I am very disappointed in the people praising the censoring / editing of Roald Dahl’s books.
Let me tell you a little story.
About five years ago I decided to re-visit Treasure Island. I found an unabridged version. I was surprised to discover that Long John Silver had a black lover. Because the book used the term “n–ress” the mention of her was removed from many American editions of the book when I grew up.
Note: I am not saying they removed the N word. I am saying they removed her *all together.* I didn’t know Long John Silver had a love interest until I was in my thirties and read an unabridged version of the novel.
It revealed so much about the story that I hadn’t noticed before.
1. That Long John Silver believed in love despite what was considered a cultural norm of the time. He didn’t care about what others considered proper and he was in love.
2. It shows that even Robert Louis Stevenson acknowledged the existence of interracial couples and yet no movie version I can think of addressed this until the TV series Black Sails.
3. It helped remind me of the culture of the era in which Treasure Island takes place and when it was written, the stigma against interracial relationships that existed in America right into the twentieth century and in some places is still a thing.
Sometimes books tell us more than just a story. They show us how a world was once viewed.
I felt like this was an important discovery, that Long John Silver had a black lover (or wife). And I was even a little angry that I had been robbed of this in previous readings of the book.
I think the removal of words like “Fat” and “ugly” from Roald Dahl’s books does us a disservice. It “cleans up” the past and denies a chance for us to learn some of the less pleasant aspects of the past and how and why language has changed since then. What should be a teaching point and experience is lost in the name of sensitivity.
I felt cheated and it even felt a little racist that Long John Silver’s love interest isn’t mentioned in many editions of Treasure Island. And I feel that one day there may be similar feelings if people discover they aren’t reading the original versions of Dahl’s books.
Try to remember the original reason Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451. It wasn’t about an evil government taking away people’s blooks. It was about this group and that group getting offended at various titles until they just banned everything to try to make everyone happy.
