The Witches Themes

Although the novel only covers a brief period of time—a few months, with most of the action happening on a single day—plenty of eventful things happen to the boy who narrates The Witches. Some of these are traumatic and awful, like the sudden death of his parents or being turned into a mouse by the Grand High Witch of All the World. Others are less world-changing but are still scary or unfortunate, like…

The Witches presents two types of female characters: those who are powerful and those who are helpless and ineffective. In the latter category, readers can find women like Mrs. Jenkins, who lets Mr. Jenkins do most of the talking and whom the book not-so-subtly suggests has failed to raise her son Bruno properly. Grandmamma’s witchophile knowledge gives her a certain kind of power, but her great age and questionable health (she’s recovering from…

When the boy’s Norwegian Grandmamma begins to tell him all that she knows about witches, he’s not sure whether he believes her or not. Tales of children being trapped in oil paintings or turned into marble statues seem too wild to be true. It isn’t until he encounters a witch in the flesh that he becomes convinced. Crucially, however, he can escape this encounter unscathed because he listened to Grandmamma’s stories and kept an…

Throughout The Witches, many traumatic and terrible things happen to the boy: his parents die in a car crash, their will forces him and Grandmamma to live in England rather than Norway, and the Grand High Witch turns him into a mouse. Yet, throughout it all, he maintains a marvelous sense of equanimity and composure. The only thing that seems to cause him suffering is the thought of losing Grandmamma. He panics when…