Roald Dahl:

Roald Dahl was born 13th of September 1916 in Wales. He had Norwegian parents but he grew up in England. Every summer, Roald and his parents went on holiday to Norway. Roalds father, Harald Dahl, was the joint owner of a successful ship-broking business, "Aadnesen& Dahl" with another Norwegian. Before emigrating to Wales, Harald had been a farmer near Oslo. He married a young French girl named Marie in Paris, but she died after giving birth to their second child. In 1911, Harald Dahl married Sofie Magdalene Hesselberg. Harald died when Roald was four years old, and three weeks later his elder sister, Astri, died from appendicitis. The family had to sell their jewellery to pay for Roalds upkeep at a private school in Derbyshire. When Roald was 13 he went to a public school named Repton. When Roald was 18, he joined an expedition to Newfoundland. When he returned to England he took a job with Shell, working in London and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. During World War II Roald served in the Royal Air Forces in Libya, Greece, and Syria. He was shot down in Libya, and wounded in Syria, and then posted to Washington as an assistant air attach to British Security (1942-43). In 1943 he was a wing commander and worked until 1945 for British Security Co-ordination in North America. In 1953 Dahl married the successful and wealthy actress Patricia Neal, they had one son and four daughters. The eldest daughter, Olivia, died of measles when she was eight. Dahl's wife suffered a series of brain hemorrhages at the age of 38. While Patricia was pregnant with their fifth child she had a stroke. She described her recovery and her husband's solicitous help in the autobiography As I Am (1988). The marriage ended in 1983 after other family tragedies, and Roald married Felicity Ann Crossland. Roald Dahls books are known all over the world. He writes with a humor that attracts all age groups. Roald Dahl first book was The Gremlins. It was a childrens picture boo k adapted from a script he got from Walt Disney.

Summary of the book Matilda:

The book Matilda is written by Roald Dahl. The book is about a little girl whose name is Matilda. She lives with her family, Mr and Mrs Wormwood. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood is not very nice people. Mr. Wormwood owns a second-hand car garage and cheats people all day. At daytime, Mrs. Wormwood is at the bingo outside town. She spends almost the entire day there. When Matilda was alone she went down to the library and spent her day sitting in the library reading. When Matilda was five and a half years old she went to school for the first time. The school Matilda was going to go to was called Crunchem Hall Primary School. The head teacher was called Miss Trunchbull. Matilda began in the bottom class with eighteen other children. Their teachers name was Miss Jennifer Honey. The first day, Miss Honey tested the class in the two-times table. Matilda said the whole two-times table, she even got up to two times twenty-eight. Then Miss Honey had to stop Matilda. Miss Honey asked if Matilda could do two times four hundred and eighty-seven, and Matilda answered correctly immediately. Miss Honey was shocked that a little girl was so smart. After the class was over, Miss Honey walked to Miss Trunchbull to tell her about Matilda. Nevertheless, Miss Trunchbull was an awful person, she hated children, and no one knew how she possible could get the job. Miss Honey went to ask Miss Trunchbull if Matilda could move up some classes because she is so smart, but Miss Trunchbull said no, because Matildas father told her that Matilda was a little brat. The following night, Miss Honey goes to talk to Matildas parents. Matildas parents do not know what Miss Honey is talking about, because they never notice Matilda. Miss Honey tried to convince Mr. Wormwood that Matilda is a genius, but he thinks that Matilda is stupid and nothing can change that. In the lunch break, the next morning, Matilda and Lavender (Matildas newfound friend) meets a girl named Hortensia. She was 10 years old. She told Matilda and Lavender all about Miss Trunchbull. She told them all about the terrible things Miss Trunchbull had done

to pupils at the school. She had once thrown a girl many metres by holding the girls pigtails. Matilda and Lavender was shocked that Miss Trunchbull could get away with it. When the lunch break was over, all the pupils gathered in the Assembly Hall. Miss Trunchbull stood on stage, and when they got settled, she screamed Bruce Bogtrotter! Bruce Bogtrotter was one of the pupils. He had the day before taken some of Miss Trunchbulls cake. Now it was time for revenge for Miss Trunchbull. She made Bruce eat an enormous chocolate cake. When he was done, he looked like he was going to explode. The next day, Miss Trunchbull was going to test Matildas class in the weekly test they had. Lavender had secretly put a newt in Miss Trunchbulls water glass. Therefore, when Miss Trunchbull was going to drink the water she saw the newt and screamed. She blamed Matilda for putting the newt there. Matilda got so mad for being accused for something she hadnt done. However, when Miss Trunchbull treated to expel her, Matilda really got mad. She felt her eyes become very hot, and suddenly she managed to tip the glass with her eyes. Miss Trunchbull got so scared of the newt that she ran out of the room. Miss Honey said that everybody could go home, but Matilda stayed. She told Miss Honey that she was the one who tipped the glass over, and she showed it to Miss Honey. Matilda and Miss Honey went home to Miss Honey to talk about Matildas powers. Matilda found out that Miss Honey was extremely poor, and lived in a very tiny house. When they were talking, she told Matilda that Miss Trunchbull is Miss Honeys aunt and that Miss Honey owns Miss Trunchbull a lot of money. Miss Trunchbull used to be Miss Honeys nanny, but when Miss Honeys father died Miss Trunchbull became her guardian. Matilda found out that Miss Trunchbulls name was Agata and Jennys fathers name was Magnus. When Matilda got home, she started to practice to make things fly, with only using her eyes. She practiced for many hours, and eventually she made to make things fly for a long time.

The next day, they were having their weekly test. Miss Trunchbull asked a boy a question, and he couldnt answer. Miss Trunchbull grabbed the boys ears and lifted him up in the sky. It was that moment that Matilda started her plan. She got the chalk to write on the blackboard: Agata, this is Magnus. It is Magnus. And, you better believe it. Agata, give my Jenny back her house. Give my Jenny her wages. Give my Jenny the house. Then get out of here. If you dont I will come and get you like you got me. I am watching you Agata. Miss Trunchbull was so shocked that she fainted. No one ever saw Miss Trunchbull again. Miss Honey got her house and was happy. However, the police had found out about that Mr. Wormwood was cheating people. So when Matilda got home, everything was a totally chaos, and they were obviously moving to Spain. Matilda didnt want that, she got Miss Honey, and they asked if Miss Honey cou ld adopt Matilda. Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood said yes, and Matilda and Miss Honey stood happily watching the car drive away.

THEMES
The parents of five-and-a-half-year-old maltda womwood have no interest in their daughter, but if they did, they would discover that she is incredibly gifted. Matilda learned to read at age 3, though the only actual book in the house was a cookbook and magazines. When she asks for a real book for herself, her father rudely turns her down and tells her to watch television instead. In spite of this, Matilda looks up the address of the local library, and when everyone else leaves the house she walks to the library and quickly impresses the librarian with her thirst for literature, finishing all the children's books within a short time. The librarian gives Matilda her own library card, and she is able to bring books home with her to enjoy. Mr. Wormwood sells used for a living and after taking Matilda and her brother Michael to work one day, shows them he makes a handsome profit by cheating customers (putting sawdust in the transmission, rolling back the mileage on the odometer and gluing the bumpers and fenders that have fallen off). Matilda accuses him of being a crook though he shrugs it off and insults her. Matilda resolves to teach her parents a lesson everytime they do something wrong. She puts superglue on her father's hat, forcing him to cut it off his own hair, adds some of her mother's hair dye to the oil her father puts in his hair, dyeing it an atrocious color, and "borrows" a parrot belonging to a friend next door and hides it up the chimney; when it talks, the family is frightened into believing the house is haunted by a ghost and run out of the house, terrified. Matilda's father sells a car to Miss Agatha Trunchbull, the principal of Crunchem Hall, a private school. He arranges with Miss Trunchbull to have Matilda attend the school, where she impresses her teacher, Miss Jennifer "Jenny" Honey, with her amazing intellectual capacity and mathematical abilityMiss Honey appeals to Miss Trunchbull to have Matilda moved up into an advanced class, but the child-hating Miss Trunchbull refuses. Miss Honey also tries, in vain, to reason with Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood, but she is not welcomed, and both parents make it clear that they are not interested either in Matilda or the vale of learingand learning. Matilda quickly learns of the Trunchbull's capacity r punishing children, as she sees the Trunchbull forces a boy to eat an entire chocolate cake in front of the school for stealing some of hers, throws a girl over a fence by her pigtails because students are not allowed to have them and other cruelties for minor reasons. When one of Matilda's friends, Lavender, places a newt in the Trunchbull's glass of water during a classroom inspection, the Trunchbull blames Matilda and refuses to listen to her. Incensed by the Trunchbull's injustice, Matilda focuses on the glass and surprises everyone by tipping it over right on to Miss Trunchbull.

When the day ends, Matilda is able to prove to Miss Honey that she really did make the glass move and Miss Honey invites her to her house for some tea. Along the way, she tells Matilda her story--Miss Trunchbull is actually her aunt, who took over her father's home and abused her after her father, Magnus, supposedly killed himself. Miss Honey was able to escape and rent the cottage, though is still as dominated by the Trunchbull's tyranny as the other children at school. Matilda secretly intends to resolve this by working on her newfound powers. After practicing and waiting for a day when the Trunchbull returns to the classroom, she "haunts" the class as Magnus' ghost, writing a threatening message for the Trunchbull on the chalkboard that tells her to give Miss Honey back her home and money and leave for good. The terrified Miss Trunchbull does so, never to be seen by anyone again. Matilda visits Miss Honey in her new home often, but returns home one afternoon to find her parents packing everything they have into the car--the police had apparently discovered some of Mr. Wormwood's covert illegal activity and now the whole family is moving out of the country. Miss Honey comes with Matilda and stands up to the Wormwoods. Matilda begs to let her stay with Miss Honey, which they do so without a second glance back at her (although her brother waves goodbye).

Adult-Child Relationships
Every child has relationships with the adults in their lives. In these relationships, it is always the adult who is in control. Adults can use the innate power they have over children in positive ways, or they can abuse it, and both cases are seen in this novel. While Matilda is the clear protagonist in this story, nearly all of the other main characters are adults. Since Matilda is a brilliant and insightful person, she is able to understand the grown-ups in her life better than most other children would. The most significant adults in her early life are, of course, her parents. Even though she is clearly more sensitive and intelligent than either of them, the very fact that she is young makes her opinions and perspectives less valuable than theirs.

Characters
Matilda Wormwood is the main character in the story, and of the Matilda characters
she is (by far) the most likeable. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to Matilda as a 4 1/2-years old who possesses an intellect far above her years. Dahl even goes so far as to describe her as a "child-genius and prodigy." (p. 75) Matilda loves to read even though her parents refuse to allow any books in the house - instead preferring that she and her brother simply watch the television. Later in the story, it is revealed that Matilda also possesses the powers of psychokinesis (the ability to move things with her mind) and it is implied that these powers are a result of the repressed anger she feels toward her parents and Headmistress who vacillate between ignoring and belittling her. By the time Matilda enters Crunchem Hall Primary School she is 5 1/2-years old.

Matilda:
Matilda is a little girl who is 5 years old. She lives with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood. Matilda is a little genius! She taught herself to read when she was 3 years old. She has some special powers; she can move things fly with only using her eyes. In the book her headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, is very mean. One day Matilda get so mad that she tips a glass of water over Miss Trunchbull. In the end, Matilda gets adopted by her, Miss Honey, and they live happily ever after.

Michael Wormwood is Matilda's older brother. Although he does not posses the same
level of intellect or ability as his sister, he is clearly the favorite in the Wormwood household.

Mrs. Phelps is the local librarian who encourages Matilda's love of reading. Mr. Harry Wormwood is Matilda's father. Harry is also a used car dealer, and right
from the start of the book we learn that he is a dishonest business man. He puts sawdust in his customers' cars to make them sound better and runs the cars backward to turn back the mileage counters. Instead of praising his daughter for her abilities, he constantly tells her that she is "ignorant and stupid." (p. 29) In fact, when Matilda correctly adds several large sums in her head and presents the answer to her father, he calls her a "cheat and a liar." (p. 55)

Mrs. Wormwood , Matilda's mother, is described as a "large woman whose hair was
dyed platinum blonde except where you could see the mousy-brown bits growing out from the roots." (p. 27) She also "wore heavy make-up and had one of those unfortunate bulging figures where the flesh appears to be strapped in all around the body to prevent it from falling out." (p. 27) Mrs. Wormwood's only interests are watching American soap-operas and playing Bingo every day. Like her husband, Mrs. Wormwood thinks very little of her daughter's unique abilities and often berates her. Fred is the young neighbor boy who lends Matilda his pet parrot. Matilda later uses the parrot to play a prank on her family.

Miss Jennifer Honey is Matilda's teacher at Crunchem Hall Primary School. Miss
Honey is young, pretty, mild-mannered and "possessed that rare gift for being adored by every small child under her care." (p. 67) Later in the story, she becomes a great advocate for Matilda.

Miss Jennifer Honey:

Miss Honey is Matildas teacher. Miss Honey is about 23/24 years old. She is a very quiet person and she is very skinny. Miss Honeys aunt is Miss Trunchbull. Miss Honey seems very insecure. Miss Trunchbull has harassed Miss Honey, since she was a little girl. Miss Honey is also very poor. She lives in a very tiny house, and she almost doesnt have any furniture. Miss Honey owes Miss Trunchbull a lot of money, because Miss Trunchbull paid for Miss Honeys food and clothes when she was little. So almost Miss Honeys entire salary goes to Miss Trunchbull, except 1 pound, which is Miss Honeys pocket money.

Miss Truchbull is undoubtedly the most colorful in the cast of Matilda characters. The
Headmistress at Crunchem Hall Primary School, Miss Trunchbull serves as the "head teacher, the boss and the supreme commander" (p. 66) who "insists on strict discipline throughout the school." (p. 69) Dahl also describes her as a "gigantic holy terror, a fierce tyrannical monster who frightened the life out of the pupils and teachers alike" (p. 67) who "hardly ever spoke in a normal voice." (p. 85) Instead, he says she "barked or shouted." (p. 85) Miss Trunchbull's favorite form of punishment is to send students to the "Chocky," which is a "very tall but very narrow cupboard" that has a floor "only ten inches square so you can't sit down or squat in it" - forcing one to stand, instead. Furthermore, "three of the walls are made of cement with bits of broken glass sticking out all over, so you can't lean against them." Leaning against the door is also impossible, because it has "thousands of

sharp spikey nails sticking out of it." (p. 104) Much later in the book, we learn that Miss Trunchbull is also Miss Honey's aunt Agatha.

Mrs Agata Trunchbull:

Mss Trunchbull is the Headmistress at the school Matilda goes to. Miss Trunchbull is a gigantic person. Miss Trunchbull hate children and she is very awful to he children at the school. Miss Trunchbull is the aunt to Miss Honey. Miss Trunchbull thinks she can do whatever she wants to whomever she wants. Miss Trunchbull makes Miss Honey give her entire salary. Miss Trunchbull gives Miss Honey 1 pound a week, for pocket money. In the end, Miss Trunchbull finally leaves, and no one ever sees her again.

Lavender, Nigel, Ruper, Eric, Wilfred and Hortensia are Matilda's friends and
classmates at Crunchem Hall Primary School.

Amanda Thripp is another classmate. She makes the mistake of coming to school
wearing her hair in pigtails. Miss Trunchbull despises pigtails, and so she uses them to pick Amanda up. Using her Olympic hammer training, Miss Trunchbull swings Amanda around over-head and throws her clear across the school yard fence. Luckily, she "landed on the grass and bounced three times and finally came to rest." (p. 116)

Bruce Bogtrotter is yet another of Matilda's classmates who suffers under Miss
Trunchbull. This 11-year old boy commits the crime of sneaking a piece of the Headmistresses' "special" chocolate cake. During his confession, Bruce admits that he found the cake, baked by the school's cook, to be "very good." (pp. 122-123) As his punishment, Bruce is forced to eat every last bite of a duplicate cake which was "fully eighteen inches in diameter" and "covered with dark-brown chocolate icing." (p. 124)

Mr. Trilby is the Deputy Head of the school who, at the end of the book, is appointed
Head Teacher in Miss Trunchbull's place.

Miss Plimsoll is Matilda's teacher once she is moved to a higher grade at the school.

About the Author

According to the official Roald Dahl website, the author was born of Norwegian parents on September 13, 1916 in Llandaff, Wales. This would explain why so many of his stories take place in England - as does the story of Matilda. The author is also quoted as saying that he remembers his mother as "always on your side, whatever you'd done," and that knowing this gave him, "the most tremendous feeling of security." This background knowledge is helpful in understanding the nature of the relationship between this story's main character, young Matilda, and her unloving, uninvolved parents as part of the fantasy. Quite unlike Dahl's own childhood, Matilda's family is ready to believe everything negative that is said about her. Consequently, she feels as if she doesn't really belongs to or fits in with her family. As a young boy, Dahl enjoyed listening to his mother tell stories involving the mythological creatures of his Scandinavian heritage and of great adventures. He also enjoyed reading the work of Dickens, which may explain many of the themes surrounding his stories as well as his occasional reference to many of Dickens' novels in Matilda. (pp. 15-18) The story Matilda broke the sales records for children's fictional literature in the UK, with over half a million paperbacks sold there in just 6 months time. Known works, other than Matilda, by Roald Dahl include James and the Giant Peach (1961), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Enormous Crocodile (1978) and The BFG (1982). Roald Dahl died November 23, 1990 at the age of 74.

GLOSSARY
Allegory
A symbolic narrative in which the surface details imply a secondary meaning. Allegory often takes the form of a story in which the characters represent moral qualities. The most famous example in English is John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which the name of the central character, Pilgrim, epitomizes the book's allegorical nature. Kay Boyle's story "Astronomer's Wife" and Christina Rossetti's poem "Up-Hill" both contain allegorical elements.

Alliteration
The repetition of consonant sounds, especially at the beginning of words. Example: "Fetched fresh, as I suppose, off some sweet wood." Hopkins, "In the Valley of the Elwy."

Antagonist
A character or force against which another character struggles. Creon is Antigone's antagonist in Sophocles' play Antigone; Teiresias is the antagonist of Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King.

Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a sentence or a line of poetry or prose, as in "I rose and told him of my woe." Whitman's "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" contains assonantal "I's" in the following lines: "How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, / Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself."

Character
An imaginary person that inhabits a literary work. Literary characters may be major or minor, static (unchanging) or dynamic (capable of change). In Shakespeare's Othello, Desdemona is a major character, but one who is static, like the minor character Bianca. Othello is a major character who is dynamic, exhibiting an ability to change.

Characterization
The means by which writers present and reveal character. Although techniques of characterization are complex, writers typically reveal characters through their speech, dress, manner, and actions. Readers come to understand the character Miss Emily in

Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" through what she says, how she lives, and what she does.

Climax
The turning point of the action in the plot of a play or story. The climax represents the point of greatest tension in the work. The climax of John Updike's "A&P," for example, occurs when Sammy quits his job as a cashier.

Complication
An intensification of the conflict in a story or play. Complication builds up, accumulates, and develops the primary or central conflict in a literary work. Frank O'Connor's story "Guests of the Nation" provides a striking example, as does Ralph Ellison's "Battle Royal."

Conflict
A struggle between opposing forces in a story or play, usually resolved by the end of the work. The conflict may occur within a character as well as between characters. Lady Gregory's one-act play The Rising of the Moon exemplifies both types of conflict as the Policeman wrestles with his conscience in an inner conflict and confronts an antagonist in the person of the ballad singer.

Connotation
The associations called up by a word that goes beyond its dictionary meaning. Poets, especially, tend to use words rich in connotation. Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" includes intensely connotative language, as in these lines: "Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Convention
A customary feature of a literary work, such as the use of a chorus in Greek tragedy, the inclusion of an explicit moral in a fable, or the use of a particular rhyme scheme in a villanelle. Literary conventions are defining features of particular literary genres, such as novel, short story, ballad, sonnet, and play.

Denotation
The dictionary meaning of a word. Writers typically play off a word's denotative meaning against its connotations, or suggested and implied associational implications.

In the following lines from Peter Meinke's "Advice to My Son" the references to flowers and fruit, bread and wine denote specific things, but also suggest something beyond the literal, dictionary meanings of the words: To be specific, between the peony and rose Plant squash and spinach, turnips and tomatoes; Beauty is nectar and nectar, in a desert, saves-... and always serve bread with your wine. But, son, always serve wine.

Denouement
The resolution of the plot of a literary work. The denouement of Hamlet takes place after the catastrophe, with the stage littered with corpses. During the denouement Fortinbras makes an entrance and a speech, and Horatio speaks his sweet lines in praise of Hamlet.

Dialogue
The conversation of characters in a literary work. In fiction, dialogue is typically enclosed within quotation marks. In plays, characters' speech is preceded by their names.

Diction
The selection of words in a literary work. A work's diction forms one of its centrally important literary elements, as writers use words to convey action, reveal character, imply attitudes, identify themes, and suggest values. We can speak of the diction particular to a character, as in Iago's and Desdemona's very different ways of speaking in Othello. We can also refer to a poet's diction as represented over the body of his or her work, as in Donne's or Hughes's diction.

Exposition
The first stage of a fictional or dramatic plot, in which necessary background information is provided. Ibsen's A Doll's House, for instance, begins with a conversation between the two central characters, a dialogue that fills the audience in on events that occurred before the action of the play begins, but which are important in the

development of its plot.

Fable
A brief story with an explicit moral provided by the author. Fables typically include animals as characters. Their most famous practitioner in the west is the ancient Greek writer Aesop, whose "The Dog and the Shadow" and "The Wolf and the Mastiff" are included in this book.

Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his wife, Desdemona.

Fiction
An imagined story, whether in prose, poetry, or drama. Ibsen's Nora is fictional, a "make-believe" character in a play, as are Hamlet and Othello. Characters like Robert Browning's Duke and Duchess from his poem "My Last Duchess" are fictional as well, though they may be based on actual historical individuals. And, of course, characters in stories and novels are fictional, though they, too, may be based, in some way, on real people. The important thing to remember is that writers embellish and embroider and alter actual life when they use real life as the basis for their work. They fictionalize facts, and deviate from real-life situations as they "make things up."

Figurative language
A form of language use in which writers and speakers convey something other than the literal meaning of their words. Examples include hyperbole or exaggeration, litotes or understatement, simile and metaphor, which employ comparison, and synecdoche and metonymy, in which a part of a thing stands for the whole.

Flashback
An interruption of a work's chronology to describe or present an incident that occurred prior to the main time frame of a work's action. Writers use flashbacks to complicate the sense of chronology in the plot of their works and to convey the richness of the experience of human time. Faulkner's story "A Rose for Emily" includes flashbacks.

Foil
A character who contrasts and parallels the main character in a play or story. Laertes, in Hamlet, is a foil for the main character; in Othello, Emilia and Bianca are foils for Desdemona.

Foreshadowing
Hints of what is to come in the action of a play or a story. Ibsen's A Doll's House includes foreshadowing as does Synge's Riders to the Sea. So, too, do Poe's "Cask of Amontillado" and Chopin's "Story of an Hour."

Hyperbole
A figure of speech involving exaggeration. John Donne uses hyperbole in his poem: "Song: Go and Catch a Falling Star."

Image
A concrete representation of a sense impression, a feeling, or an idea. Imagery refers to the pattern of related details in a work. In some works one image predominates either by recurring throughout the work or by appearing at a critical point in the plot. Often writers use multiple images throughout a work to suggest states of feeling and to convey implications of thought and action. Some modern poets, such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, write poems that lack discursive explanation entirely and include only images. Among the most famous examples is Pound's poem "In a Station of the Metro": The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Imagery
The pattern of related comparative aspects of language, particularly of images, in a literary work. Imagery of light and darkness pervade James Joyce's stories "Araby," "The Boarding House," and "The Dead." So, too, does religious imagery.

Irony
A contrast or discrepancy between what is said and what is meant or between what happens and what is expected to happen in life and in literature. In verbal irony, characters say the opposite of what they mean. In irony of circumstance or situation, the opposite of what is expected occurs. In dramatic irony, a character speaks in

ignorance of a situation or event known to the audience or to the other characters. Flannery O'Connor's short stories employ all these forms of irony, as does Poe's "Cask of Amontillado."

Literal language
A form of language in which writers and speakers mean exactly what their words denote. See Figurative language, Denotation, and Connotation.

Metaphor
A comparison between essentially unlike things without an explicitly comparative word such as like or as. An example is "My love is a red, red rose," From Burns's "A Red, Red Rose." Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" is built entirely of metaphors. Metaphor is one of the most important of literary uses of language. Shakespeare employs a wide range of metaphor in his sonnets and his plays, often in such density and profusion that readers are kept busy analyzing and interpreting and unraveling them. Compare Simile.

Metonymy
A figure of speech in which a closely related term is substituted for an object or idea. An example: "We have always remained loyal to the crown." See Synecdoche.

Narrator
The voice and implied speaker of a fictional work, to be distinguished from the actual living author. For example, the narrator of Joyce's "Araby" is not James Joyce himself, but a literary fictional character created expressly to tell the story. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" contains a communal narrator, identified only as "we." See Point of view.

Onomatopoeia
The use of words to imitate the sounds they describe. Words such as buzz and crack are onomatopoetic. The following line from Pope's "Sound and Sense" onomatopoetically imitates in sound what it describes: When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow. Most often, however, onomatopoeia refers to words and groups of words, such as Tennyson's description of the "murmur of innumerable bees," which attempts to

capture the sound of a swarm of bees buzzing.

Parable
A brief story that teaches a lesson often ethical or spiritual. Examples include "The Prodigal Son," from the New Testament, and the Zen parable, "Learning to Be Silent." See Fable.

Parody
A humorous, mocking imitation of a literary work, sometimes sarcastic, but often playful and even respectful in its playful imitation. Examples include Bob McKenty's parody of Frost's "Dust of Snow" and Kenneth Koch's parody of Williams's "This is Just to Say."

Personification
The endowment of inanimate objects or abstract concepts with animate or living qualities. An example: "The yellow leaves flaunted their color gaily in the breeze." Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud" includes personification.

Plot
The unified structure of incidents in a literary work. See Conflict, Climax, Denouement, andFlashback.

Point of view
The angle of vision from which a story is narrated. See Narrator. A work's point of view can be: first person, in which the narrator is a character or an observer, respectively; objective, in which the narrator knows or appears to know no more than the reader; omniscient, in which the narrator knows everything about the characters; and limited omniscient, which allows the narrator to know some things about the characters but not everything.

Protagonist
The main character of a literary work--Hamlet and Othello in the plays named after them, Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis, Paul in Lawrence's "Rocking-Horse Winner."

Recognition
The point at which a character understands his or her situation as it really is.

Sophocles' Oedipus comes to this point near the end of Oedipus the King; Othello comes to a similar understanding of his situation in Act V of Othello.

Resolution
The sorting out or unraveling of a plot at the end of a play, novel, or story. See Plot. Reversal The point at which the action of the plot turns in an unexpected direction for the protagonist. Oedipus's and Othello's recognitions are also reversals. They learn what they did not expect to learn. See Recognition and also Irony.

Rising action
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play's or story's plot leading up to the climax. See Climax, Denouement, and Plot.

Satire
A literary work that criticizes human misconduct and ridicules vices, stupidities, and follies. Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a famous example. Chekhov's Marriage Proposal and O'Connor's "Everything That Rises Must Converge," have strong satirical elements.

Setting
The time and place of a literary work that establish its context. The stories of Sandra Cisneros are set in the American southwest in the mid to late 20th century, those of James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland in the early 20th century.

Simile
A figure of speech involving a comparison between unlike things using like, as, or as though. An example: "My love is like a red, red rose."

Style
The way an author chooses words, arranges them in sentences or in lines of dialogue or verse, and develops ideas and actions with description, imagery, and other literary techniques. See Connotation, Denotation, Diction, Figurative language, Image, Imagery, Irony, Metaphor, Narrator, Point of view, Syntax, and Tone.

Subject
What a story or play is about; to be distinguished from plot and theme. Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily" is about the decline of a particular way of life endemic to the American

south before the civil war. Its plot concerns how Faulkner describes and organizes the actions of the story's characters. Its theme is the overall meaning Faulkner conveys.

Subplot
A subsidiary or subordinate or parallel plot in a play or story that coexists with the main plot. The story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern forms a subplot with the overall plot of Hamlet.

Symbol
An object or action in a literary work that means more than itself, that stands for something beyond itself. The glass unicorn in The Glass Menagerie, the rocking horse in "The Rocking-Horse Winner," the road in Frost's "The Road Not Taken"--all are symbols in this sense.

Synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is substituted for the whole. An example: "Lend me a hand." See Metonymy.

Syntax
The grammatical order of words in a sentence or line of verse or dialogue. The organization of words and phrases and clauses in sentences of prose, verse, and dialogue. In the following example, normal syntax (subject, verb, object order) is inverted: "Whose woods these are I think I know."

Tale
A story that narrates strange happenings in a direct manner, without detailed descriptions of character. Petronius' "The Widow of Ephesus" is an example.

Theme
The idea of a literary work abstracted from its details of language, character, and action, and cast in the form of a generalization. See discussion of Dickinson's "Crumbling is not an instant's Act."

Tone
The implied attitude of a writer toward the subject and characters of a work, as, for example, Flannery O'Connor's ironic tone in her "Good Country People." See Irony.

Understatement
A figure of speech in which a writer or speaker says less than what he or she means; the opposite of exaggeration. The last line of Frost's "Birches" illustrates this literary device: "One could do worse than be a swinger of birches."

PLOT
Introduction: The story starts off when Matilda is a baby. She is very smart, and by age three has read everything in the house and wants nothing more than a book. So she starts going to the library and increasing her brainpower. Meanwhile at home, her parents are horrible and don't pay her any attention. Every time her father does something bad, she plays a trick on him (super gluing his hat to his head, putting bleach in his hair tonic). Her father is also a crooked used car salesman, and is being watched by two cops who pose as speedboat salesmen and videotape the house from across the street. Things start to look better for Matilda after her father meets Agatha Trunchbull, a headmistress of a local school, and he enrolls Matilda in school there. But the Trunchbull is a horrible woman (and an ex-Olympian, famous for shotput, javelin, and hammer throw), who disciplines her students by throwing them out of windows, over the fence, making them eat huge chocolate cakes, and putting them in the chokey. All the students fear the Trunchbull. Rising action: "Matilda discovers she has psychokinetic powers, a secret which she confides only to Miss Honey. She learns this when her best friend, Lavender, puts a newt in Miss Trunchbull's water, and when the Trunchbull blames Matilda for it, Matilda gets so angry she tips the glass over with her mind. Miss Honey is very curious about Matilda's powers and she takes Matilda to her home. They arrive at her cottage, where Matilda discovers Miss Honey is living in poverty. Matilda asks why, and Miss Honey explains how when she was two years old her mother died and her father was a doctor who needed someone to look after everything at home, so he invited his wife's sister to come and live with him but she turned out to be a mean person who treated Miss Honey very badly when not in the father's presence. Miss Honey was 5 years when her father died, and the police decided he'd killed himself. Miss Honey had become her aunt's slave and did everything her aunt told her to: cooking, cleaning, ironing. When Miss Honey was an adult, she wanted to go to university but her aunt wouldn't allow it; however there was a teachers' training college in the local area and she went under the condition that she would keep up with her work. When she found a job the aunt demanded that she pay all her salary to her except for an allowance of 1 pound a week as payment for feeding and clothing her and Miss Honey was so terrified of her that she agreed. She found the tiny cottage and rented it from a farmer for 10 pence a week, and when she moved out of her aunt's house she finally got her freedom. Matilda asks who the aunt is and Miss Honey reveals that it is none other than Miss Trunchbull. With

this information, Matilda formulates a plan as to how she can get rid of the Trunchbull for good." Climax: "When the Trunchbull investigates Miss Honey's class, Matilda uses her powers to pretend to be the spirit of Miss Honey's father by writing on the blackboard and demanding that Miss Trunchbull give Miss Honey her wages and her father's house. At the sight of seeing this being written as though by an invisible hand, Miss Trunchbull faints and is carried from the classroom by the teachers." Falling Action:
"The day following the chalkboard incident, Miss Trunchbull disappears, abandoning her

brother-in-law's house. Also, his will turns up and it is discovered that Miss Honey is the rightful heiress to his property. Miss Honey then moves back into her father's house, and with the Trunchbull gone Matilda is moved into the top form where she loses all of her powers. Miss Honey believes that Matilda's brain now has to work hard instead of accumulating spare "brainpower" the powers would need: this, the two of them agree, is a good thing, as Matilda would not care to "go through life as a miracle worker". In the movie, Matilda does not lose her powers, but it is stated that she uses them less often. Resolution: Meanwhile, the police are alerted to Matilda's father, who has been selling stolen cars. He decides to move the whole family to Spain (Guam in the movie version), but Matilda asks them to let her remain with Miss Honey. They agree, as it is less of a bother, and drive away forever. Matilda and Miss Honey make a loving family and live together in Miss Honey's father's house."