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Title: The Witches
Series:
----------
Authors: Roald Dahl
Rating: 4
of 5 Stars
Genre: Childrens Fiction
Pages:
122
Words: 37.5K
From Wikipedia.org
The
story is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed seven-year-old
English boy, who goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after
his parents are killed in a tragic car accident. The boy loves all
his grandmother's stories, but he is especially enthralled by the
stories about real-life witches who she says are horrific female
demons who seek to kill human children. She tells him how to
recognise them, and that she is a retired witch hunter (she, herself,
had an encounter with a witch when she was a child, which left her
with a missing thumb).
According
to the boy's grandmother, a real witch looks exactly like an ordinary
woman, but there are ways of telling whether she is a witch: real
witches have claws instead of fingernails, which they hide by wearing
gloves; are bald, which they hide by wearing wigs that often make
them break out in rashes; have square feet with no toes, which they
hide by wearing uncomfortable pointy shoes; have eyes with pupils
that change colours; have blue spit which they use for ink, and have
large nostrils which they use to sniff out children; to a witch, a
child smells of fresh dogs droppings; the dirtier the child, the less
likely she is to smell them.
As
specified in the parents' will, the narrator and his grandmother
return to England, where he was born and had attended school, and
where the house he is inheriting is located. However, the grandmother
warns the boy to be on his guard, since English witches are known to
be among the most vicious in the world, notorious for turning
children into loathsome creatures so that unsuspecting adults will
kill them. She also assures him that there are fewer witches in
England than there are in Norway.
The
grandmother reveals that witches in different countries have
different customs and that, while the witches in each country have
close affiliations with one another, they are not allowed to
communicate with witches from other countries. She also tells him
about the mysterious Grand High Witch of All the World, the feared
and diabolical leader of all of the world's witches, who visits their
councils in every country, each year.
Shortly
after arriving back in England, while the boy is working on the roof
of his treehouse, he sees a strange woman in black staring up at him
with an eerie smile and quickly registers that she is a witch. When
the witch offers him a snake to tempt him to come down to her, he
climbs further up the tree and stays there, not daring to come down
until his grandmother comes looking for him. This persuades the boy
and his grandmother to be especially wary, and he carefully
scrutinizes all women to determine whether they might be witches.
When
the grandmother becomes ill with pneumonia, the doctor orders her to
cancel a planned holiday in Norway (she and her grandson had planned
to go there). The doctor explains that pneumonia can be very
dangerous when a person is 80 or older (she later reveals in the book
that she is 86), and therefore, he cannot even move her to the
hospital in her condition. Instead, about two weeks later when she
has recovered, they go to a luxury hotel in Bournemouth on England's
south coast.
The
boy is training his pet mice, William and Mary, given to him as a
consolation present by his grandmother after the loss of his parents,
in the hotel ballroom when the "Royal Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Children" show up for their annual meeting. When
one of them reaches underneath her hair to scratch at her scalp with
a gloved hand, the boy realizes that this is the yearly gathering of
England's witches (all of the other women are wearing gloves as
well), but he is trapped in the room.
A
young woman goes on stage and removes her entire face, which is a
mask. The narrator realizes that this is no other than the Grand High
Witch herself. She expresses her displeasure at the English witches'
failure to eliminate enough children, and thus demands that they
exterminate the lot of them before the next meeting. She exterminates
a witch who questions whether it will be possible to wipe out all of
Britain’s children.
The
Grand High Witch unveils her master plan: all of England's witches
are to purchase sweet shops (with counterfeited money printed by her
from a magical money-making machine) and give away free sweets and
chocolates laced with a drop of her latest creation: "Formula 86
Delayed-Action Mouse-Maker", a magic potion which turns the
consumer into a mouse at a specified time set by the potion-maker.
The intent is for the children's teachers and parents to unwittingly
kill the transformed children, thus doing the witches' dirty work for
them so that nobody will ever find the witches because they are
unaware that it was their doing.
To
demonstrate the formula's effectiveness, the Grand High Witch brings
in a child named Bruno Jenkins, a rich and often greedy boy lured to
the convention hall with the promise of free chocolate. She reveals
that she had tricked Bruno into eating a chocolate bar laced with the
formula the day before, and had set the "alarm" to go off
during the meeting. The potion takes effect, transforming Bruno into
a mouse before the assembled witches.
Shortly
after, the witches detect the narrator's presence and corner him. The
Grand High Witch then pours an entire bottle of Formula 86 down his
throat, and the overdose instantly turns him into a mouse. However,
the transformed child retains his mentality, personality and even his
voice - refusing to be lured into a mouse-trap. After tracking down
Bruno, the transformed boy returns to his grandmother's hotel room
and tells her what he has learned. He suggests turning the tables on
the witches by slipping the potion into their evening meal. With some
difficulty, he manages to get his hands on a bottle of the potion
from the Grand High Witch's room.
After
an attempt to return Bruno to his parents fails spectacularly (mainly
due to his mother's fear of mice), the grandmother takes Bruno and
the narrator to the dining hall. The narrator enters the kitchen,
where he pours the potion into the green pea soup intended for the
witches' dinner. On the way back from the kitchen, a cook spots the
narrator and chops off part of his tail with a carving knife, before
he manages to escape back to his grandmother. The witches all turn
into mice within a few minutes, having had massive overdoses just
like the narrator. The hotel staff and the guests all panic and
unknowingly end up killing the Grand High Witch and all of England's
witches.
Having
returned home, the boy and his grandmother then devise a plan to rid
the world of witches. His grandmother, by impersonating the chief of
police of Norway on the telephone, discovered that the Grand High
Witch was living in a castle in that country. They will travel to the
Grand High Witch's Norwegian castle, and use the potion to change her
successor and the successor's assistants into mice, then release cats
to destroy them. Using the Grand High Witch's money-making machine
and information on witches in various countries, they will try to
eradicate them everywhere. The grandmother also reveals that, as a
mouse, the boy will probably only live for about another nine years,
but the boy does not mind, as he does not want to outlive his
grandmother (she reveals that she is also likely to live for only
nine more years), as he would hate to have anyone else look after
him.
Yep, still as good as when I read it back in '12 and the many times
in the 90's as well.
★★★★☆
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