Roald Dahl The Hitchhiker Pdf

First published in 1977 in the collection The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, "The Hitchhiker" is a masterpiece of narrative tension. Unlike Dahl’s children’s stories, this one is steeped in adult cynicism and clever crime.

The Plot Summary: The story is narrated by a wealthy, somewhat arrogant writer who is driving his brand-new,昂贵的 BMW (a 3.8 litre, to be precise) from London to the countryside. To break the monotony, he picks up a scruffy, talkative hitchhiker.

The hitchhiker, a small, rat-faced man with quick fingers, immediately makes the narrator uncomfortable. As they drive, the hitchhiker spots a police officer hiding behind a billboard. The narrator, a stickler for rules, panics—he is speeding. The policeman pulls them over, and the narrator expects a hefty fine. Roald Dahl The Hitchhiker Pdf

However, the hitchhiker steps out of the car and engages the policeman in a bizarre conversation, denying that the car was speeding. Suddenly, the policeman’s notebook vanishes. Then his pen. Then his whistle. The policeman, utterly flustered, gives up and lets them go.

It is here that Dahl reveals the story’s true genius. The hitchhiker is not just a vagrant; he is a "fingersmith"—a professional pickpocket of the highest order. He proceeds to show the narrator his "collection": a wallet full of stolen IDs, a dozen ballpoint pens, and—hilariously—the policeman’s whistle. The story ends with the hitchhiker admitting he was once arrested, but only because he refused to bribe a judge, choosing pride over freedom. The narrator, once smug in his luxury car, is left humbled by the sheer artistry of the thief. First published in 1977 in the collection The

While not a PDF, the audiobook version read by Andrew Sachs (available on Audible) follows the text verbatim. You can listen while following along with a legal transcript you create yourself.

The story opens with a writer—an analogue for Dahl himself—picking up a well-dressed, effeminate young man. The narrator is meticulous, proud, and middle-class, defined by his new car’s “750 c.c. engine” and “walnut dashboard.” Dahl deliberately establishes this narrator as a creature of measurable reality. He trusts the tangible. The hitchhiker, by contrast, is pure performance: flamboyant, loquacious, and armed only with a cigarette holder and a “small brown sausage” of a hand. To break the monotony, he picks up a

When the police siren wails and the narrator is wrongly accused of speeding, the story pivots from social comedy to existential heist. The hitchhiker reveals his true profession: not a vagrant, but a “fingersmith”—a pickpocket of such dexterity that his hands are insured for £25,000. In a dazzling paragraph of kinetic prose, Dahl describes the man dismantling the policeman’s watch, wallet, and badge without the officer ever feeling a touch. The climax is not an arrest, but a revelation: the justice system is powerless against those who operate outside its mechanical logic.

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