The Witch Short Story Summary

The theme of “The Witch” is that children judge people off of their actions rather than adults judging people based off of their outer appearance. The short story shows this by starting off in a train with a mother and her two children. The mothers four year old son, Johnny, was looking out the window and announced that he saw a “big old ugly witch.” The mother ignores the boy and keeps giving him the lollipops to keep him quiet. A man comes into the train car and notices the boys wild imagination. The mother is already displeased based on the man 's appearance, unlike the boy who was intrigued in what the man had to say. The man told the boy of a grausam story of killing his sister and feeding a bear her head. The mother gives the man a disturbed

Many examples of the stories theme were shown in the story. The story starts off with an older lady, Miss Adela Strangeworth, walking down Main Street in her small town to the little supermarket. As she walked she always said nice things and greeted her neighbors with respect. Miss Strangeworth also spent a lot of time in her garden of roses. The reader could infer that this older lady had no hint of evil in her and was nice to everyone in her community. As the story continues though, the reader finds that Miss Strangeworth would write awful letters to the people in her town. This tells the reader that looks can be deceiving and that even the nicest of people can have darkness inside of them. Then Miss Strangeworth goes to the local post office to send her letters the people she had written them to. But as she walks up to the post office there were multiple people standing there, and when she went to drop off her letter she accidentally dropped one onto the ground. One of the people standing there picked it up and gave it to the person on the envelope. Later Miss Strangeworth receives a not that said, “Look out at what used to be your roses.” This was a great example of the theme, that darkness hides in everyone. It also demonstrates to the reader that darkness cannot go away with just human