The Witches Appearances Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

REAL WITCHES dress in ordinary clothes and look very much like ordinary women. (1.4)

Simply through dressing like women and making themselves look like women, witches can be mistaken for women. It's crazy to think how much our looks can trick the outside world.

Quote #2

Kindly examine the picture opposite. Which lady is the witch? That is a difficult question, but it is one that every child must try to answer. (1.23)

Here, Roald Dahl integrates Quentin Blake's illustrations into the book, by having the reader try to figure out which of the drawings is an ordinary woman and which one is a witch. It makes us feel like we're really involved in the book and that our narrator wants us to pay attention. In a book without illustrations, could Roald Dahl have still accomplished this? How?

Quote #3

"[A witch] doesn't have finger-nails. Instead of finger-nails, she has thin curvy claws, like a cat, and she wears the gloves to hide them." (3.10)

Do you notice that the things that are strange about a witch are always extremities? They're always at the edges of her body: her fingernails (or lack thereof), her hair (or lack thereof), her toes (or, yep, lack thereof). Why do you think this is? Why doesn't a witch have a strangely shaped stomach or a really long neck?