History Literature / TheTwits

* {{Jerkass}}: Mr. and Mrs. Twit are both rude, mean, and naughty.

* CaptainObvious: "To one side there is The Big Dead Tree. It never has any leaves on it because it was dead."

* CaptainObvious: "To one side there is The Big Dead Tree. It never has any leaves on it because it's dead."

One of Creator/RoaldDahl's many morbidly comic children's books, ''The Twits'' is a novella about Mr. and Mrs. Twit, an inexplicably married couple who despise one another, smell, and are generally horrible people who [[KickTheDog are cruel to animals]].

-->''What I am trying to tell you is that Mr. Twit was a foul and smelly old man.''
-->''Mrs. Twit was no better.''
---> -- '''The narrator'''

* IAmAHumanitarian: Mr. Twit has no qualms with the idea of making several boys into a pie.

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* ComicallyMissingThePoint: The Twits' house has no windows. Mr. Twit didn't see the point of letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry peer in at them. This trope is promptly lampshaded by the narration.

* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing: At the end, when the Twits disappear.

* {{Balloonacy}}: Ostensibly to cure her of the shrinks, Mr. Twit ties 100 helium balloons to his tethered wife (to stretch her back to size). Initially he intends to just leave her in that state for a few days, but inspired by a comment of hers he cuts the tethering strings, sending her aloft. Unfortunately for him, she figures out how to get back down to Earth.

* DeathByIrony: The couple are offed by gluing them upside-down to the floor after they have tortured Muggle-Wump and his family by making them stand upside-down on top of one another.
* EscalatingWar: The first several chapter focus entirely on the Twits pulling cruel pranks on each other. Finally the narrator says this has gone on long enough and he wants to move on to a lighter topic.

* EvilCripple: Mrs. Twit has a glass eye, which she uses to play pranks on her husband, and uses a walking stick (though that last part probably doesn't count because she really carries it so she can hit dogs and cats and small children).
* EvilMakesYouUgly: Mrs. Twit was once a beautiful woman, until she started thinking ugly thoughts which led to the transformation into her hideous appearance.

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: The first chunk of the book consists of vignettes about how horrible the Twits are. The second chunk is about the family of monkeys trying to escape.

* MoreDakka: After the monkeys and birds manage to outwit the Twits several times, Mr. and Mrs. Twit decide to go purchase guns and shoot them all, especially "the kind that spray out fifty bullets or more with each bang!"

One of Creator/RoaldDahl's many morbid children's books, ''The Twits'' describes Mr. and Mrs. Twit, an inexplicably married couple who despise one another, smell and are generally horrible people who [[KickTheDog are cruel to animals]].

The first couple of chapters describe the couple [[GrossOutShow and their lack of hygiene]] with a delighted glee; then there are several chapters of them [[EscalatingWar playing increasingly mean tricks on one another]], including Mr. Twit convincing his wife that she has a disease called "the Shrinks". Finally, the focus shifts to some of the animals they have been tormenting and how they get their revenge on the horrible couple once and for all.

* {{Gaslighting}}: The titular dysfunctional couple do it to each other to begin with (for example, adding a small segment to the bottom of a walking stick every day to make the wife think she's shrinking), and have it spectacularly turned on them at the end ([[spoiler:they're tricked into gluing themselves to the floor, and end up shrinking down into nothing in their efforts to get themselves unstuck]]).
* GivingThemTheStrip: Early in the book, a group of boys get stuck in a tree because Mr. Twit has coated the tree limbs with glue to catch birds for dinner. When he threatens to eat the boys instead, the only thing they can do to escape is slip out of their pants.

** When Muggle-Wump commands his family and the birds to take up the Twits' carpet and stick it onto the ceiling, they respond with "He's dotty!" "He's balmy!" "He's batty!", etc. This is much the same dialogue that the Golden Ticket tour group has as they wonder at Mr. Wonka's sanity during the boat ride in ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory''. The sentence "But there was no saving her now." also appears in both books — referring to blueberry!Violet in ''Factory'' and the Balloonacy-imperiled Mrs. Twit here.

* MythologyGag: When Muggle-Wump commands his family and the birds to take up the Twits' carpet and stick it onto the ceiling, they respond with "He's dotty!" "He's balmy!" "He's batty!", etc. This is much the same dialogue that the Golden Ticket tour group has as they wonder at Mr. Wonka's sanity during the boat ride in ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory''. The sentence "But there was no saving her now." also appears in both books — referring to blueberry!Violet in ''Factory'' and the Balloonacy-imperiled Mrs. Twit here.

* FeatheredFiend: Inverted. Roly-Poly Bird and the other birds are instrumental to the escape of the monkey family and the turning of the Twits upside down.

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: The first chunk of the book is vignettes about how horrible the twits are. The second chunk is about the family of monkeys trying to escape.

* VillainProtagonist: The Twits are a variation, as they are introduced before Muggle-Wump and get a lot more of the focus in the first half of the book. The position of protagonist is later given to Muggle-Wump.
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* EvilCripple: Mrs. Twit has a glass eye, which she uses to play pranks on her husband, and uses a walking stick (though that last part probably doesn't count because she carries it to hit dogs and cats and small children).

* EverythingsBetterWithMonkeys: Muggle-Wump and family.

* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Inverted. ''Goodness equals beauty.'' Mrs. Twit was once a beautiful woman, until she started thinking ugly thoughts which led to the transformation into her hideous appearance. The narration states that people who are ugly can still have beauty shine through if they have pleasant thoughts and demeanor, accompanied by a drawing of such a person.

* MoreDakka: After the monkeys and birds manage to outwit the Twits several times, Mr. and Mrs. Twit decide to go purchase guns and shoot them all, especially "the kind that spray a hundred bullets a second!"

* {{Gaslighting}}

* SexlessMarriage: Not outright stated (it's for children, after all), but the Twits' marriage is apparently one of these since they sleep in separate beds. Neither of them can really be blamed for this; they're both hideously ugly, in body and mind.

* BeautyEqualsGoodness: Played with. Mrs. Twit was once a beautiful woman, until she started thinking ugly thoughts which led to the transformation into her hideous appearance. The narration states that people who are ugly can still have beauty shine through if they have pleasant thoughts and demeanor, accompanied by a drawing of such a person.

One of Creator/RoaldDahl's many morbid children's books, ''TheTwits'' describes Mr. and Mrs. Twit, an inexplicably married couple who despise one another, smell and are generally horrible people who [[KickTheDog are cruel to animals]].