Jean-Paul’s Rating: 3/5 stars
Roald Dahl is such a wonderfully subversive children’s author. Darkly so. Children are the heroes, but they’re still children and do childish things. Adults are the enemy, some by motivation, some by ignorance, some by incompetence. The good adults are few and far between. Just like real life. “The Witches” is probably the darkest of the Dahl books of which I’ve read. It is a story about a boy and his grandmother and their efforts to prevent the boy from being killed by witches. Witches, you see, loathe children, which I totally get, I mean, have you met children? Witches, though, despise children to such depths that they feel the need to remove them from this Earth in dastardly ways.
There is a line of thought that says “The Witches” is misogynist, which I totally get. Witches are always female and Dahl spends a lot of time describing the female qualities of the witches while at the same time being sure to qualify it saying all witches are female but not all females are witches but at the exact same time saying that you can’t tell the difference so you should assume that all females are witches until you can prove otherwise. That is a pretty harsh lesson to be teaching children and I can see them taking that lesson to heart without an explanation as to why the world of “The Witches” is make believe. As I mentioned before, this is a pretty dark book. And this isn’t even the darkest part about it.
It comes to pass in the novel that the boy and his grandmother find themselves at a vacation resort on the coast of England which also happens to be hosting all of the witches in Great Britain for their annual conference as well as the Grand High Witch who is the leader of the world of witches. It is revealed that the Grand High Witch has a plan to destroy all the children in Great Britain. So yes, “The Witches” is a children’s book about genocide. The witches are clearly evil, though, so of course they can giddily talk about genocide. And what better way thwart the genocidal witches of Great Britain with a little genocide of your own! Wait, what? This is a children’s book, right? Who are the good guys again? The boy and grandmother’s genocidal plan works and the witches of Great Britain are no more! Hurray? Everyone lives happily ever after? Nope! The book continues! There are more witches in this world still and it is up to the boy and his grandmother to infiltrate the world of witches and kill all the witches in the world because clearly all witches are evil and must be destroyed. They do, after all, want to kill children. The book ends with the boy and his grandmother finishing the first step to worldwide genocide. And they lived happily ever after. What I find most disturbing is how, while I could find plenty of complaints about the misogyny about the book, I couldn’t find anything about the genocide. Maybe I just missed it out there, but I don’t like what that says about us as human beings to not have addressed it.
“The Witches” is the best children’s book about casual genocide that you will ever read. I mean, it legitimately is a fun book to read. And, in the right environment, I think it could be used as a valuable learning experience about how easily we as a race make people The Other and how quickly we can take away their humanity and allow ourselves to believe that The Other’s death is an acceptable outcome. Or, I guess, it would also be a great book if you’re trying to bring up baby Hitler.