- ID
- b127
- Title
- "Silas and Goliath."
- Genre
- Story
- Page Count
- 6
- Word Count
- 1780
- Publisher
- Auckland Star
- The Voice
- Publication Year
- 1939
- Document Types
- Film & Television
- Comic Fiction
- First-Person Narratives
- Character: Uncle Silas
- Topics
- Boyhood, Religion
Uncle Silas regales his nephew with an "awful, blood-thirsty, terrifying picture of the flesh-eating, ear-chewing, woman-grabbing" village bully named Porky Sanders and of how Silas "knocked him into Kingdom Come."
The tale ends (like several of others in the series) with the "housekeeper" chastising Silas for "telling the boy such downright nonsense and such tales about things that never happened." Silas's comeback, that he sees no difference between such a tale and certain stories in the Bible, and the narrator's comment that "and now that I come to think of it, nor do I," well express the overall spirit of the Silas tales, the rapport between Silas and the boy, in addition to offering a gentle poke at religion.
A television adaptation starring Albert Finney was aired in 2001.
Published in:
- The Auckland Star (July 28, 1939, p. 15, with the title 'Goliath's Downfall')
- The Voice (Hobart, July 29, 1939, p. 5, with the title 'Goliath's Downfall')
- My Uncle Silas (1939)
- The Complete My Uncle Silas Stories (Bloomsbury ebook, 2016)
