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Margie is the 11-year-old protagonist of the story and a friend of Tommy’s. The third-person-limited point of view is filtered through her childlike innocence and curiosity. Margie is a curious girl who is constantly asking questions and wanting to be around other people. This personality may account for her recent poor performance in her fact-based and passive geography lessons; Margie seems to crave an education that is interactive, engaging, and involved other people, but this vision is incompatible with her computerized and individualized model of education. In particular, she longs to be around other children her age—hence her constantly hanging around Tommy and dreaming of how fun it would have been to attend school with a whole neighborhood of children—but instead she’s forced to sit alone in the schoolroom in her house, day after day, watching a computer screen talk at her. Margie is also a highly imaginative child, as evidenced by her ability to picture historical scenes from Tommy’s old book about schools from many centuries ago. After reading through the ancient book and learning about the ways of the past, Margie loses herself in her imagination, envisioning what it would be like to be a student hundreds of years ago and dreaming of “the fun they had.”
Margie Quotes in The Fun They Had
The The Fun They Had quotes below are all either spoken by Margie or refer to Margie. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Fun They Had Quotes
Margie even wrote it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2155, she wrote, “Today Tommy found a real book!”
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It was a very old book. Margie’s grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him there was a time all stories were printed on paper.
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They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to—on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.
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“School? What’s there to write about school? I hate school. Margie always hated school, but now she hated it more than ever. The mechanical teacher had been giving her test after test in geography and she had been doing worse and worse until her mother had shaken her head sorrowfully and sent for the County Inspector. “
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The Inspector had smiled after he was finished and patted Margie’s head. He said to her mother, “It’s not the little girl’s fault, Mrs. Jones. I think the geography sector was geared a little too quick. Those things happen sometimes. I’ve slowed it up to an average ten-year level. Actually, the overall pattern of her progress is quite satisfactory.”
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Tommy looked at her with very superior eye. “Because it’s not our kind of school, stupid. This is the old kind of school that they had hundreds and hundreds of years ago.” He added loftily, pronouncing the word carefully, “Centuries ago.”
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“A man? How could a man be a teacher?”
“Well, he just told the boys and girls things and gave them homework and asked them questions.”
“A man isn’t smart enough.”
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She was thinking about the old schools they had when her grandfather’s grandfather was a little boy. All the kids from the whole neighborhood came, laughing and shouting in the schoolyard, sitting together in the schoolroom, going home together at the end of the day. They learned the same things so they could help one another on the homework and talk about it […] Margie was thinking about how the kids must have loved it in the old days. She was thinking about the fun they had.
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Margie Character Timeline in The Fun They Had
The timeline below shows where the character Margie appears in The Fun They Had. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Fun They Had
On the page dated May 17, 2157, Margie writes excitedly in her journal about an amazing discovery: “Today Tommy found a real book!”...
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It’s especially bewildering to Tommy and Margie that when they turn to back to a page that they’ve already read, it still...
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Margie asks Tommy where he found the book. Engrossed in his reading, Tommy points to his...
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At first, Margie can’t imagine anyone wanting to write a book about school because she hates it so...
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At the time, Margie had hoped that the County Inspector wouldn’t be able to put her mechanical teacher back...
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When he was done fixing the mechanical teacher, the County Inspector smiled at Margie again and patted her on the head. Understanding Margie’s trouble with the lessons, the County...
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Margie asks Tommy why anyone would want to write about school. Tommy calls Margie stupid and...
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Margie is baffled and doesn’t understand how a man could be a teacher, believing that a...
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...students in the old days learned the same things if they were the same age. Margie finds this confusing because her mother always tells her that “a teacher has to be...
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Before Tommy and Margie are even halfway through the book, Mrs. Jones calls her daughter inside for school. Margie...
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Margie goes into her schoolroom, which is right next to her bedroom. The mechanical teacher is...
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Sighing, Margie puts her homework in, but she isn’t thinking about fractions at all. She’s too busy...
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Meanwhile, the mechanical teacher drones on about fractions, but Margie still isn’t paying attention—she is too busy “thinking about how the kids must have loved...
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