Helga

Helga is something of a tomboy, as evidenced by her interest in playing contact sports alongside her male classmates, blatant lack of femininity, and disregard, to near dislike, for stereotypical female behavior, as seen in the episode "Helga's Makeover". She can also be very sarcastic, cynical and bossy, bullying her fourth-grade classmates with an iron fist, and often taking advantage of her best friend, Phoebe. However, Helga also has a much softer side, which becomes apparent mostly when she is alone and in her school work. She is heavily emotional, and as such, able to comprehend spectrum emotions such as love and hate. Occasionally Helga has acted in a more selfless manner the biggest examples being when Helga blackmailed Olga's cheating boyfriend into leaving, knowing Olga would be miserable with him, and when she helped in finding Mr Hyunh's daughter. During both these events Helga made sure she was able to cover up her involvement. This emotional extremity is a running joke throughout the series; although Helga is seen as a "tough girl" by her classmates, she is frequently the first to go into hysterics in times of crisis.

Helga is extremely intelligent. In the episode "The Aptitude Test", in which the class takes a standardized exam, it is eventually revealed that she achieved a perfect score on the test and the most outstanding result since her perfectionist sister, Olga Pataki, took the test. Presumably, however, the types of grades she receives on an average basis in school vary from low to high—in the episode "Quantity Time," Helga tells her parents that she failed another math test at school, though in "A Day In The Life Of A Classroom", her teacher Mr. Simmons encourages Helga to help Harold because she received excellent scores on the past two math exams. Her bad grades are most likely caused by her lack of motivation, attention (from both her family and Arnold), and academic concern. Helga appears to excel academically in literature classes, as evidenced by Mr. Simmons's constant praise of her literary work though always withholds her name possibly out of respect as she gets embarrassed from when he reads them aloud. Helga displays a remarkable gift for poetry, creating dramatic soliloquies expressing a situation or feeling with a generous use of vocabulary, especially for someone her age. These instances were more simple in the earlier episodes, but as the series progressed, grew in their intensity. Aside from poetry, Helga exhibits further aspects of cultural experience, being able to identify the work of Edward Hopper and make reference to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in "Helga on the Couch".

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