The Little Witch

Otfried Preußler

4 ideas

1. Little Witch Burns the Coven's Brooms

   A 127-year-old witch, too young to join the Walpurgis Night dance, sneaks in anyway. She is caught, and her broom is burned. The Chief Witch says she may attend next year only if she has become a 'good witch' by then. Advised by her raven Abraxas, she spends the year doing kind deeds: she frightens a forester who bullied poor women gathering firewood, and she saves the ox Korbinian from slaughter at the shooting festival. At her examination the coven condemns her, because 'good' meant good at evil, and she is sentenced to gather firewood for their bonfire. Instead she steals the magic from all the other witches and burns their brooms and spellbooks in that fire, leaving herself the only witch who can still do magic.

2. The 'Good' That Means Good-At-Evil

   Inside an institution built around a harmful function, 'being good' means excelling at that function, not being morally good. The newcomer who hears the word in its everyday moral sense will be judged a failure precisely because she succeeded morally. The ambiguity stays hidden until the evaluation, so the institution controls which meaning counts.

3. Kindness as Humiliating Petty Tyrants

   The young witch's good deeds are rarely plain generosity. Most of them use power to embarrass people who abuse small authority over the weak: a forester, a bully, festival officials. Seen this way, everyday goodness is corrective justice aimed at local abusers, delivered through comic reversal rather than through punishment by law.

4. Disarm a Corrupt Authority, Don't Petition It

   When a hierarchy punishes you for virtue, seeking its approval is pointless, because its standards are the problem. The effective response is to remove its means of power, as the little witch does by stripping the coven's magic and burning their brooms. She then goes on being good without asking anyone's permission.

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