Character Analysis Of Peter Williamson In 'Beware Of The Dog'

Through the use of internal conflicts, irony, dialogue, and foreshadowing, the author teaches the reader that things are not always as they seem. The main character of this story is Peter Williamson. This pilot has lost his leg, which causes him to struggle with internal conflicts throughout the story. Here is an example before he jumped into the English Channel (or so he thought),“He looked at his altimeter. Twenty-one thousand. To test himself he tried to read the hundreds as well as the thousands. Twenty-one thousand and what? As he looked the dial became blurred, and he could not even see the needle. He knew then that he must bail out; that there was not a second to lose, otherwise he would become unconscious” (Dahl). More internal struggles continue when Peter arrives in “Brighton” at the hospital. He must trust the nurse, but later learns that she was really forced to try and get him better so the Germans can get information out of Peter. This technique shows

This is the reason that at the end of the story Peter did not want to talk to the Royal Air Force man who came to talk to him. This shows that Peter learns that he can’t trust the people during the war because they lied to him. Dialogue is very crucial to this story as well. The nurse and Peter have many conversations, which cause Peter to find out that he is not in Brighton, but in France. When the nurse would talk to Peter, she could trick him with her words since Peter did not actually know what was going on outside of his hospital room. Dialogue in this story tricked the reader, as well as Peter to believe a lie. That is important in this story because it ties back to the theme that things are not always as they seem, like when the nurse didn’t tell Peter about what was really going