The Grandmother
In order for this story to work, the grandmother has to join the long list of Dahl characters who are unpleasant or worse. The narrative is entirely dependent upon the reader buying into George’s scheme for dispatching the woman and if she comes across like the sweet little old lady in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, George comes off as psychotic rather than sympathetic:
“George couldn’t help disliking Grandma. She was a selfish grumpy old woman. She had pale brown teeth and a small puckered-up mouth like a dog’s bottom…she was always complaining, grousing, grouching, grumbling, griping about something or other…suddenly she smiles. It was a thin icy smile, the kind a snake might make just before it bites you.”
George’s Marvelous Ingredients
The extended sequence in which George creates his marvelous medicine is pageant of capitalized images. It is stuff found around the house, the kind of stuff which under different names can be found even still today in a great many homes. The capitalization makes these products stick out in the text far more than the accompanying illustration, transforming from mere images into imagery that creates a fuller portrait of the grandmother as a result of this choice of presentation:
“GOLDENGLOSS HAIR SHAMPOO…VITAMIN ENRICHED FACE CREAM…HAIR REMOVER SMEAR IT ON YOUR LEGS…DISHWORTH’S FAMOUS DANDRUFF CURE…BRILLIDENT FOR CLEANING FALSE TEETH…NEVERMORE PONGING DEODORANT SPRAY, GUARANTEED TO KEEP AWAY UNPLEASANT BODY SMELLS FOR A WHOLE DAY…HELGA’S HAIRSIT, HOLD TWELVE INCHES AWAY FROM THE HAIR AND SPRAY LIGHTLY…WAXWELL FLOOR POLISH, IT REMOVED FILTH AND FOUL MESSES FROM YOUR FLOOR.”
And that’s just the stuff inside the house.
Cooking the Medicine
Once all the ingredients above have been mixed with even more left unmentioned, it is time for the process of mixing. This results in a passage of sensory imagery designed to appeal to the reader’s eyes and nose to put across just how intensely noxious the medicine George makes turns out to be:
A rich blue smoke, the color of peacocks, rose from the surface of the liquid, and a fiery fearsome smell filled the kitchen. It made George choke and splutter. It was a smell unlike any he had smell before. It was a brutal and bewitching smell, spicy and staggering, fierce and frenzied, full if wizardry and magic.
Grandma Takes the Medicine
The result of Grandma actually taking George’s concoction is the point toward which the entire story has been moving. The entire story is on the line at this moment; if the consequences do not pay off, the rest of the tale will collapse under the weight of that failure. Imagery at this critical juncture is an essential tool of composition and the slowing down of time through the use of ellipses (…) is every bit as integral as the onomatopoeia and smiles:
“her whole body shot up whoosh into the air. It was exactly as though someone had pushed an electric wire underneath of her chair and switched on the current. Up she want like a jack-in-the-box...and she didn’t come down…she stayed there…suspended in midair…about two feet up…still in a sitting position…but rigid now…frozen…quivering…eyes bulging…the hair standing right up on end.”
