Seventeen Oranges by Bill Naughton — Summary and Explanation

Author: Bill Naughton

Genre/Form: Short story (prose fiction)

Curriculum: Class 6 | Roots and Wings | Literature Reader

About the Author: Bill Naughton

Bill Naughton (1910-1992) was a British writer of Irish origin. He was born in Ballyhaunis, County Mayo, Ireland, and grew up in Bolton, Lancashire, in the north of England. His family moved to England when he was young, and he spent his early life working in ordinary jobs: as a weaver, a lorry driver, a coalman, and a warehouse worker. These experiences gave him a deep understanding of working-class life in Britain.

Naughton began writing later in life, and his stories draw heavily from his own experiences among the working people of northern England. He wrote with warmth, humour, and honesty about the struggles and small victories of everyday people. His most famous work is the play "Alfie" (1963), which was later adapted into a popular film. He also wrote "One Small Boy" (1957), "The Goalkeeper's Revenge," and many other short stories for children and adults.

"Seventeen Oranges" comes from his collection of stories about working-class boys and their adventures. The stories are often funny, a little risky, and always rooted in real life. Naughton had a gift for capturing the spirit of a young boy navigating a world with very few resources but plenty of wit.

Background and Context

This story is set in the dockyard area of a British port town, most likely in northern England. Dockyards in the early twentieth century were busy, noisy places where ships unloaded cargo from around the world: bananas, oranges, sugar, oil, and hundreds of other goods. Young boys often worked in and around these docks doing small jobs like deliveries.

The narrator of the story works as a delivery boy. He uses a small pony cart to carry goods from the docks to different locations. The dockyard had a gate through which workers had to pass, and a policeman or dock officer was stationed there to keep watch. Anything taken out of the docks without permission was considered theft.

This story falls under the broader tradition of working-class fiction in English literature, where the main character is not a hero in the traditional sense but an ordinary person who uses cleverness and resourcefulness to survive. The humour in the story comes from the irony of the situation: the boy does something very dramatic to escape punishment and then suffers the consequences of his own cleverness.

Story Walkthrough

Part 1: Who Is the Narrator and What Does He Do?

The story is told in the first person by a young boy who works as a delivery boy at the docks. He uses a small pony cart to transport goods. He is quick and efficient: he reaches the cargo areas before the other workers, who are still busy watering their animals, and begins loading goods onto his cart right away.

The narrator is careful to say that he is not a thief. He does not deliberately steal things. However, he admits that he has a habit: whenever bananas or other fruit accidentally fall out of cargo boxes while being unloaded, he picks them up and hides them under his clothing. He wears a "brest," which is a kind of sleeveless jacket made from sugar sacks. This jacket is supposed to protect him from the cold and rain, but the narrator uses it mostly to conceal the things he picks up from the docks.

He insists that he never actually took things that belonged to someone else. The fruit he collected had fallen accidentally, and he saw that as fair game. He would eat bananas throughout the day and head home happy.

Part 2: The Friend and the Box

The narrator then tells the reader about a particular day. He is leaving the docks through the gate, carrying a box. There is a policeman on duty at the gate, a man named Clem, whose job is to check what workers are taking out of the dockyard.

Clem stops the narrator and asks what is in the box. The boy quickly comes up with a clever excuse: he says there is a cat inside the box. He tells Clem not to open it, because if he does, the cat will escape.

Clem is not fooled. He says he does not believe the story and asks the boy to open the box. When the box is opened, there is no cat inside. But while doing this, Clem notices that the narrator's pocket looks very heavy. He takes the boy into his cabin (a small office at the gate), searches his pocket, and finds seventeen oranges.

Clem carefully lays all seventeen oranges out on the table. He tells the narrator to stay where he is, and says he is going to get a witness before charging the boy. He locks the door and goes out.

Part 3: Alone in the Room with the Evidence

Now the narrator is alone, locked in the cabin, staring at the seventeen oranges on the table.

He is terrified. He thinks about what will happen to him: the punishment, what his mother will think, what his father will say. He looks at the walls, the door, the oranges, and his own jacket. He sees no way out.

Then, a voice in his head gives him an idea: eat the oranges. If the evidence disappears, the policeman will have nothing to charge him with.

The narrator hesitates for a moment, then decides. He picks up the first orange, peels it, puts it in his mouth, and eats it as fast as he can. He then thinks about whether to throw away the seeds and peel. But no: even those are evidence. He eats the peel and the seeds too, chewing as quickly as possible. This is a race against time.

He eats the first orange entirely, then the second. For the third, he takes out his penknife, cuts it into small pieces, and eats it even faster. There are still three oranges left when he hears the policeman returning.

He forces himself to keep going. More oranges, seeds, peel, everything. The voice in his head keeps saying: every orange you eat is one less piece of evidence against you.

By the time the policeman returns with his witness, there is nothing on the table.

Part 4: The Policeman Returns but Finds Nothing

Clem comes back into the room and looks at the table. The oranges are gone. He searches the room carefully. He can smell oranges, he knows something is wrong, but there is not a single orange to be found. He cannot understand how seventeen oranges simply vanished.

Clem questions the narrator and tries to get him to say something. But the narrator stays silent. He had read many detective stories, and he knew one important lesson from them: if you talk too much, you make mistakes, and everything you say can be used against you. So he says nothing.

Clem cannot make a case. Without evidence, he cannot formally charge the boy with theft. He could shout at him or accuse him, but no one would believe a story about seventeen oranges disappearing inside a locked room. He has no choice but to let the boy go.

Part 5: The Consequences

The boy escapes punishment. But he does not get away without suffering. For several days after the incident, he cannot stand up straight. His stomach is in turmoil. He has eaten seventeen oranges in a matter of minutes, including the peel and the seeds, and his body is paying the price. The peel and seeds are upsetting his digestion, and he feels terrible.

This is the ironic conclusion of the story: the narrator outwits the policeman, but nature has the last laugh.