George's Marvelous Medicine

Grandma is George’s maternal grandmother. She serves as the story’s antagonist. Physically, she is a small, elderly woman whose appearance is described in sinister terms. She has “a thin icy smile, the kind a snake might make just before it bites you” (8). Her words and actions reveal her to be judgmental, hypocritical, bossy, and narcissistic. Although she accuses George of being lazy, disobedient, and greedy, it is she who best embodies those traits, as when she claims that her powers caused her unusual growth, then points out that she is now the tallest when George proves her wrong. She also repeatedly accuses George of lying after she misrepresents the facts. Lacking any redeeming qualities or a sympathetic backstory, Grandma embodies, to exaggeration, negative personality traits that serve as a warning for young readers.

Grandma’s physical transformation due to George’s medicine contrasts with her lack of development in terms of personality and attitude. The physical changes brought on by the medicine reveal the extent of Grandma’s personality flaws, such as her superiority complex: When Grandma is small, she considers growth bad, but when she is large, she refers to others as “miserable midgets” (61). Whatever physical changes she goes through, Grandma shows no signs of remorse or regard for others. At the story’s climax, Grandma’s shrinking face “still bore the same foul and furious expression it had always had” (86). Grandma’s fate illustrates the impossibility of changing someone else; despite George’s best efforts, no amount of medicine or magic can change Grandma against her will.

Mrs. Kranky is George’s mother. Following traditional gender roles, Mrs. Kranky primarily attends to home and family. At the beginning of the novel, she leaves George at home with Grandma, warning him not to “get into mischief” (1). She goes grocery shopping while George makes the medicine. When she returns, she demonstrates dutiful concern for and deference to Grandma: After Mr. Kranky calls Grandma “a pain in the neck,” Mrs. Kranky responds, “I don’t care. […] I’m not leaving my own mother sticking up through the roof for the rest of her life” (58). Mrs. Kranky’s devotion to her mother, while admirable, is called into question after Grandma’s disappearance. With Grandma no longer around, Mrs. Kranky realizes that a burden has been lifted. Her arc demonstrates the danger that family relationships based solely on duty or routine can allow for opportunists like Grandma to take advantage of others.

In addition to her concern for Grandma, Mrs. Kranky also serves as a skeptical, concerned voice in opposition to her husband as he tries to replicate George’s first batch of medicine. Her warnings prove prophetic as subsequent batches of medicine have unexpected consequences. Mrs. Kranky thus serves as a voice of caution, a reminder that interfering with powers such as magic should not be taken lightly.