George walks a fine line between naughty little monster and Harry Potter-esque child alchemist with extraordinary abilities. Dahl's story is similar to his reworking of classic fairytales, Revolting Rhymes, in that it includes strange and mystical creatures, such as a chicken with a disproportionately long neck, altered after drinking some of George's fantastical brew.
However, whilst on the face of it the story is a typically Dahl presentation of a child's victory over a bullying or overbearing grown-up, it is also a cautionary tale, and one that has fable-like morality to it.
The first lesson that can be drawn from the book is all about consequences. George does not intend to make his grandmother disappear completely with his potion. He just wants her to stop bullying him, and being mean. She is not a nice woman,and he feels that there should be some way of giving her a taste of her own medicine, so to speak - which is why he constructs some of his own. What he doesn't do is think about the worst case scenario and the things that might happen if she were to drink to much of it, or if it was to prove highly poisonous. At the end of the story, George is beginning to understand the nature of consequences, and how one must always consider the outcome of one's actions before making, them.
The story also warns about getting carried away and allowing something to snowball out of control. This is really demonstrated best by George's father, who gets so excited about the money that he feels can be made from making his livestock drink the medicine and growing extremely large, that he does not see the ethical minefield through which he is walking. The book warns against letting things get out of control, as both father and son are so caught up in the moment of their triumph that they do not see wha tis happening in the bigger picture.
