31 pages • 1 hour read
Roald DahlEsio Trot
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPages 49-63Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 49-63 Summary
After weighing Alfie, Mrs. Silver is giddy with delight as she calls Mr. Hoppy a “miracle man.” In a brief scene, she discovers that Alfie is now too large to enter his house. Mr. Hoppy doesn’t miss a beat. He merely tells another lie and says that if she changes the magic words to make Alfie shrink a little, he’ll be able to enter the house again, without requiring changes to the structure. He writes a new chant for her, also in backward English.
Mrs. Silver worries that Alfie will be disappointed if he gets smaller, but she agrees to try. She touches Mr. Hoppy’s arm and says that if it works, “then [he is] the cleverest man alive” (53). This is all the encouragement he needs to stay the course.
While she is at work the next day, Mr. Hoppy finds a small enough tortoise and places it in Mrs. Silver’s garden. He hears her happy shouts later that day. He excitedly runs down to meet her, telling himself not to mess up this greatest moment of his life. She hugs him and invites him inside for tea. When she smiles, he proposes to her. Mrs. Silver agrees to marry him and gives credit to Alfie. The next day, Mr. Hoppy returns the other tortoises and cleans up his living room, disposing of all the evidence. They marry weeks later, and Mrs. Silver changes her last name to Hoppy.
In a postscript, the reader learns that a girl named Roberta Squibb bought the original Alfie after Mr. Hoppy took him back to the pet store. She fed him vegetables, and he lived in her garden. When Roberta was an adult with two children and a husband, Alfie was at least 30 years old: “It has taken him all that time to grow to twice the size he was when Mrs. Silver had him. But he made it in the end” (62).
Pages 49-63 Analysis
The final third of the story focuses on the aftermath of Mr. Hoppy’s deception. Despite the thematic tension of misapplied ethics, Mr. Hoppy basks in Mrs. Silver’s praise. When she cheers for Alfie, she also praises Mr. Hoppy just as quickly, a reminder that she has enough Love and Affection for more than one creature in her life: “‘Oh, you great big wonderful boy! Just look what clever Mr. Hoppy has done for you!’ Mr. Hoppy suddenly felt very brave” (50).
Her compliment buoys Mr. Hoppy so drastically that he feels that the reckoning of his existence is finally at hand: “This is it! he whispered to himself under his breath. The greatest moment of my life is coming up now! I mustn’t bish it. I mustn’t bosh it! I must keep very calm!” (57). He has been calm to a fault until this point, which is part of the reason he has never had the nerve to approach Mrs. Silver.
When she smiles and embraces him, it changes everything: “That smile of hers, so warm and friendly, suddenly gave him the courage he needed, and he said ‘Mrs. Silver, please, will you marry me?’” (50). Mrs. Silver accepts his proposal but also takes the opportunity to mention that he never should have waited so long: “‘Why, Mr. Hoppy!’ she cried, ‘I didn’t think you’d ever get round to asking me! Of course I’ll marry you!’” (50). Her acceptance of his proposal appears to have been inevitable if he could find the courage and opportunity to ask.
This raises a question about Mrs. Silver’s insight: She is credulous enough to use the magic words to grow—and then shrink—Alfie, but one could surmise that she knows more about Mr. Hoppy’s feelings for her than she has admitted. Otherwise, why would she accept a proposal from a man with whom she’d had only (in his estimation) superficial conversations?
Mr. Hoppy gets his reward: love, affection, companionship, and an end to his loneliness. If he regrets taking Alfie and giving him back to the pet shop without telling her, he never expresses it. Mr. Hoppy has only to keep his secret to have his dreams fulfilled. This raises a provocative question about the message of the story: Did he do the right thing since his deception made two people happy and took away their loneliness? Perhaps readers will decide, instead, that the secret should weigh on his conscience and that that would be the only outcome if Mr. Hoppy were truly a good person.
Dahl doesn’t end the story without closure for Alfie. In the postscript, he takes the reader forward into Alfie’s future with Roberta Squibb: “It has taken him all that time to grow to twice the size he was when Mrs. Silver had him. But he made it in the end” (62). If Mrs. Silver was right about Alfie’s feelings about his own size, even Alfie gets a happy ending, despite being transported to a new home and deprived of Mrs. Silver, without any chance to protest.
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