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Matilda by Roald Dahl was first published in 1938. This story occurs in modern times and is told in third-person omniscient from Matilda's, the main character, point of view. There are five chief characters. They are Matilda, a child prodigy; Matilda's parents, who are selfish couch potatoes; Miss Trunchbull, a mean teacher; Miss Honey, a kind and caring teacher who later becomes Matilda's foster mother; and Miss Phelps, the town librarian. Matilda is an exceptional child.
She begins reading newspapers when she is one year old. At three, Matilda reads books like Nicholas Nickle by, Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, Kim, Animal Farm, and Jane Eyre. Matilda's parents do not like her study habits and think that she should be interested in other things. It becomes obvious they do not like her. So, Matilda begins to do some mischievous pranks to get their attention. She, for example, puts super glue in her dad's hat brim which he cannot get off.
Another time, Matilda borrows a parrot and stuffs it up the chimney where it sounds like a ghost which makes everyone in the family run out of the house. She learns to pick up things by thinking about them without moving. At one point Matilda picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the chalkboard at school which frightened Miss Trunchbull, a mean teacher. In time, her father decides that the family had better move to Spain. However, Matilda has her own ideas.
She approaches her parents to receive permission to stay with Miss Honey and her parents agree. It would seem that the theme of the book is for parents to appreciate their children and to encourage them. Dahl also presents that children should be grateful for what they have. The book caused a lot of emotions for me. I was glad when Matilda got even with Miss Trunchbull and her parents by pranks. Sometimes, though, these acts were mean.
Intellectually, it was easy to tell Matilda's parents were not Christian. They should have helped Matilda when she needed it with school rather than being slothful. Perhaps, if Matilda's parents were Christian, she would have been taught not to seek revenge and she would have received the attention she needed without doing such mean pranks. It would seem that Dahl is subjective. He tries to prove his theories by statements about parents who only guide their children when it is convenient for them.
He expresses his anger through the main character, Matilda. In the preface of the book, Dahl states annoyance with trouble-makers, spoiled youth, and lazy children. I agree with Roald Dahl that some parents favor their children too much and spoil them. The characters in the book did not seem real to me. I have never known or heard of parents or teachers that are so abusive.
Maybe they exist, but they are not common. I could not identify with the main character, Matilda, in a great portion of this book because she was disrespectful to her parents even though they were mean to her. I learned from this book that humanists rear their children differently than Christian parents. Also, humanistic families are different from Christian families in how they care for one another. In this sense, the book has an enduring them as there will always be humanistic families.
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Research essay sample on Roald Dahl Main Character
