Line #20 Headscratchers/Matilda


1	[[folder:The 1996 movie]]
2	* [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse What happened to Michael]], after the Wormwoods went to [[FailureIsTheOnlyOption Guam to escape the authorities?]]
3	** Michael is with them in the car (he shouts out "I'll be an only child again!" as Matilda's parents are contemplating Matilda's adoption), so it's safe to assume that Michael went with their parents to Guam.
4	*** Which can serve as FridgeHorror of its own, seeing that the Wormwoods got most likely arrested in Guam, ending with Michael in an orphanage, on the street, or similar. While he had been a lazy bully, he was mostly a victim of being ''groomed'' into one, just to end up suffering for his parents' deeds and not having been HappilyAdopted like Matilda.
5	*** If his parents were arrested, he would most certainly not end up on the street. He'd be put into foster care and he might end up in a better family, who could even raise him into being a better person.
6	*** This ''is'' a Roald Dahl story though. For all we know, he might [[Literature/TheWitches be a mouse now]].
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8	* The kids not only pelt the Trunchbull with food, but with WATER BALLOONS. Considering the way Crunchem Hall is run, how and why would they have water balloons on their person at the time?
9	** Perhaps every kid in school is looking for a chance to prank the Trunchbull?
10	** I suppose Matilda's first act of standing up to the Trunchbull when she was abusing Bruce helped light a fire under all the other students. Lavender for example puts the newt in the Trunchbull's water as revenge for locking Matilda in the Chokey. Likewise, Miss Honey was compelled to break Matilda out against the Trunchbull's wishes. Matilda had stood up to her in the assembly and that prompted them to do the same. So the kids may have been looking for opportunities to get back at her too.
11	** The answer might be found in the book, where the students ''do'' prank Trunchbull when they can. It's treated as a war -- Trunchbull tries to oppress them and they fight back in the ways they can. This is most clearly shown in the book's scene where Hortensia is telling Matilda and Lavender about life at Crunchem Hall -- where Hortensia in the movie just talks about the hellish nature of the school, book-Hortensia brags about the pranks she's played on Trunchbull. Though the kids in the movie seem a lot more cowed and oppressed, it's possible they ''do'' occasionally try to fight back by pulling pranks like their book counterparts.
12	** The balloons are probably a consequence of the warlike environment of the school - as explained above. The water, however, as well as how the kids got such a supply on such short notice, has a very simple [[UrineTrouble alternative explanation]].
13	** Possibly they sensed something was going down when the Trunchbull was being terrorized in Matilda's class (she does get thrown around a lot, which is bound to make some noise) and they filled some of them up with water from the tap. Miss Honey's classroom has a sink in it since that's where Lavender fills the jug before she pulls the prank with the newt, so the other rooms might have them too and they could fill up without having to leave the room.
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15	* How come the other teachers are not shown? Only three adults at the school are shown, all are women by the way.
16	** TwoTeacherSchool? Though, since, according to the epilogue Miss Honey extended it into an ElevatorSchool as principal, they do have other teachers but we don't see them because they're not the focus.
17	** Because it's an elementary school and Matilda therefore only has one teacher. We don't see the others because Matilda doesn't attend their classes. She only sees the Trunchbull because a) the woman has dealings with her father and b) she makes a weekly visit to every class.
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19	* Minor detail: If Matilda got the adoption papers by copying a book in the library, why is her name already typed on them?
20	** The librarian went along with her plan and typed them up for her.
21	** Just as modern libraries have computer labs, older ones sometimes had public typewriters. Matilda could have filled them out herself.
22	** Matilda is a very advanced ChildProdigy. She could have easily worked out a way to do so, and Miss Phelps likely could have helped her, since she has been looking out for the girl for years.
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24	* Perhaps the most obvious question: Yes, the Trunchbull gets away with her punishments because they're legitimately too insane to believe. Fine. But why didn't some of the parents raise objections when their kids came home, say--
25	** Terrified and acting emotionally abused
26	** Bloody or bruised
27	** In the case of the 1996 film, ''five hours late''? Especially considering that everyone else's parents are supposed to be great compared to Matilda's (see book and musical), what exactly is the deal here?
28	** AdultsAreUseless. Great but useless.
29	** ValuesDissonance. Back when the book was first written - or [[WriteWhatYouKnow from the author's childhood]]. Schools could probably pull stunts like that back in Dahl's day. For the "five hours late" stunt, maybe the Trunchbull called the parents and said that their children had "misbehaved and were in detention"... For all we know, the parents had the option of taking their kids home. We just know Matilda came home five hours late because her parents are ''that'' careless.
30	** In the original book, it was barely hinted that even the parents were bullied into ignoring what was going on. Now, whether that applies to the movie is anyone's guess.
