The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame

First published: 1938, excerpted from Dream Days (1898); illustrated

Subjects: Animals, arts, friendship, and social issues

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Fantasy

Time of work: Long ago

Recommended Ages: 10-15

Locale: The countryside near the Downs, in southeast England

Principal Characters:

• The Boy, a bookish, intelligent child
• The Dragon, a poetic, peace-loving creature
• St. George, a sensible if duty-bound public figure

Form and Content

Initially appearing as one of several stories and sketches in Kenneth Grahame’s Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon was published in a self-contained volume several decades later, with illustrations by Ernest H. Shepard. Grahame wrote Dream Days as a sequel to The Golden Age (1895), the work that established him as a major literary figure. Dream Days features the same characters as in the earlier book, grown somewhat older: five orphaned siblings and the unsympathetic adults, known as “Olympians,” in charge of them. Both books are narrated in the first person by an unnamed sibling.

In its original context, Grahame’s dragon tale unfolds as a story within a story. The framing story finds the narrator and his younger sister Charlotte “tracking” mysterious prints, which they believe belong to a dragon, to the doorstep of a neighbor whom the siblings have dubbed “the funny man.” This character, first encountered in the previous story “The Magic Ring,” is “funny” because, unlike most adults in their experience, he is responsive to children. Brother and sister enjoy a pleasant visit with “the funny man,” who, as he walks the two home, succumbs to Charlotte’s entreaties for a story. The tale that he tells is The Reluctant Dragon.

The story approximates a fairy-tale beginning as it is placed indeterminately in time and space: “long ago” and “in a cottage half-way between an English village and the shoulder of the Downs.” In this cottage live the Boy and his parents, who are in awe of his “book-learning.” Drawing on this learning, the Boy confirms that the creature that his father has spied while herding sheep is a dragon. To help reassure his parents, he determines to “have a talk” with the beast regarding its intentions.

The Dragon is revealed to be a sensitive, artistic sort who composes poetry and tells exciting tales about earlier times. He and the Boy become friends. Much to the Boy’s exasperation, the Dragon shrugs off warnings that the villagers will seek his bloody end once they know that he is nearby, as dragons are popularly believed to be monsters and scourges.

The Boy’s suspicions are confirmed when he discovers that the townsfolk have summoned the famed dragonslayer St. George to rid them of the beast. The Dragon refuses to be roused by the news and suggests that the Boy “arrange” something. St. George echoes this suggestion when the Boy, gaining an audience with him, attests the Dragon’s peaceable character.

What the Boy arranges is a meeting between the two. Insisting on upholding tradition, St. George proposes a mock fight, during which he will appear to vanquish the Dragon and “convert” him to civil behavior. The Dragon, happily anticipating the ensuing feast—during which he expects to endear himself to the populace—agrees. All goes according to plan, and the story concludes as it began, with a nod to fairy-tale convention. Closing the tale is a “happily ever after” tableau: the Boy, Dragon, and St. George arm-in-arm.

Critical Context

The Reluctant Dragon introduces what writer and critic Margaret Blount describes as the “prototype” of dragons in modern juvenile fiction whose “sting has been removed.” Grahame’s Dragon can be convincingly fearsome, and his contemporary E. Nesbit’s dragons are formidable, if redeemable, beasts. The trend in twentieth century fiction for children, however, was toward domesticating the dragon, such as in C. S. Forester’s Poo Poo and the Dragons (1942), Rosemary Manning’s Green Smoke (1957), and Margaret Mahy’s The Dragon of an Ordinary Family (1969).

The Reluctant Dragon also has the distinction of remaining popular while Dream Days, from which is excerpted, has not. Educator and critic Elizabeth A. Cripps traces this divergence to a difference in “implied readership.” Writing in the 1890’s, when a romantically tinged cult of childhood was at its peak in English literature, Grahame created a narrator in Dream Days whose dual perspective is that of a child and the adult he becomes. Such a state of mind is naturally foreign to children. In fact, adults were the most eager readers of Dream Days when it first appeared.

Contributing to the sense of nostalgia that infuses Dream Days, its narrator expresses himself with a languid, self-conscious lyricism that fails to engage most young readers. By contrast, the narrator of The Reluctant Dragon launches immediately into his tale. It is related with minimal reflection in a direct, conversational style that relies on simple, fluid syntax and vivid pictorial detail. Such a narrative approach is accessible to the young reader—as it most likely was, in the story’s initial context, to the two youngsters who heard it from “the funny man.”

Lois Kuznets credits the popularity of The Reluctant Dragon with children, relative to Dream Days, to the fantasy situation that it presents. Moving into the realm of fantasy not only lightens the story’s tone but also gives the Boy gratifying control over an adult situation, something that the orphans in the framing text sorely lack.