The Twits - Plot

Plot

A hideous, vindictive, spiteful couple known as the Twits live together in a brick house without windows with their abused, mistreated family of pet monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, and they continuously play practical jokes on each other out of hatred for one another; Mrs. Twit drops her glass eye into her husband's beer mug and fills his dinner plate with worms claiming that it is a new brand of spaghetti, Mr. Twit constantly lengthens his wife's cane and chair and convinces her that she is shrinking and needs to be stretched out using helium balloons (in hopes of ridding himself of her once and for all, only for her to figure out how to land and learn about Mr. Twit's charade in the end). However, the book also chronicles the Twits' mistreatment of those around them; Mr. Twit apparently coats tree limbs with glue in hopes of catching birds for pie, but when a group of little boys wind up sticking to the tree he very nearly winds up forcing them to endure the same fate until they figure out how to free themselves. (Fortunately the Roly-Poly Bird, a character also featured in several other works by Dahl, with the assistance of the Muggle-Wumps, manages to caution unsuspecting birds of the fate that awaits them if they perch on the tree on the Twits' property). However, the Muggle-Wumps, tired of being forced to stand on their heads by their owners (who believe that they can start a circus of monkeys that way), with the help of the Roly-Poly Bird, use Mr. Twit's powerful glue to attach the couple's furniture to their ceiling while they are away to trick them into thinking that they are upside-down and that their ceiling is actually their floor, and the glue permanently affixes them to the ceiling so that they catch the "Terrible Shrinks" (the disease that Mr. Twit had convinced Mrs. Twit that she had earlier in the book), resulting in them shrinking away into nothing, leaving the Muggle-Wumps free to escape.