Matilda

by Roald Dahl

Even when their own child is the most disgusting little blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.

It is only when the parents begin telling us about the brilliance of their own revolting offspring, that we start shouting, “Bring us a basin! We’re going to be sick!”

if I were feeling lyrical that day, I might write, “It is a curious truth that grasshoppers have their hearing-organs in the sides of the abdomen. Your daughter Vanessa, judging by what she’s learnt this term, has no hearing-organs at all.”

“The periodical cicada spends six years as a grub underground, and no more than six days as a free creature of sunlight and air. Your son Wilfred has spent six years as a grub in this school and we are still waiting for him to emerge from the chrysalis.”

“Fiona has the same glacial beauty as an iceberg, but unlike the iceberg she has absolutely nothing below the surface.”

the parents looked upon Matilda in particular as nothing more than a scab.

Mr and Mrs Wormwood were both so gormless and so wrapped up in their own silly little lives that they failed to notice anything unusual about their daughter.

“This clot,” boomed the Headmistress, pointing the riding-crop at him like a rapier, “this blackhead, this foul carbuncle, this poisonous pustule that you see before you is none other than a disgusting criminal, a denizen of the underworld, a member of the Mafia!”

“A thief!” the Trunchbull screamed. “A crook! A pirate! A brigand! A rustler!”

“Do you deny it, you miserable little gumboil?

“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about, you suppurating little blister!”

that robber-bandit, that safe-cracker, that highwayman standing over there with his socks around his ankles stole it

But those who inhabit the criminal underworld are not noted for their good manners.”

She glared at Bruce Bogtrotter who was sitting on his chair like some huge overstuffed grub, replete, comatose, unable to move or to speak.

“Not a very pretty sight,”

“What a bunch of nauseating little warts you are.”

“It makes me vomit”, she went on, “to think that I am going to have to put up with a load of garbage like you in my school for the next six years. I can see that I’m going to have to expel as many of you as possible as soon as possible to save myself from going round the bend.”

one could see that he was trying not to be scared by the Gorgon who towered above him.

“I knew as soon as I saw you that you were nothing but a piece of filth! What is your father’s job, a sewage-worker?”

“The one with the pen, you little fool.”

“You ignorant little slug!” the Trunchbull bellowed. “You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue!”

“Keep still, you squirming worm!”

It was splendid entertainment. It was better than a pantomime,

“I don’t like small people,” she was saying. “Small people should never be seen by anybody. They should be kept out of sight in boxes like hairpins and buttons. I cannot for the life of me see why children have to take so long to grow up. I think they do it on purpose.”

“How dare you suggest such a thing! What cheek! What infernal insolence!

“You may be Ink, young man, but let me tell you something. You’re not indelible. I’ll very soon rub you out if you try getting clever with me.

a pillar of doom towering over the helpless boy.

you strike me as the sort of poisonous little pockmark that will always be wrong! You sit wrong! You look wrong! You speak wrong! You are wrong all round!

“Ears never come off!” the Trunchbull shouted. “They stretch most marvellously, like these are doing now, but I can assure you they never come off!”

spell it, you little wart!”

“That’s the way to make them learn, Miss Honey,” she said. “You take it from me, it’s no good just telling them. You’ve got to hammer it into them. There’s nothing like a little twisting and twiddling to encourage them to remember things. It concentrates their minds wonderfully.”

“You could do them permanent damage, Miss Trunchbull,” Miss Honey cried out. “Oh, I have, I’m quite sure I have,” the Trunchbull answered, grinning. “Eric’s ears will have stretched quite considerably in the last couple of minutes! They’ll be much longer now than they were before. There’s nothing wrong with that, Miss Honey. It’ll give him an interesting pixie look for the rest of his life.”

“Oh, do shut up, Miss Honey! You’re as wet as any of them. If you can’t cope in here then you can go and find a job in some cotton-wool private school for rich brats. When you have been teaching for as long as I have you’...

He knew how to handle the little brutes, didn’t he! He knew how to use the birch, didn’t he! He kept their backsides so warm you could have fried eggs and bacon on them!

I don’t suppose this bunch of morons we’ve got here will ever read it because by the look of them they are never going to learn to read any thing!”

here you are, an unhatched shrimp sitting in the lowest form there is,

The man’s a thief and a robber! I’ll have his skin for sausages, you see if I don’t!”

“I have never been able to understand why small children are so disgusting. They are the bane of my life. They are like insects. They should be got rid of as early as possible.

My idea of a perfect school, Miss Honey, is one that has no children in it at all.

She’s round the twist.

The Trunchbull, this mighty female giant, stood there in her green breeches, quivering like a blancmange.

“Stand up, you disgusting little cockroach!”

“Stand up at once, you filthy little maggot!”

“You are a vile, repulsive, repellent, malicious little brute!” the Trunchbull was shouting. “You are not fit to be in this school! You ought to be behind bars, that’s where you ought to be! I shall have you drummed out of this establishment in utter disgrace! I shall have the prefects chase you down the corridor and out of the front-door with hockey-sticks! I shall have the staff escort you home under armed guard! And then I shall make absolutely sure you are sent to a reformatory for delinquent girls for the minimum of forty years!”

“You are finished everywhere. I shall personally see to it that you are put away in a place where not even the crows can land their droppings on you! You will probably never see the light of day again!”

The headmistress let out a yell that must have rattled every window-pane in the building

“Speak up, you clotted carbuncle!”

“I am fed up with you useless bunch of midgets!”

“You blithering idiot!” shouted the Trunchbull. “You festering gumboil! You fleabitten fungus!

Can’t you see that, you stagnant cesspool!