The Witches (book)
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| Author | Roald Dahl |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Witches |
| Illustrator | Quentin Blake |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's books |
| Publisher | |
| Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | Print () |
| ISBN | 0141301104 |
The Witches is a book for children
by Roald
Dahl, first published in London in 1983 by Jonathan Cape. The book,
like many of Dahl's works, is illustrated by Quentin Blake. Its content
has made the book the frequent target of censors and it appears on the American
Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of
1990-2000 at number twenty-seven.[1] For
the 1990 film of the book, see
The
Witches. The book was also adapted into a stage play.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The book's witches are part of a well-connected organization with the goal of eliminating as many children as possible. This organization has branches in every country on the face of the earth, and is particularly powerful in Norway. The chapters in different countries are, for some strange reason, forbidden to communicate, though the witches in the same country are all friends.
At the annual convention of English witches (which has been ironically disguised as a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children convention), the Grand High Witch, angry at the witches' failure to destroy all of the children in England, unveils her master plan; the British witches should purchase lots of sweet shops (using counterfeit money given to them by the Grand High Witch, who is able to reproduce the currency of any nation by means of a special machine) and give away chocolate. The chocolate will have been laced with a magic potion that will change anyone who eats it into a mouse at a specific time. The witches are instructed by the Grand High Witch that the potion will activate at 9 am, the day after the children have eaten the chocolate, when they are at school. The teachers, she hopes, will panic and kill the mice, thereby doing the witches' work for them.
Unfortunately for the witches, an old Norwegian witch expert and her grandson (the unnamed narrator) are staying at the same hotel as the congregation of witches. By chance, Boy is hiding in the convention room at the time training his pet mice. After the witches unveil their true selves (removing their wigs to reveal bald scalps, their shoes to reveal toeless feet, their gloves to reveal long, sharp claws, and grinning widely with their mouths full of blue saliva) he quickly realizes the truth and attempts to stay hidden.
The Grand High Witch turns a fat child named Bruno Jenkins, lured to the convention hall by the promise of free chocolate, into a mouse as a demonstration of her potion. Shortly after, the witches smell the narrator's presence (children smell repulsive to witches) and promptly turn him into a mouse as well, by giving him such a massive overdose that it works instantly.
The newly transformed boy manages to reach his grandmother's room safely. Together they hatch a plan to turn the witches' potion against them by adding it to the soup reserved for the witches themselves. They all turn into mice almost instantly, as they have each had massive overdoses. The hotel staff panic, as the Grand High Witch predicted, and kill England's witches in their form of mice. Boy and his grandmother then create a plan by which to use the potion recipe the witches created to attack the Grand High Witch's Norwegian headquarters. The idea is that they can turn all of the witches into mice, and then place a number of cats into the headquarters. That done, they would use the counterfeiting machine to pay all the expenses they would need to travel around the world getting rid of all the witches they can find.
At the beginning of the book Dahl suggests the existence of ghouls when he states that a witch is always female, whereas a ghoul is always male.
[edit] How to recognise a witch
The book gives several characteristics which distinguish witches from the rest of the characters. These are told to Boy by his grandmother near the beginning of the book.
1. Slightly larger nostrils
2. Blue tinge to tongue and teeth (saliva is
naturally blue)
3. Pupils that seem to have fire
dancing inside
4. Always wears gloves to cover claw-like fingers
5. Wears a wig to hide
baldness and can be seen scratching hair due to itchiness
6. Wears pointy
shoes and limps slightly because witches have no toes
7. Always a woman
8.
Might hold the nose when they pass children
Also, it is more often that a "sweet and nice" lady is a witch rather than a mean one, because witches want children to trust them.
[edit] Miscellany
In Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes, pea soup based on the food consumed by the witches appears as one of the recipes.
We never know what really happens to the boy's grandmother and why she has a distorted finger. There are suggestions that it was from an encounter from a witch when she was young. This is also mentioned in the film The Witches (1990), but again the cause of the disfigurement was not mentioned.
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