| The Witches | |
|---|---|
1st edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Roald Dahl |
| Original title | The Witches |
| Illustrator | Quentin Blake |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's,fiction |
| Publisher | Jonathan Cape |
| Publication date | 1983 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 208 |
| ISBN | 978-0-141-32264-3 |
| OCLC Number | 144596054 |
The Witches is a children's book 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. It appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990 to 1999, at number twenty-two.[1] The book was also adapted into a stage play and a two-part radio dramatization for the BBC.
Contents |
A young boy from England (who tells the story in first-person and is never named in the book) now lives with his grandmother in Norway after his parents are killed in a car accident. Some nights later, the grandmother tells the boy how to recognize a real witch. While they look and act like ordinary women, they are really demons who only look human--which makes them all the more dangerous. Witches are bald, and must wear wigs directly on their naked scalps, resulting in a condition they call "wig-rash." They have clawed fingers that they must hide with gloves. Their feet have square ends and no toes. Their spit is bright blue, leaving a pale bluish film on their teeth. Their eyes have color-changing pupils in which one may see "fire and ice dancing" in the center. They hate children with a passion, and seek to eliminate as many as they can, since they emit a repulsive odour that only they can smell (similar to dog's droppings) unless they seldom wash, and can be sniffed from miles away. Every year, they attend an annual meeting where they hear a speech from their terrifying ruler, the Grand High Witch. The grandmother lost at least five of her childhood friends to witches; one disappeared without a trace, another was locked in a painting, the third child became a chicken, the fourth was turned to granite stone, and the fifth into a porpoise.
The boy and his grandmother return to England, as per his parents' will. The grandmother warns the boy to be on his guard, since English witches are known to be among the cruelest in the world. Shortly afterward, the boy is building the roof on his treehouse and spots a strange woman in black staring up at him with an eerie smile. When he sees that she is wearing gloves, he instantly recognizes her as a witch; when the witch offers him a snake to entice him, he climbs up the tree which he is in and stays there until his grandmother comes and gets him for supper. This persuades the boy and his grandmother to be wary, as he is confident that the woman was a witch.
When the grandmother later becomes ill with pneumonia, the doctor orders her to cancel a planned holiday in Norway. Instead, they go to a luxury hotel in Bournemouth on the southern English coast. The boy goes to train his pet mice in the hotel ballroom when the members of the "Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children" show up for their annual meeting. The boy notices one of the women reaching under her hair (with a gloved hand) to scratch at her scalp, and instantly realizes that the "RSPCC" is really the yearly convention of England's witches. A young woman shows up on stage, and removes her face mask to reveal a hideously deformed face underneath. The boy instantly recognizes her as the Grand High Witch. On her cue, the witches reveal their true selves. The Grand High Witch uses her eyes to exterminate one witch who decides to argue, terrifying the other witches.
The Grand High Witch is angry at her English minions' failure to destroy all of the country's children, and orders all of them exterminated by the end of the year. To help them along, she unveils a master plan calling for the witches to purchase sweet shops (with "homemade" money given to them by the Grand High Witch by her money-making machine) and give away free chocolate (for the grand opening) laced with Formula 86 Delayed-Action Mouse Maker, a potion which will change anyone who eats it into a mouse at a specific time. The witches are instructed by the Grand High Witch to set the formula to activate at 9:00 a.m. 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. She warns her followers to only put one dose on each bit of candy that they sell. An overdose could break the delay barrier and even cause a child (especailly an adult) to turn into a mouse instantly.
The Grand High Witch turns an overweight child named Bruno Jenkins (lured to the convention hall by the promise of free chocolate) into a mouse as a demonstration of her potion. The witches hurriedly put on their disguises as Bruno arrives. At precisely 6:15, Bruno turns into a mouse. Shortly after, the witches smell the narrator's presence. He get away but is later captured by the witches, who corner him, hold his nose, and pour an entire bottle of Formula 86 down his throat, turning him into a mouse instantly.
The formula turns out to have a lucky change: the transformed child retains his or her sentience, personality and even his or her voice. After tracking down Bruno, the transformed boy returns to his grandmother's house and tells her what he has learned. He suggests turning the tables on the witches by slipping Formula 86 into their food. With some difficulty, he manages to get his hands on a bottle of the potion from the Grand High Witch's room. After a failed attempt to return Bruno to his parents, the grandmother slips the boy into the kitchen, where he pours the potion into the soup intended for the witches' dinner. The witches all turn into mice almost instantly, having had massive overdoses. The hotel staff panic and, unknowingly, end up killing all of England's witches. The boy and his grandmother then concoct a plan to destroy all of the world's witches. Learning the location of the witches castle from the hotel's records, they will travel to the Grand High Witch's Norwegian castle (having stolen her notebook), use the potion to change her successor and retainers into mice, then release cats into the castle to kill them. Using the Grand High Witch's money-making machine and information on the whereabouts of all of the world's witches, they will repeat the process all over the world. The grandmother also reveals that as a mouse, the boy will probably only live about another nine years, but the boy is happy about this, as he would never want to live any longer than his grandmother.
Dahl's children's stories have been praised as often as challenged. For instance, three of Dahl's stories appear in Publisher's Weekly's 150 Bestselling Children's Books of all time (until the year 2000).[2]
The prominence of violence has also been an issue, while feminists in Britain claim the story is sexist.[3] The narrator says that all witches are women. But then, he does say immediately afterwards, 'I do not wish to speak badly about women. Most women are lovely. But the fact remains that all witches are women.' He also says that all ghouls are men, and that neither are really human anyway.
The book has been adapted into a film by director Nicolas Roeg starring Anjelica Huston and Rowan Atkinson, released in 1990 (the year Roald Dahl died) and distributed by Warner Bros. In the film the boy is named Lucas (but mainly called "Luke") Eveshim, the grandmother Helga Eveshim, and The Grand High Witch Evangeline Ernst.
In 2008, the BBC broadcast a two-part dramatization of the novel by Lucy Catherine and directed by Claire Grove. The cast included Margaret Tyzack as the Grandmother, Toby Jones as the Narrator, Ryan Watson as the Boy, Jordan Clarke as Bruno and Amanda Laurence as the Grand High Witch.