Exploring the fragility of human psyche

 

Title: Madness

Author: Roald Dahl

Publisher: Penguin Books, London

Year published: 2016

256 pages

“Madness” is a collection of ten unsettling short stories for adults, first compiled in 2016 as part of a centenary edition of his darker tales. 

The book delves into the chilling consequences of losing control—of one’s life, but more profoundly, of one’s own mind—exploring the fine, often domestic, line between sanity and irrationality. 

Dahl uses his signature blend of suspense, dark humor, and macabre plot twists to examine themes of obsession, psychological breakdown, and the hidden cruelties lurking beneath polite society.

The stories are characterized by ordinary settings and seemingly normal people whose hidden anxieties, eccentric desires, or sudden fixations lead to bizarre and frequently fatal outcomes. 

One of the central pieces, “The Way Up to Heaven,” focuses on a wealthy, elderly woman with a crippling, pathological obsession with punctuality. 

Her deliberately cruel husband enjoys tormenting her by causing maddening delays whenever she needs to travel. 

This domestic power struggle culminates in a shocking, decisive act of calculated non-action as the wife, desperate to catch a plane, makes a fateful decision about the delayed elevator containing her husband.

Another standout is "The Landlady," a concise and deeply eerie tale. A young man travels to a new city for work and checks into a cozy, inexpensive bed and breakfast run by a seemingly sweet, harmless woman. 

The landlady, however, harbors a sinister secret: she never wants her guests to leave, and her collection of preserved pets hints at the gruesome fate she has planned for her new tenant. 

The story builds mounting dread through the contrast between the landlady's gentle demeanor and the chilling realization of her intentions.

"Edward the Conqueror" explores a different kind of madness within a marriage. A woman rescues a stray cat she becomes convinced is the reincarnation of the composer Franz Liszt after observing its intense reaction to her piano playing. 

Her husband, whose initial skepticism turns into jealousy and then outright antagonism over the attention she bestows on the feline, decides to violently assert control over his wife's perceived delusion, leading to a dark, destructive outcome.

In "William and Mary," the theme is the mad desire to cheat death and the unexpected horrors of its aftermath. A dying, emotionally controlling man arranges to have his brain and one eye kept alive in a special saline solution after his body expires, hoping to retain consciousness. 

The story follows the macabre reality of this experiment and the disturbing emotional reaction of his widow, Mary, who is finally freed from his tyranny but must now contend with his partially living presence.

Other tales further illustrate the collection’s theme: "Pig" follows a young man, raised as a strict vegetarian, whose first taste of pork after his guardian's death sparks a culinary obsession that leads him directly into a violent, horrifying trap. 

"The Sound Machine" introduces an eccentric inventor whose device allows him to hear ultrasonic sounds, revealing a world of silent screams and agony that drives him to the brink. 

"Dip in the Pool" is a tense piece about a man on a cruise ship who, upon realizing a bet on the ship's daily mileage will ruin him, hatches a desperate, irrational plan to save his fortune by faking an emergency, with unforeseen and swift consequences.

Collected from various points in Dahl’s career, the stories in "Madness" showcase his exceptional skill in crafting tales with a "sting in the tail." 

They explore the fragility of the human psyche and the unsettling ways that small obsessions, anxieties, or moments of profound loss of control can unravel a life, confirming Dahl’s mastery of adult fiction that is dark, thought-provoking, and deeply unsettling.




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