Two characters from Danny the Champion of the World: William, a.k.a Danny’s father, and Danny.
by Harry Wan
William (Danny’s father)
Without a doubt, Danny’s father is the most excellent and exciting father any boy could ever have. His father appears to be really serious in fact, he never smiles with his mouth; when he smiles, he uses his eyes. He has bright blue eyes and when he smiles, his eyes flash, and if you attentively looked at them, you could see a tiny little golden spark jumping in the middle of the eyes, but his mouth would never move. This is nice because that means he can’t give fake smiles at you – you can’t just make your eyes twinkle whenever you want. This way, if you look at someone and they smile but their eyes are not twinkling, it’s sure to be either a fraud move, or it is phony.
Danny’s father is not someone you would call educated; he hasn’t even read twenty books in his life. He’s also a great storyteller. Sometimes he would take the particularly good ones and turn them into serials. The longest series went on for 50 nights. That story was called the Big Friendly Giant or BFG for short. Occasionally, as he told stories, William would stride up and down waving his arms and waggling his fingers, but most of the time he would sit close to Danny on the edge of his bunk and speak softly.
Danny’s father is also a fine mechanic. People who lived miles always bring their cars to him to repair rather than the nearest garage. William loved the engines. “A petrol engine is sheer magic”; “Just imagine being able to take a thousand different bits of metal and if you fit them all together in a certain way, and if you press a little switch, suddenly those bits of metal will all come to life and they will purr and hum and roar, they will make the wheels of a motor car go whizzing round at fantastic speeds”. This shows how much Danny’s father loves being a mechanic; he almost looks at them from a philosophical perspective. Overall, I really like Danny’s father William, he really is the best possible father anyone could have. I really like how he can smile with his eyes because that means he can never fake smile at you. I also like how he looks at engineering as if the metal pieces have lives.
Danny (William’s Son)
When Danny was four months old, his mother died suddenly and his father William was left to look after him all by himself. Danny had no siblings. Throughout all of Danny’s boyhood, from the age of four months onward, there were just the two people, father and son.
Danny and his father lived in an old gypsy caravan behind a filling station. Danny’s father owned the filling station and the caravan with a small field behind, but that was about all he owed. While Danny was a baby, his father washed him, fed him, changed his diapers, and did all the things a mother would do for her baby, except, he also has to make a living at the same time by repairing car engines and selling customers petrol oil.
During the early years, Danny had never had a moment’s unhappiness or sickness. When he was five, he was a scruffy little boy with grease and oil all over him. By the age of seven, he learned to disassemble a small engine and assemble it back together.
Danny also didn’t go to school until he was nine years old, I bet every kid reading this is jealous right now. Overall, I think Danny is a nice, polite, clever and is a respectful little boy. He’s nice, polite, and respectful because he doesn’t talk back to other people and so far only got angry once in the book. Danny is clever because he invented a new way of poaching pheasants.