Roald Dahl’s Heroes and Villains

Product Information

The Witches are a secret society of evil witches who possess dark magic and the titular primary antagonists of both the Roald Dahl book and film adaptations of the same name. They are actually female demons who have come to Earth, and for thousands of years, they have made it their duty to rid the world of children, which they loathe due to children smelling like "dog's droppings" to them. At 50, everyone has the face they deserve.’ This formulation, proposed by George Orwell shortly before his death in 1949, is the blueprint for the story of Mrs Twit. Mrs Twit – first name unknown – has a ‘fearful ugliness’. Her ugliness has not, however, been conferred on her by genes, but by thinking ugly thoughts ‘every day, every week, every year’ – a physical manifestation of her interior hideousness. ‘Nothing shone out of Mrs Twit’s face,’ Dahl says, definitively. Love books? Join BBC Culture Book Club on Facebook, a community for literature fanatics all over the world. In the 2020 film adaptation, the appearance of witches remains the same as they are still bald and have toeless, square feet. However, they now have three clawy fingers instead of five and they have elongated mouths showing sharpened teeth that resemble fangs and their tongues can split in two parts.

urn:lcp:roalddahlsheroes0000dahl:epub:a0606f45-0d97-482a-bcaa-3f1090d2679f Foldoutcount 0 Identifier roalddahlsheroes0000dahl Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t2z41x96w Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780857551252

Develop

Much like her husband, and son, Mrs. Wormwood is obsessed with wealth and television, actively preferring to eat dinner while watching TV, instead of following Matilda's suggestion of eating at the table. She also prizes materialism and beauty above all else, as is seen in her generally fashionable appearance, and by her statement towards Miss Honey: You chose books; I chose looks. She is shown to prefer maintaining a social life over the raising of her children. In the early days of Matilda's life, Mrs. Wormwood often left her at home alone, while she went to play bingo, and, in the movie, is angry at Mr. Wormwood for chasing away two speedboat salesmen she was talking to (although both are unaware that they were secretly F.B.I. field agents).

You don't seem to understand that witches are not actually women at all. They look like women. They talk like women. And they are able to act like women. But in actual fact, they are totally different animals. They are demons in human shape. That is why they have claws and bald heads and queer noses and peculiar eyes, all of which they have to conceal as best they can from the rest of the world. His crime? Stealing a slice of chocolate cake from Matilda’s evil headmistress Miss Trunchbull. For Bruce, there is no banishment to the Chokey this time. Instead, she forces him to eat a whole cake in front of the school as punishment. Today, titles like Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG and Matilda, which was released just two years before his death aged 74 in 1990, regularly appear on lists of the best children's books ever – including BBC Culture's own. Collectively, his books have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, their stories also spawning stage and screen adaptations, including a recently announced prequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, set to star teen crush Timothée Chalamet as a young Willy Wonka.Roald Dahl’s books are all terrifying in some way, but none is more harrowing than The Witches. Yet even through the blind horror, I maintained a perverse desire for my comparatively dreary British seaside holidays to be livened up by encountering a coven of oddly alluring child-torturing demons.