Student Question

What feeling does Chapter 1 of Matilda evoke in the reader?

Expert Answers

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Feelings will vary from reader to reader, but here's what we're mostly likely to feel after reading Chapter 1.

In general, we're feeling very involved and anxious to keep reading. The narrator's humor is really engaging, and we laughed a lot when reading the description of how he would write really truthful and insulting remarks about dumb kids on their report cards so their parents could realize that their precious little darlings aren't so amazing after all.

So we're still giggling a little bit about that, and anticipating more funny bits in the story, but we're also very shocked and disgusted by the idea that Matilda's parents don't care about her at all. How sad it is to think about a mom and dad ignoring their child! Some of us will read ahead eagerly to see if the parents change their mind, or to see if they get punished for treating their child so badly.

We're told in Chapter 1 that Matilda is both sensitive and brilliant, and that the parents are too focused on their own silly lives to appreciate how special their daughter truly is. We know that she learned how to talk really well while she was still a baby. So we're interested to find out exactly how smart Matilda is, and how her early verbal skills led to even more exciting accomplishments. Some readers may also be interested in finding out why the parents' lives are described as silly. What do they do that's silly? We're eager to find out. And, some readers want to know more about the brother, Michael. If he's totally normal, then do the parents ignore him, too, like they ignore Matilda?

To sum it up, most readers will feel curious and emotionally involved by the end of Chapter 1, eager to read on to see what happens with this odd family, the Wormwoods.

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