresser" and "Kinderkauer".

In the dialogues of the good giant, especially with Sophiechen, but also with the queen, her servants and the military, Roald Dahl pulls out all the stops of his creative language. Here is a small selection:

category	Examples in English	Example German (or German translation)
Word inventions	trogglehumper (nightmare)	Bristle hump
	snozzcumbers	Puking cucumbers
	whiz poppers	Fart trees
	chiddler	child
Slip of the tongue	human beans instead of human beings	Liver beings instead of living beings
	elefunt instead of elephant	Noble elephant instead of elephant
	Your Majester instead of Your Majesty	Your mayonnaise instead of your majesty
	your humbug servant instead of your humble servant	Your most prodigal servant instead of your most obedient servant
	scrambled dregs instead of scrambled eggs	mixed scraps instead of scrambled eggs
Wrong sayings	to twiddle someone's leg instead of to pull someone's leg	kidding someone
	two rights is not making a left instead of two wrongs don't make a right	doubly wrong and yet not right
Interchanging letters	jipping and skumping instead of skipping and jumping	hop and jump
	catasterous disastrophe instead of disastrous catastrophe	disastrous catastrophe
Corruptions	bellypopper instead of helicopter	Pups robbers instead of helicopters
Suitcase words	delumptious from delicious and scrumptious	delicious and tasty
Identical words	almost as a fizzlecrump	as fast as a flash bomb
Wrong endings	hippodumplings instead of hippopotamuses	Hippos
	crockadowndillies instead of crocodiles	Crocodiles
	babblement instead of babble	Chatter

Roald Dahl had one of his prettiest word games with the name of Charles Dickens , one of his favorite writers. Sophiechen once asked the giant, who had never attended school, how he learned to write. The giant told her that he had read Dahl's Chickens' novel " Nicholas Nickleby " hundreds of times and thus acquired his knowledge as an autodidact. Some “dahlesque” words were listed in the “Olympus” of the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 on Roald Dahl's 100th birthday . In the same year the "Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary" appeared, a special dictionary on the Dahlian language universe.

Roald Dahl is not alone in literature with his talent for language creation. A famous predecessor of the 19th century was Lewis Carol , who loved playing on words in his children's books, inventing new words, suitcase words and nonsense words and baptizing his characters with bizarre names (turtle superich, Cheshire cat, Jabberwocky, Humpty Dumpty). Anthony Burgess , Roald Dahl's almost the same age, invented the fictional youth jargon Nadsat for his novel “ Uhrwerk Orange ” , a twisted mixture of Russian vocabulary with London's Cockney Rhyming slang as well as words from the English gypsy language and the language of children.

translation

The translator Adam Quidam was faced with the problem of congenially translating the funny language of the good giant into German. Since a literal translation was usually ruled out, the translator resolved to achieve roughly the same “humor level” on each page as in the original.

He usually ignores the giant's frequent grammatical errors. For example, he does not translate “I is hungry!” As “I am hungry!”, But as “Hunger!”. Only sometimes, when the “level of humor” demands it, does he insert a grammatically incorrect formulation, for example: “You saw me!”.

Incidentally, Adam Quidam succeeds in reproducing the funny English puns with appropriate equivalents in German: "human beans" (for human beings) are for him "human liver beings", and he replaces the sentence "Greeks from Greece is all tasting greasy" with "Greek liver creatures from Greece have a terrible taste of greath".

The literary scholar Reinbert Tabbert judges: "This is how a book was written in German too, whose linguistic wit is fascinating."

