WITCHES` LOAVES:A RESEARCH ARTICLE

-BY:REYAN KHAN(2BAPSENG)

Double, double toil and trouble;

Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.-Macbeth

"Crawl inside," said the witch, "and see whether it is the right heat, so that we can push in the
bread."-Hansel And Gretel

To grasp at a first glance is an Assumption.It would be very natural for us to assume that a
recurring theme might be prevalent in this short poem by O. Henry,very much so like the tales of
witches in the classic fairy tales.Ironically assumption is what makes the climax of the story even
more fun to read.However this piece of literature is a bit less morbid,a notch of a hilarious
tragedy and a light hearted read.
Penned down by William Sydney Porter,the story follows the life of Miss Martha
Meacham.Narrated in the third person by an unknown narrator,this short story deals with the
themes of loneliness at an old age,crushes and awe of strangers,desperation,love,defeat and
embarrassment.The second most important character is that of Blumberger,the well
mannered,thich browed stranger with a thick German accent,who only buys 2 pieces of stale
bread.This spirals here assumption which leads to an unexpected turn in the end.

JUSTIFICATION OF THE TITLE

Witches` Loaves is a very clever title to this story and it is very appropriate ,the lines I would
like to quote are the following lines from the story.

1-“In the back room she cooked a mysterious compound of quince seeds and borax. Ever so
many people use it for the complexion.”
This incidence is the first of many to come having an allegory of comparing miss martha to a an
archetypal witch who “brews potions in her cauldron and all other mysterious compounds".All
throughout the history of fairy tales there have been many incidences of witches being shown to
being in a secluded room,here “In the back room...”,miss martha seems to be cooking a
compound that the author stresses on to justify the title as being “Mysterious”in order to use it
for her complexion ,this can be compared to the generic idea of a witch using her potions to alter
appearances.Although this comparison comes of as miss martha seems very dubious on part of
her nature ,we as readers cannot help but think its what the author meant in a humorous or
parodical way.
2-”The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly inspired, Miss Martha
seized the opportunity.
On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter that the dairyman had left ten
minutes before. With a bread knife Miss Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves,
inserted a generous quantity of butter, and pressed the loaves tight again.”....

These lines make apparent,although harmless,the deceptive and quick wit perception of Miss
Martha.Although these lines can be argued to be inconsistent with the comparison to a witch i
would include these lines since they are immediately followed after the lines describing martha
as a witch for the first time,that is,the previous lines I covered.
Deception and quick wit,along with the fact that an edible object is tampered with is
characteristic of an ideal witch in fairy tales,some stories that have a similarity in this case are
“Snow white where the evil queen deceptively gives Snow white a poisoned apple to eat.

3-"Dummkopf!" he shouted with extreme loudness; and then "Tausendonfer!" or something like it
in German....
The words in the different dialect above directly translate in german to “Dumbhead” and “Witch”
This is the strongest argument we have in favour in justification of the title since there is a direct
reference to Martha being called a witch,although not literally but figuratively.The reason being
Blumburger had no idea of the intention of Martha's actions,none at all therefore when he comes
to see that his regular bread has been so maliciously covered with butter he thought of it as
martha's deliberate attempt to spoil his work unprovoked.

Ending on this note to the justification of the title let us move on to the next segment of this
article.

CONTRAST OF THE DIALECTS

The language dialects used in this story are English and German.Both of these languages are
germanic branch of the indo-european language family according to Wikipedia.com.The contrast
of the dialects become apparent when Blumberger tries to speak english but it comes out with a
german accent.
● According to landgiff.com,”The German alphabet contains the same 26 letters as the
English alphabet, plus the umlauted letters: ä, ö, ü, and the ß (scharfes S or double-s).
German ESL students may have interference problems in class when the teacher spells
out words. For example, beginners commonly write f or a and b when the teacher says v
or r or p.The following lines are true to this statement:

Two loafs of stale bread, if you blease.

"You haf here a fine bicture, madame,"

● “There is a significant lack of correspondence between the tenses used in English to

convey a particular meaning and those used in German. For example, German does not
have a continuous tense form, so it is common to hear sentences such as I can't come
now; I eat my dinner; or conversely He is riding his bike to school every day.”The
following lines spoken by Blumburger is a testament to this observation:
"I vill not go," he said angrily, "else I shall told her."
"I vill tell you. You vas von meddingsome old cat!"

THE ROLE OF AGE

The opening paragraph has a cheeky description of Miss Martha,signifying her age,having two
“false teeth and a sympathetic heart.”Almost as if the author wants to insinuate that as one grows
physically,their spirit grows too.The opening of the story displays age as a factor that plays a
great role in the assortment of the core themes of the story that are,Loneliness,Pursuit of love and
desperation.
The age of Martha shows although she is established,has her own business but is experiencing a
void of a partner,who she finds in Blumburger.The takeaway is that with age,our desperation and
longing for what we did not get through the youth yearns over our purpose of life.
Fantasising of what could be results in wishful thinking and overshadows our judgement
however on a lighter note,At the coming of age of maturity one tends to be more romanticised by
the idea of settling down,hanging the coat to live out their left life in a peaceful and stoic way.It
also presents the way Miss Martha simply changes her blue dotted dress to the regular one a
literal resemblance to hanging the coat,accepting things as they are.
Both the middle aged protagonist shows a different yearning at a same phase of life for different
people as the pursuit of life turns out different for different people at a later age.

REFERENCES
http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/german.htm -The german english dialect