Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Whatever else (talk | contribs) at 04:18, 18 January 2007 (→Plot). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Grand High Witch of All The World or just The Grand High Witch is a title given to the leader of all witches according to Roald Dahl's 1983 book The Witches. She is described as being "without mercy" and she travels all around the world summoning all the witches of whatever country she is in, giving congratulations or reprimands to them depending on how good she judges them at destroying children.

Plot

Template:Spoiler The Grand High Witch appears fairly late in the story, but is mentioned by the unknamed narrator and protagonist's grandmother "a retired witchophile"- by which she means she knows a lot about witches and in her youth travelled around the world looking for them- above all the Grand High Witch, although she admits that she "never came close to succeeding". She warns her grandson to be careful after he encounters a witch himself when he is out in the garden, and after falling ill, decides to go on holiday with him to a nice hotel in Bournemouth, rather than return to her native Norway.

The narrator goes with his pet mice to a vacant room in a hotel to try to teach them tricks. The room is reserved for a group of people meeting on behalf of the "Royal Society For the Preventation of Cruelty to Children", but since the room is empty he assumes the meeting is over. He goes behind a screen with his mice, only to find that the meeting is in fact about to take place- and this, when they all start taking off their wigs to reveal hairless scalps, follows with the realisation that the members are in fact all witches and their guest speaker is none other than The Grand High Witch herself.

The Grand High Witch within this story is noted for being particularly intolerant and demanding. She claims to want all children in "Inkland" to be eliminated by her time of her next visit to the country the following year. When one brave (or foolish) witch points out the impossibility of such a thing, The Grand High Witch tauntingly versifies her impertinence and uselessness promptly burns her to oblivion with magic that jumps from her eyes- a technique of execution that the narrator's grandmother explains is known in the witches' community as "getting fried".

The Grand High Witch then goes on to explain that elimination of children will be easily done if all the witches set up a trade as sweetshop owners. (One witch interprates this as meaning she wants the children to be poisoned and she looks as though she is about to "get fried" as well, but curiously she does not.) The Grand High Witch then recites to them ingredients of a potion that will turn anyone who consumes it into a mouse- a creature detested by so many that parents and teachers alike would be sure to exterminate them on sight. The witches (and the narrator) then witness a young boy, Bruno Jenkins, enter the room, whom the Grand High Witch fed a chocolate bar with potion in it, which has been so timed that he will turn into a mouse after just a few seconds in teh room- which is precisely what happens.

The witches are just about to leave when one of the witches then picks up the scent of the narrator of the story. They catch him, pour some more potion down his throat, and leave both him to scamper away. Bruno Jenkins and himself then find their way back to his grandmother's house. The narrator descends, via some of his grandmother's knitting, into The Grand High Witch's apartment (which is right below his own), steals a small bottle of the potion fed to him and Bruno, and then afterwards takes it into the kitchen. After hearing that all the witches are having pea soup, he pours the entire bottle into the saucepan in which it is being made. All the witches, including The Grand High Witch, are transformed into mice and instantly chopped to pieces by the cooks. The narrator and his grandmother decide to move into the castle she resided in when not travelling around the world to give meetings in order to find out the names and addresses of all the other witches in the world. They then make a pact to feed the same potion to the next Grand High Witch, travel around the world in order to deliver it to all the witches they can find.

          Template:End spoiler

Personal characteristics

Like all witches within the story, the Grand High Witch inevitably will have no toes, no hair, claws instead of fingernails, blue saliva, a small but terrifying flame in the middle of her eyes and slightly larger-than-average nostrils. The Grand High Witch that the narrator encounters, however, also has a face that looks as though it has been "pickled in vinegar" and is worm-eaten and so disguises it with a very realistic mask. She also has a very gutteral accent (hence her pronunciation of England as "Inkland") that gives her "difficulty" in pronouncing the leters "R" ("rrr") and "W" ("v"). Besides frying witches with her eyes, another personal eccentricity of hers is that she has several frogs living with her in her hotel room that the narrator overhears her (when he is in there stealing her potion), threatening to throw outside to be eaten by seagulls- although it is implied that they, liek him, were children once upon a time that she transformed with some other form of potion.