31	*** Another thing to note is that, when she does cause the kids injuries, the injuries Trunchbull deals could have other explanations (like Lavender's bruised face after getting yeet out of a window) and, two, if you had a child abusing crazy-ass as a principal, would your parents believe you? Prolly not, well, maybe not back then.
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33	* In the same year the film came out, a first-grader named Jonathan Prevette was disciplined for kissing a classmate, which caused his mother to stage protests against the school district board, and ultimately sparked a public debate on the role schools should play in penalizing misbehaving students (and whether or not his actions constituted sexual harassment in the first place). Therefore even as far back as 1996, some overprotective parents have a propensity of taking action based on what their children say or what they interpret, regardless of their plausibility. Ms. Trunchbull would most likely have immediately been protested and investigated by her superiors as soon as she mistreated a student who had parents like that, instead of being able to cow the entire school into silence because no one was listening to them, or took them seriously.
34	** As for bruised and beaten, there are plenty of real-life cases where children are bullied but the parents never find out. Children get into all sorts of scrapes, so a line about falling in the playground seems much more believable than [[WeirdnessCensor getting thrown over the fence by the school's evil principal]].
35	*** Eventually though the other families would hear similar reports among the students. This would prompt investigation. It seems that the Trunchbull hasn't been around for that long, maybe a few years, as when students graduate from there and become old enough they would be believed, then the Trunchbull would be screwed.
36	** Who knows, since she's Miss Honey's abusive aunt, maybe she terrorized the parents, too? The kids are supposed to be 6-7, she's implied to be in her late 40s-early 50s, and the fact she's TheDreaded, this wouldn't be impossible.
37	** And since she has a BigFancyHouse, it's possible she uses her money to protect herself in the event of such a thing (yes the house doesn't legally belong to her, but she's bound to be quite well off if she's principal).
38	** [[FridgeLogic And yet she has to buy a used car from a]] HonestJohnsDealership, [[FridgeLogic and most of the house is being used as storage]]. If you're always hearing that teachers are underpaid, it stands to reason that principals (even superintendents) don't earn much more.
39	** Although buying a used car doesn't necessarily mean she can't afford a better one. She could just be a cheapskate, considering she haggles the price of the car by allowing Matilda to go to her school.
40	** She tells Harry that she has a tight budget.
41	** Plus, well, kids-lit logic. Children's literature, especially that of the fantastical sort which Roald Dahl traded in, often tends to exaggerate stuff to make the story more interesting and exciting. After-school detention is a common punishment experienced by children, so Dahl ups the ante and illustrates what an utter bastard Trunchbull is by having her keep the kids back what is almost an entire school day on ''top'' of their existing school day.
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43	* If Miss Trunchbull hadn't happened along and offered to enroll Matilda as a barter for her car, when would Matilda have gotten to go to school?
44	** Possibly never, considering her parents aren't too keen to find one for her. They don't even know that she's old enough to have started school two years ago. Perhaps social services might have stepped in eventually, but they don't seem to exist in the Matilda universe.
45	** They think she's only four, so maybe they would have gotten round to it eventually.
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47	* When Matilda uses her mental powers to trick the Trunchbull into believing that her house had been haunted by Magnus in an attempt to retrieve Miss Honey's doll and two chocolates, she uses them to take Trunchbull's Olympics portrait into the fireplace and then put Magnus' portrait in its place, much to the Trunchball's dismay. By looking at her face, it's obvious that the Trunchbull loved her portrait but that she also anticipated its impending fate, so why she didn't run fast to rescue it from the "ghost" when she could have done it?
48	** Well, the Trunchbull was quite scared over the situation, as papers were sent flying by the wind and the windows were opening and closing. When one is scared, he/she doesn't have much time to consider what's going to happen later on, so perhaps the Trunchbull thought at the possibility that the ghost would use her portrait to hit her with it.
49	** Because the painting was flying through the air, apparently guided by the ghost of a man she may have murdered. She was likely worried that if she got up and tried to save the portrait, what might the ghost do to ''her'' instead?
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51	* Does anyone else think that Trunchbull got off too easy? Considering she's implied to have murdered Magnus I think it would be better if she had died at the end (maybe having a fatal heart attack out of fear due to the "supernatural" stuff since it's been shown that for all her anger and cruelty [[DirtyCoward she's a coward at heart]] or committing suicide for fearing that Magnus' ghost would come back for her).
52	** Maybe, but this ''is'' still a story for kids. Even for Roald Dahl, there's a limit to exactly how dark he can go in punishing his villains, especially for a human villain in a comparatively more grounded story like ''Matilda''. His villains that meet a particularly sticky end either tend to be actual monsters (like the Witches) or meet an end that is absurd and over-the-top (like the Twits "disappearing" after spending too long standing on their heads). A heart attack or suicide would almost certainly be too "real" for what is, at the end of the day, a children's book.