Quotes

• "Doesn't matter," said the GuRie. “I can't always be right. That's how I am: sometimes right and sometimes bad. "
• “The words,” he said, “are always a ticklish thing for me. That's why you have to be patient with me and not improve on me. I already told you earlier, I know exactly what I want to say, but somehow my words get mixed up sometimes. "
• “I'm definitely not a ghost giant who knows everything, but I think you're a human liver creature who knows nothing at all. You're a real head of cabbage. ”-“ Hollow head, you mean, ”said Sophiechen. - "What I mean and what I say are two different things," the GuRie proudly announced.
• "The human liver beings are the only liver beings that murder their own people."
• “I think it's mean when these nasty giants go out every evening and people go out to eat. We haven't done anything to them! ”-“ That's what Piglet said, the pig, ”replied the GuRie. "Every piglet that is slaughtered says: I haven't done anything to the human liver beings, why are they eating me then?" - "Oh yes," sighed Sophiechen.
• The GuRie ... said to the commander-in-chief of the air force: “You have fag robbers, don't you?” - “Does he want to be cheeky?” Asked the commander-in-chief of the air force. - "He means helicopter", Sophiechen explained to him.
• "You really are a smart guy," said the Queen, looking up at the tall GuRie. "Your academic achievements leave a little to be desired, but you are really not stupid, I know that for sure."

expenditure

English

• Roald Dahl ; Quentin Blake (illustration): The BFG. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982.
• Roald Dahl ; Quentin Blake (illustration): The BFG. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1982.

German

• Roald Dahl ; Quentin Blake (illustration); Adam Quidam (translation): Sophiechen and the giant. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984.

media

Film adaptations

• 1989: The big friendly giant . Animated TV movie, UK. German version: 1994. Director: Brian Cosgrove, screenplay: John Hambley, online .
• 2016: BFG - Big Friendly Giant . Feature film, USA / Great Britain / Canada. German version: 2016. Director: Steven Spielberg, screenplay: Melissa Mathison, actors: BFG: Mark Rylance, Sophie: Ruby Barnhill.

radio play

• Roald Dahl ; Adam Quidam (translation): Sophiechen and the giant: radio play; from 7 years. Munich: Der Hörverlag, 2005, 3 CDs. - Director: Burkhard Ax, radio play adaptation based on the stage version by David Wood: Ingeborg Tröndle, speaker: Peer Augustinski, Verena Wurth, Michael Habeck.

theatre

• Roald Dahl ; David Wood (editor); Jane Walmsley (illustration); Adam Quidam (translation): Roald Dahl's Sophiechen and the Giant: plays for children. Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag, 2004.

Awards

• 1985: German Youth Literature Prize .
• 1991: Read Alone and Read Aloud BILBY Awards (Australia).
• 2003: BBC Big Read (UK), ranked 56th out of 100.
• 2007: Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children (USA), ranked 48th out of 100.
• 2012: School Library Journal (USA) annual bestseller , ranked 88th out of 100.

literature

• Donald Sturrock: Storyteller: the life of Roald Dahl. London: HarperPress, 2011, ISBN 978-0-00-725476-7 , especially pp. 522-527.
• Susan Rennie; Quentin Blake; Roald Dahl: Oxford Roald Dahl Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, ISBN 978-0192736451 .

Web links

• Roald Dahl website about "The BFG".

Footnotes

1. ↑ #Sturrock 2011 , pp. 521-522, 467.
2. ↑ #Sturrock 2011 , pp. 521-522, 527.
3. ^ The giant crocodile (1978), The Zwicks are upside down (1980), The miracle cure (1981).
4. ^ "I had all my words mixed up. I said words that didn't exist." - "The Marvelous World of Roald Dahl", BBC documentary, 2016.
5. ↑ The untranslatable word game was replaced by a paraphrase in the German translation.
6. ^ One hundred years of Roald Dahl: an Oxford English Dictionary update, September 12, 2016, online .
7. ↑ #Rennie 2016 .
8. ↑ Adam Quidam is a pseudonym of Hermann Gieselbusch.
9. ↑ Reinbert Tabbert: Borstenbuckler and Kinderkauer. In: Zeit online, February 7, 1986, online .
10. ↑ http://www.djlp.jugendliteratur.org/datenbanksuche/kinderbuch-2/artikel-sophiechen_und_der_riese-1217.html ( Memento from June 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) .
11. ↑ The Big Read Top 100 .
12. ↑ Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children .
13. ↑ Top 100 Chapter Book Poll Results ( Memento of the original from July 13, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .