Courage In Roald Dahl's Matilda

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In the fantasy book Matilda, by Roald Dahl, there are two words that really popped out to me when I read them. The first word is courage and the second word is elated. The first word, courage makes me think of Matilda, the second child of the Wormwoods. She is not only outrageously smart but is courageous. An example of that is when she takes chances, like pranking her dad. In a conversation with a girl named Hortensia, the girl talks about how she pranked the headmistress and was put in a “chokey” which is basically a torture chamber. Matilda would later think about how the girl had so much courage. “They gazed in wonder at this goddess, and suddenly even the boil on her nose was no longer a blemish but a badge of courage”.(103) Matilda …show more content…

Matilda used the expression related to describing how she felt after using her newfound powers to scare the headmistress of Matilda’s school. She took the chalk with her telepathic powers and wrote about something bad the headmistress did. ”She was feeling curiously elated. She felt as though she had touched something that was not quite of this world, the highest point of the heavens, the farthest star. She had felt most wonderfully the power surging up behind her eyes, gushing like a warm fluid inside her skull, and her eyes had become scorching hot, hotter than ever before, and things had come bursting out of her eye-sockets and then the piece of chalk had lifted itself up and had begun to write. It seemed as though she had hardly done anything, it had all been so simple.”(206) The word elated means happy or powerful. Matilda finds it so easy to draw with her mind and make fun of the headmistress that it gives her a feeling of power and happiness. According to dictionary.com elated means very happy or proud; jubilant; in high spirits. The contexts show that Matilda is a happy person with power and “superpowers”. This change from when she was an ordinary girl who got bullied made her feel

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