The author’s books are filled with bizarre characters and scary situations, yet they’re leavened with humor that helps young readers deal with the fearful events. Dahl wants his audience to remain calm enough to learn that bad people also are silly and that it’s possible to stand up to evil. Matilda contains an especially wicked antagonist, the huge and angry Miss Trunchbull, whose rages and abuse of school children are so over the top that they become ridiculous. She hurls kids out windows and over fences, but the victims are never hurt, only stunned. The author helps readers understand that the scary Trunchbull isn’t a qualified judge of people but instead a preposterous, cartoonish despot.

The other bad people, Matilda’s parents, verbally mistreat her and generally neglect her, but she’s never harmed physically. The mental abuse would normally damage a child, but Matilda is presented as a girl with a naturally resilient mind who can see her parents’ corruption for what it is and not take their casual cruelties to heart. She sees them as sadly comic, and she relieves the tension of living with them by playing pranks on them.