53	** Allegedly, there ''was'' a version of the book's ending where the Trunchbull runs screaming from the classroom and straight into the arms of the police, where she's taken away in handcuffs while the children jeer from the windows. It's unclear why Dahl rejected this more realistic ending, though it's possible it was less empowering or satisfying than allowing Matilda to defeat her singlehandedly. But you're not the only person to think the Trunchbull got off too lightly: at least one stage adaptation includes [[FixFic an epilogue]] stating that the Trunchbull was arrested when she [[AccidentalPublicConfession accidentally admitted to murder]] while reporting that she was being haunted.
54	** If you think about it, she wasn't just scared out of the school. She lost her job, her house, and presumably any credibility if she went around claiming she was being attacked by ghosts. She's either been DrivenToMadness or left destitute. She may also have to live in fear for the rest of her life that Magnus's ghost could come at her again to punish her. Or more mundanely, once there was no fear of her retaliation, Miss Honey reported her to the proper authorities to make sure she was taken away.
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56	* This has bothered me ever since I first saw the movie: when Miss Trunchbull awoke from her faint, why the hell did she just grab that random boy standing close to her and throw him out the window? He hadn't done anything to piss her off, why did she suddenly want to murder him?
57	** A) She's an incredibly wicked woman who does this sort of thing to students as punishment for the slightest offenses such as eating candy in class. B) She's well and truly lost her mind over apparently being haunted by the ghost of Magnus. C) She's used to being all-powerful and untouchable, and now that power is slipping away from her, throwing him out the window might have been a vain effort to regain control.
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59	* Why doesn't Ms. Honey just call the cops if Trunchbull is openly doing horrible things to kids? She's an adult so presumably, people will believe her. Is the implication supposed to be that Trunchbull is [[TheDreaded so scary]] that [[PoliceAreUseless the cops won't do anything.]]
60	** The book implies that this is the case, as Miss Honey tells Matilda that her aunt is respected by the community when asked why hasn't she hired a lawyer to get back her house.
61	** Miss Honey is also a victim of Trunchbull's abuse herself. She is almost too certainly terrified to do so, as she fears any consequences that might arise for her if Trunchbull finds out she reported her. It's a common issue among victims of abuse that they are too frightened of their abuser's wrath to tell anyone else.
62	** Perhaps she also wants to make sure she protects the children at the school whatever way she can. She's too afraid to outwardly stand up to her aunt, but she can rebel in her little ways. She also might fear losing her job and then being forced to depend on The Trunchbull's charity.
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64	* Upon making a scene when she spots the newt on her water glass, why does Mrs. Trunchbull assume that it was Matilda who put the newt on her glass, if Lavender was the one who brought her the water jar and her glass, aside from the fact that Matilda had been locked up on the Chokey since morning? This could be excusable in the book, in which Matilda was already in the class from the beginning and Lavender didn't deliver the water jar and the glass to the Trunchbull personally, but why doesn't the Trunchbull suspect the girl who gave her the jar and the glass in the film version?
65	** Trunchbull has it in for Matilda. She accuses her of involvement because she's looking for reasons to punish her.
66	*** Trunchbull also mentions that Matilda's father had just given her an earful about what a rotten kid Matilda is, so this might have primed Trunchbull to blame any mishaps on her.
67	** Lavender is also Matilda's best friend, and the one she sits next to in class. The Trunchbull probably also assumed Matilda put her up to it.
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69	* Where was the Trunchbull going before her car stopped working? There are many websites that say that she was going to the Olympics, but she was just wearing her olympic uniform and carrying some balls and javelins. Couldn't she have just being going to train somewhere?
70	** She's wearing workout gear, so yes she would be going to train somewhere. You can't practice shotput and javelin inside, so she might have been going to a gym or somewhere more remote. Given that she's clearly over forty, she's too old to be competing in the Olympics now; she had done so in the past.
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72	* If Trunchbull [[ChildHater hates kids so much]] why the hell did she become the principal of a school in the first place? Isn't that like someone who hates books becoming a librarian?
73	** She's a bully and it's easier to bully people who can't say or do anything against you.
74	** She seems to really enjoy punishing children, as opposed to simply not wanting to be around them, so she becomes an authority figure in charge of a place where she can do just that.
75	[[/folder]]
76
77	[[folder:The Musical]]
78	* We're strongly set up to believe that Matilda's story is based on a fantasy about her own life because we hear her parents throw out the words 'escapologist' and 'acrobat' before she seemingly creates characters with those names. It's odd, though, as 'escapologist' seems an incredibly unlikely word to come from the mouth of her knowledge-hating father. Later, the eventual reveal shows that Matilda's story is nothing to do with her parents and is something she was picking up from elsewhere via psychic powers. Truly bizarre coincidence on top of highly unlikely word choice? A sign that Matilda's powers were affecting her parents? Or a sign that they might have some dormant powers of their own?
79	* The movie musical removes Michael so it's justified but why would being pregnant come as a complete shock to Mrs Wormwood onstage if she's been through it before?
80	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / Matilda