The Enormous Crocs

In the short story “The Enormous Crocodile”, Dahl plays with a lot of literary devices in order to make the interesting to read for the children. There are rhyming scheme that is used and various tones are presented in the short story. Dahl also uses the element of comparison in this story. One of the elements that is used is the element of irony where by Dahl present the character the Enormous Crocodile as a very enormous character in the story and he thinks that he is very smart that he will be able to lure the kids using his tricks but unluckily, all his tricks are intercepted by other animals in the story. So, this shows that how irony for the Enormous Crocodile to think that he is a smart animal that he will be able to fool the kids but he never thinks about other animals in the jungle that are smarter than he is.

In this story, there are several tones that have been used in order to create a different feeling to the readers while reading the story. The first tone that is used is happy tone whereby the Enormous crocodile is very happy when he is going to execute all his plans in order to eat the kids. Another tone that has been used is the alert tone. This tone is being used when the Enormous Crocodile is executing his plans and the other animals come and save the kids. This tone has somehow made the readers feel excited while reading the story. The optimism tone is also used in the story in order to make the story sounds promising. This is used when the crocodile is planning to eat the kids and when he plans all his tricks. This also can be seen when he talks to the other animals along the way because this shows that he is very positive about being able to eat the kids. Last but not least, the tone of greed. In the story, whenever his trick fails, the Enormous Crocodile will want to eat more and more kids and this has made him looks very greedy.

In this writing, Dahl also uses a lot of element of symbolism through the animal characters that are presented in the story. The first animal that is used which is the main character of this story, the crocodile. Crocodile is often being described as an aggressive, able to survive on its own, easy to adapt to its surrounding, cunning and also very deceptive animal whereby in this story, the Enormous Crocodile has all the characteristic according to the symbolism. The next animal is elephant. Elephant is often being related to wisdom, strength, patience, endurance and self-restraint which of course all of these traits are being presented by Dahl in this story. Hippopotamus symbolizes birth, motherhood and protection towards the young. In this story, Humpy-Rumpy the hippopotamus has all the characteristics as being described in the symbolism this of animal. The other animal that is presented in this story is monkey. Monkey usually is being related to the element of quickness and wit, very observant, curious, loving and of course a good parent. In this story, we can see that the monkey has shown all the qualities discussed above. Even he is small but monkey still tries to save the kids in his own way and he succeeded. The last animal symbolism that is used in this story is the bird. Bird is often related to communication, freedom and sight whereby in the story, Roly-Poly plays its role as a bird that tries to free the children from the tricks of the Enormous Crocodile.

Among other literary elements that have been used, alliteration is one of the important elements that Dahl has used in making his story interesting. Alliteration is the repetition of the consonant in a sentence and one of the examples is “I’m going to fill my hungry tummy, with something yummy, yummy, yummy, yummy!” . This line is said by the Enormous Crocodile. In this line, we can see that the repetition of consonant ‘y’ and ‘m’ is used in order to make the rhyming scheme of the sentence sounds nice. The next literary element is personification which is to give the humanistic trait to non living things. For instance, the line “It looks strong as anything”, this line describe the condition of the bench at the picnic area whereby the Enormous Crocodile pretends to be. The writer, Dahl, also uses the element of onomatopoeia in this story to make it more rhythmic. The sound like “bang”, “ow-eeee!” and “yummy-yum-yum!” has made the story full of interesting sound that will captivate the children’s interest. Lastly, the literary element that is used in this story is the element of hyperbole. Hyperbole is the element of extreme comparison and one f the examples that is used in this story is “He was going so fast and so high that soon the earth was just a tiny dot miles below.”. This is being used to describe how fast the Enormous Crocodile is thrown away by the elephant. Another example is “And he was sizzled up like a sausage.”. This is to show that the sun is very hot and the Enormous Crocodile is cooked like a sausage when he reaches the surface of the sun.

Characterization is very important in a story because if the characters presented in the story do not have a specific or interesting characteristic, the story will fall flat and it will be less interesting to be read. In this story, “The Enormous Crocodile”, the main character of it is the Enormous Crocodile himself. He is a crocodile that lives in a river in Africa, who has a craving for children. He goes along the river and into the jungle on a quest to obtain juicy children for his meal, by using secret plans and clever tricks. The next character presented in this story is the Notsobig Crocodile. This crocodile lives in the river with Enormous Crocodile. He gets his name by being the smaller of the two. He finds children to be bitter, and he has little faith in Enormous Crocodile's evil plan. After that, this story has Humpy-Rumpy the hippopotamus. He knows that the Enormous Crocodile is up to no good, and manages to foil the coconut tree plot. The next one is Trunky the elephant which the Enormous Crocodile bites him on the leg to get his attention when he is on his way to execute his plans and the Enormous Crocodile wants to share his nasty plan with him. Trunky the Elephant becomes the hero of the story when he throws the Enormous Crocodile to the sun during the picnic bench incident. The character of Mugle-Wump is played by the monkey. Muggle-Wump tries to offer Enormous Crocodile nuts, in lieu of chasing children, but to no avail. He manages to foil the playground incident with the seesaw. The last animal character in this story is Roly-Poly the bird. Roly-poly offers the Enormous Crocodile some berries but the Enormous Crocodile refuses his offer and the Enormous Crocodile even tries to bite him when he tries to escape from him. He is the one who foils the merry-go-round plot. The other characters mentioned in the story are Totot and Mary who are the two children who want to collect the coconut near the Enormous Crocodile and another child character is Jill whom almost eaten by the Enormous Crocodile during the merry-go-round trick.