Shortly after arriving back in England, while Lucas is working on the roof of the tree-house he has been building, he sees a strange woman in black staring up at him with an eerie smile, and he realizes that she is a witch. She warns him to beware of the Grand High Witch, the feared and diabolical leader of all of the world's witches, who each year visits their councils in every country. They are particularly notorious for turning children into loathsome creatures so that unsuspecting adults kill them.Īs Lucas asks more questions, 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. Lucas's grandmother warns Lucas to be on his guard, however, since English witches are known to be among the cruelest in the world. The boy thinks this is good as he never has to take another bath, but the grandmother limits it to once a week.Īs specified in the parents' will, Lucas and his grandmother have to return to England, where he was born and was in school, and where the house he is inheriting is located. When a child matures into an adult, the stink waves disappear. Witches also detect children by "stink waves", which are projected conversely to when a child bathes, an unwashed child would project very weak waves, whereas a child that just got out of the bath would project a pungent odor to witches. Hiding their feet are the toughest part, as human girls prefer to wear pointy-toed pumps or high heels, the witches must follow suit, which is extremely painful for their square feet. To conceal their appearance, they wear wigs to hide their baldness and gloves to hide their claws. While witches look and act like human women, they are actually "demons in human shape." They have bald heads, clawed hands, blue spit, large nostrils (but only slightly larger than human women), and square, toeless feet. (a witchophile who kills the Grand High Witch would be akin to a soldier winning the Medal of Honor). Other than that, she admits her witch hunting career was a failure, as she never came close to tracking the Grand High Witch. When Lucas asks his grandmother if she is one, she says yes, albeit retired, then tells of an incident which cost the grandmother her left thumb and which is so horrible she cannot bear to speak of it. She also tells about witchophiles, men and women who hunt witches.
#ACTRESS IN THE MOVIE VERSION OF THE WITCHES ROALD DAHL HOW TO#
She tells the boy that she knows of five children who were cursed by witches and tells him how to recognize them. He loves all the stories, but he is enthralled by the one about witches, which she says are horrific creatures who seek to kill human children. The grandmother is a wonderful story teller. The story is set partly in Norway and partly in the United Kingdom, and features the experiences of a young British boy and his Norwegian grandmother in a world where child-hating evil witches secretly exist.Ī seven-year-old British boy called Lucas goes to live with his Norwegian grandmother after his parents are killed in a car crash. It was published in 1983 by Jonathan Cape in London, with illustrations by Quentin Blake (like many of Dahl's works). The Witches is a children's fantasy horror novel by the British writer Roald Dahl.
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