The Magic Finger

The Magic Finger, published in 1966, is a children’s fantasy picture book written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake. Dahl is considered one the world’s greatest children’s authors. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide; they include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, among others. Many of Dahl’s works, including The Magic Finger, have been adapted into television shows and movies. The Magic Finger is a picture book and widely regarded as a novel.

The story is told in the first-person perspective from an unnamed protagonist living in the English countryside. The narrator, an eight-year-old girl, recounts “something very funny” that happened the week before (7). The girl is friends with her neighbors: the Greggs, who live on a farm, have two sons, Philip and William, and love hunting. Philip is eight, like the narrator, and William is eleven. The girl despises hunting and “used to try to stop Philip and William from doing it” (8). Despite her efforts, the boys and Mr. Gregg would laugh at her. One day, the girl sees Mr. Gregg, Philip, and William emerge from the woods with a dead deer. They jeer at her when she shouts at them. The girl flies into a rage and begins to see red, and “put[s] the magic finger on them all” (10). The girl has secret magic powers.

When she gets angry and points her index finger, she can curse her target. The girl promised never to use her ability again after she turned Mrs. Winter, her teacher, into a cat. When Mrs. Winter shamed the narrator for misspelling the word “cat” and called her “a stupid little girl,” the girl used her Magic Finger on her (11). Mrs. Winter transformed into a cat with whiskers and a tail right in front of the entire class. The narrator promised that Mrs. Winter “never will be” normal again (13).

Whenever the narrator gets upset, she sees red and feels a warm tingle in her finger. The curse shoots out of her finger with “a quick flash, like something electric” (14). After she uses the Magic Finger on the entire Gregg family, she “wait[s] for things to happen” (15). Mr. Gregg, Philip, and William go back out to hunt wild ducks. They shoot and kill sixteen ducks in total.

Four ducks follow the Gregg hunters around the lake and then back home. The Greggs keep trying and failing to shoot the ducks. Later that night, after Philip and William have gone to bed, Mr. Gregg goes outside to try and find some firewood. When he realizes that the ducks are still flying circles around the house, he is terrified and runs inside. When the Greggs wake the following morning, they are no longer fully human. Every member of the Gregg family is now part duck, with wings instead of hands, and bodies about the size of other birds. Philip and William “were really tiny. They were about as big as robins” (25). The boys are delighted to try out their new wings and launch out of the window and into the sky. Mr. and Mrs. Gregg hesitantly follow. After some flying, the Greggs notice four wild ducks “as big as men” with “great long arms, like men, instead of wings” going into their house (28). The Greggs have switched places with the ducks that were following them.

The Greggs have no place to go and are distraught. Mr. Gregg comforts his family and they build a nest at the top of a tall tree. After they’ve gathered sticks and feathers, they finish building their comfortable nest. They plan to sneak back into their house to steal a tin of biscuits, but every window is shut when they arrive. They soon see the human-sized ducks cooking, sleeping, playing with toys, and even spot one holding Mr. Gregg’s gun. Philip and William refuse to eat worms. Their mother tries to comfort them, saying, “I can mince it all up very fine and you won’t even know the difference. Lovely slug-burgers. Delicious worm burgers” (38). The boys burst into tears. Mr. Gregg suggests that they eat the apples from their trees instead. Without fingers or hands, the Greggs struggle to eat the apples and only manage a “few small bites each” before going back to their nest to sleep (39). 

The narrator tries to call Philip but only hears a duck quacking from the other end of the line. She worries about what her Magic Finger has done to them. That night, the Greggs endure a huge storm with torrential rain and gale winds that make their tree sway. In the morning, the family wakes to find all four human-sized ducks standing below their tree, “three of them […] [with] guns in their hands” (44). The Greggs beg the ducks for mercy. Mrs. Gregg cries: “My two little children are up here with us! You wouldn’t shoot my children!” (46). The six ducks the Greggs hunted yesterday were the children of one of the ducks. Mr. Gregg begs for his and his children’s lives, promising that he will never hunt again. He even swears to destroy his guns. The ducks agree to this and praise the Greggs for their nest.

The Greggs fly down to the ground and are overcome by an array of shifting colors. When they come to, they find that they have changed back into humans. The boys dance for joy, as the four ducks from before—now back to normal–fly home toward the lake in the woods. Half an hour later, the narrator walks into the Gregg’s garden and sees Mr. Gregg smashing apart his guns, Mrs. Gregg placing flowers on the sixteen graves of the ducks, and the boys scattering barley for the wild birds to eat.

When the narrator speaks to Mr. Gregg, he tells her that he has changed his last name to Egg “in honour of my feathered friends” (60). The boys tell the narrator everything that happened. Mrs. Egg tells the narrator to peek into the house and look at the mess of feathers the wild ducks left behind. While the narrator chats with the Eggs, they hear a gunshot from over by the lake. The Coopers are “shooting mad” the way the Eggs once were (62). The narrator begins to feel a tingling in her finger and the anger filling her body; she rushes toward the lake. She intends on using the Magic Finger on the Coopers too.