Personality
Arnold is depicted as an average nine-year-old boy, his personality enriched with righteous, reliable morals and honesty. His parents were explorers who mysteriously vanished on an expedition during Arnold's infancy, leaving their son presumably orphaned and living in an apartment building with his grandparents and pet pig Abner. Albeit Arnold's admirable kindness normally remains untouched, his less considerate moments include revealing the mortifying secret of a friend and partaking in the savage rebellion being pulled by the fourth-graders against their new, mild-mannered teacher, Mr. Simmons. However, aside from that Arnold is usually intelligent and righteous; he once snuck out with his grandmother late at night to emancipate a sea turtle from an exhibit in a local aquarium and can be relied upon to provide his friends with good advice. Other examples of his generosity include showing kindness to his lonesome, neglected classmate Helga Pataki during their first day of nursery school, resulting in her development of an obsessive an unrequited infatuation with him that is commonly referenced throughout the series, albeit she masks it with surly behavior. Arnold's best friend is Gerald, characterized by his towering black hairstyle, who appears alongside him in virtually every episode and who frequently hangs around with him.
Read more about this topic: Arnold (Hey Arnold!)
Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“A personality is an indefinite quantum of traits which is subject to constant flux, change, and growth from the birth of the individual in the world to his death. A character, on the other hand, is a fixed and definite quantum of traits which, though it may be interpreted with slight differences from age to age and actor to actor, is nevertheless in its essentials forever fixed.”
—Hubert C. Heffner (1901–1985)