36 pages • 1 hour read
Astrid LindgrenPippi Longstocking
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1945A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Pippi Moves Into Villa Villekulla”
Content Warning: This section contains references to racial stereotypes contained within the novel.
Pippi Longstocking’s story begins with a description of what led to her current circumstances. Pippi’s mother died when she was just a baby, and she doesn’t remember her. She looks up to the skies, hoping her mother is in heaven and saying, “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll always come out on top” (12). Her father, on the other hand, was blown off his ship. Pippi still holds out hope that he is alive and stranded on an island somewhere, perhaps having become “king of all the cannibals” (12). When Pippi left the sailors of the ship, she also took with her a monkey named Mr. Nilsson and enough gold to keep herself supported. She moved into the house her father bought, Villa Villekulla, in a garden at the end of a small town. Pippi is strong enough to lift her horse, which she bought with her gold.
Before the accident that took her father, Pippi was always out at sea with him. Their neighbors, a boy and girl named Tommy and Annika, often wondered if anyone lived in the house at all. When Pippi moves in, Tommy and Annika stare at her in awe. Her orange hair, braids that stick out, oversized shoes, and homemade, patched dress and mismatched stockings are all noteworthy, but the monkey on her shoulder, dressed in human clothes, is the strangest part of all. When Pippi starts walking backward, Tommy and Annika ask her why, and she replies that she is free to do as she pleases, adding a lie that people in Egypt walk backward every day. She invites Tommy and Annika over and shows them around her home, introducing them to her pet monkey and horse. They are surprised to see a horse standing on Pippi’s porch, and they delight in the pancakes that Pippi haphazardly cooks for them. Pippi makes a huge mess, but it doesn’t seem to bother her because she has a reason for every accident. A full-page illustration shows Pippi standing proudly with her hand on her hip as she flips the pancakes and food splatters the walls. Pippi explains to her new friends that if she doesn’t behave, she disciplines herself, and in the worst cases, she gives herself a spanking. Afterward, Pippi shows Tommy and Annika a drawer of treasures that she and her father collected on their travels. She gives Tommy a pearl-covered dagger and Annika a box with shells on it and a ring inside. Pippi then tells her new friends to go home so that they can come back tomorrow.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Pippi Is a Thing-Finder and Gets Into a Fight”
Annika and Tommy wake up the next day eager to go visit Pippi again and curious to know what adventure might be in store. They are certain that something amazing is bound to happen with Pippi around. When they get to her house, they find Pippi baking cookies on the floor of the kitchen and covered in flour. She finishes just as they arrive and announces that she has no plans to be lazy; instead, she is going hunting to see what sorts of treasures may be hiding on the ground around the town. Pippi, Tommy, and Annika walk around searching for whatever they may find. Pippi finds an old rusty can and an empty spool, excited to put both to use in some imaginative way. The trio then spots a boy named Willie being beaten by some local boys, one of which is a well-known bully named Bengt. Pippi goes up behind the much larger boy and taps him on the shoulder. She scolds him for picking on Willie with four other boys and calls him cowardly. The boys mock Pippi’s hair color and clothes. She then picks each boy up and plops him in a tree. Stunned, the boys stare at her, and Pippi tells Willie to let her know if they ever bother him again. When the moment has passed, Pippi points out how neither Tommy nor Annika has found anything and directs them toward a nearby oak tree, coaxing them to look inside. Tommy finds a leather journal and Annika a coral necklace. They go home wondering if Pippi was the one who put them there: “You just never can tell about anything when it comes to Pippi” (37). They accept that she is unpredictable and admire this quality in her.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Pippi Plays Tag With Some Policemen”
One afternoon, Pippi sets up a picnic for her new friends, and they sit on the porch eating together, occasionally feeding the horse a cookie. Two police officers soon arrive and tell Pippi that the townspeople are concerned about her living on her own and not going to school. They tell Pippi she needs to learn things like multiplication and capital cities, and Pippi states that she gets along fine without knowing those things. The police officers try to convince Pippi that she needs to move to a children’s home where she can be supervised and attend school, but Pippi has other plans. She starts a game of tag with the two men and then climbs up the porch and balcony to the roof. When the officers follow with a ladder, she jumps down from the chimney and traps them on the roof by taking their ladder. The police officers demand to be let down, and Pippi does so, but when they grab her and try to take her away, she picks them both up and puts them down at the edge of the property. An illustration shows the police officers staring at Pippi with flabbergasted expressions as she carries them away. They report that Pippi is better off on her own, and the townspeople decide to leave her alone.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
Pippi Longstocking is a story of a girl whose Imagination and Ingenuity and Strength of Body and Mind allow her to keep Living Every Day as a New Adventure. The novel introduces its protagonist by describing the circumstances that brought her to her unusual life and Pippi’s own optimistic reactions to what would be considered by many to be significant tragedies. Pippi’s mother died when she was a baby, but Pippi thinks of her mother as an angel that watches her from heaven and assures her mother that she need not worry about her. Pippi’s father washed out to sea, and Pippi imagines that he has become king of an exotic island, rather than having died. Her optimism in the case of her father could be considered naïve, childish fantasy, but it is exactly this type of thinking that gets Pippi through each day and fundamentally defines her as a strong and independent person despite only being nine years old. Her attitude toward education is negative, and she sees no need to learn in a school when she can instead learn from the world around her.
Pippi’s eccentricity initially draws Annika and Tommy to her. Pippi keeps a pet monkey and horse, both of which she allows to come inside the house, and her appearance is striking and unconventional, so people notice her and feel curious about what type of person she might be. Tommy and Annika live next door to Pippi, and despite their well-to-do upbringing (or perhaps because of it), they are fascinated with Pippi and immediately want to become her friend. They do not judge her mismatched clothing or unique hairstyle, instead only wanting to know her better. Pippi shows that despite being on her own, she is hospitable and kind. She makes her new friends pancakes and gives them beautiful, rare gifts. She finds joy in making them laugh and amusing them with her antics. Pippi makes a game out of almost everything, including the day that she is nearly arrested by two police officers. When Pippi experiences prejudice and is made fun of by Bengt for being a redhead, she simply puts him in his place, literally and figuratively. Her moral character is matched only by her physical strength. It seems almost nothing can break her positive outlook, and Pippi becomes the perfect example of how to live one’s childhood fully, so Annika and Tommy keep coming back to visit her.
Pippi Longstocking breaks through the norms of what is expected of girls and women, particularly during the 1950s. At the same time, some of the ideas presented within the novel are questionable when assessed according to modern standards. As a result, a complicated interpretation follows because the story is simultaneously forward-thinking and outdated. Pippi is nine years old and lives on her own. She is happy to do so because of the benefits independence affords, and although she misses her parents, she never lets their absence bother her:
She had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun, and no one who could make her take cod liver oil when she much preferred caramel candy (11).
She is in the enviable position, to many children, of having no one to impose boundaries or discipline. She is physically strong and courageous and is in many ways a positive role model.
At the same time, Pippi has flaws; she lies regularly, and many of the things she says would be considered offensive, racist, or harmful today. Pippi makes up stories that have no basis in truth but could nevertheless influence her trusting listeners such as Annika and Tommy. For example, Pippi says everyone in the Congo tells lies, and later she says that nobody in Argentina goes to school. Pippi also refers to giving herself spankings when she doesn’t obey herself. Lastly, Pippi’s fantasy that her father is a “cannibal king” plays on a harmful stereotype that nonwhite people who live on South Sea islands are cannibals and thus uncivilized (12).
