His grandmother lights one of her large, black cigars and tells him about the five children. When he doubts her, she tells him that she personally knows at least five children who have been taken or transformed by witches. She begins to tell him about witches, but she makes clear that these are not made up stories like some others. The next day, his grandmother starts to tell him stories to distract both of them from the tragedy. She tells him that he will live in Norway with her, since she could never leave. The boy is taken back to his grandmother's house and they stay up together crying and hugging. His parents both die instantly, but the boy is left almost entirely uninjured. One such Christmas, the boy and his family go to visit the grandmother and, while there, his immediate family gets in a terrible car crash on an icy road. They would always visit her in Norway at Christmas and in the summertime, and the boy would spend lots of time speaking in both Norwegian and English with her. He had been born in England but was very close to his maternal grandmother who lived in Norway. The story proper now starts, bringing us to a time when the narrator is seven years old. It turns out that the narrator is a man who had multiple experiences with witches as a child. However, a little help is given at the end of the chapter: 'There are a number of little signals you can look out for, little quirky habits that all witches have in common, and if you know about these, if you remember them always, then you might just possibly manage to escape from being squelched before you are very much older' (5). The narrator even implies that the teacher reading the story to the class right at the moment could be a witch.

A picture of two women is shown to emphasize the point that you cannot tell a regular woman from a witch just by looking at them. The narrator also makes it clear that only woman can be witches. The narrator says that there are not that many witches in the world anymore, only about 100 in most countries.

Instead of doing this in the ways that other people might, like stabbing them or hitting them over the head, witches use their magic powers. The narrator goes on to inform the reader that real witches seem just like ordinary people, but they spend all their time plotting to kill children. As the narrator says, 'This is not a fairy-tale. The Witches begins with a chapter directly addressing the reader and clearing up some points about the depictions of witches in the book.

Roald dahl the witches novel