Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2007

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

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Themes

Popularity and Acceptance

Diary of a Wimpy Kid follows one student on his journey to navigate the waters of middle school and find his place in the hierarchy of his school. Greg makes it clear that he dreams of being rich and famous, and he believes that his pathway to success begins in middle school. Over the course of his school year, however, Greg tries and fails to attain popularity again and again. Kinney uses Greg’s failures to remind the reader that the journey to achieve popularity and acceptance can become all-consuming and cause a person to forget who they really are in the process.

Greg remembers how simple it was to be popular in elementary school. He complains that “[n]owadays, it’s a whole lot more complicated. Now it’s about the kind of clothes you wear or how rich you are or if you have a cute butt or whatever” (6). Middle school changes the dynamics of social groups as more students hit puberty and begin to change friend groups, and Greg feels like he has to “scramble” to gain popularity before it’s too late. He figures that he’s “somewhere around 52nd or 53rd most popular this year” (7) while Rowley is “probably hovering right around the 150 mark” (8). The quest for popularity causes Greg to think about people in terms of their popularity rank, and he starts to see his own best friend as an obstacle that might prevent him from becoming more popular.

Throughout the novel, Greg tries one tactic after another to climb the social ladder, from running for student government to trying to become the next school newspaper cartoonist. He even tries to “cash in on some of Rowley’s new popularity” (142) when he breaks his hand, but he is confused when this backfires on him. In a final last-ditch effort to become popular, Greg even tries to make it to his yearbook’s Class Favorites page at the end of the school year because he believes “[i]f [he] can get [him]self voted onto the Class Favorites page, [he’s] practically an immortal” (198). This, too, blows up in Greg’s face, and he finishes the school year forgotten, unknown, and without his best friend. He loses himself in his pursuit of popularity, and he never learns to love or accept himself the same way Rowley does. Ironically, Rowley does not pursue popularity but is voted Class Clown and finishes the school year with plenty of friends and admirers. Rowley never lost his sense of self, and this is what makes him popular and likable in turn.

Friendship and Taking Others for Granted

At its heart, Diary of a Wimpy Kid is a story about friendship and what it means to be a good friend. Greg spends most of the novel documenting the various ways he manipulates and mistreats his friend Rowley until one day Rowley decides he has had enough of Greg’s bullying. Kinney uses the story of Greg and Rowley to demonstrate the importance of treating your friends well and not taking them for granted.

When Greg introduces Rowley at the beginning of the novel, he complains that Rowley doesn’t seem to take the quest for popularity seriously. Rowley is portrayed as more juvenile and innocent while Greg is the self-appointed “cool” friend between the two boys. At the same time, Greg admits he enjoys having Rowley around because “[Greg] get[s] to use all the tricks Rodrick pulls on [him]” (19) on Rowley, and Greg can always count on Rowley to let him play video games at his house. While Rowley seems to care deeply about their friendship, he is guilty of allowing Greg to use him and often allows Greg to manipulate him into doing what Greg wants.

As the novel continues, Rowley starts to grow disillusioned with how Greg treats him. Greg uses Rowley as an experiment with his homemade weight set, and he doesn’t try to help Rowley when he starts to struggle because “if Rowley didn’t get serious about working out, he was never going to get to [Greg’s] level” (92). When Rowley gives Greg a Big Wheel for Christmas, Greg uses the toy to torture Rowley and causes him to break his hand. When Rowley is injured, Greg becomes so jealous of the attention Rowley receives that he “decide[s] it [is] time for [him] to have an injury of [his] own” (143).

When Rowley starts giving Greg the cold shoulder after the worm-chasing incident with the kindergarteners, Greg still doesn’t understand why Rowley is upset with him. He tries to prove that he can find a new best friend, but Greg quickly realizes that Rowley is much better at making friends. Although Greg hasn’t been a good friend to Rowley, he finally decides to do the right thing and protect Rowley’s reputation after he ate the cheese because “if Rowley ever tries to run for President and someone finds out what these guys made him do, he won’t have a chance” (210). In the end, Greg is still arrogant and unwilling to take accountability for his actions, but he shows that he does care about Rowley. Rowley decides to give Greg another chance, and the boys have a mutual understanding to never discuss what happened with the Cheese.

Family Conflicts and Power Dynamics

In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Greg lives with his brothers and his parents. Along with his struggles to attain popularity at school, Greg also struggles to find his place in his family. With two brothers, Greg feels caught in the middle, and Kinney uses Greg’s daily interactions with his family to illustrate how family dynamics can be complicated, and family conflicts directly impact the way a person interacts with the world outside of their home.

Early on, Greg talks about how his brother Rodrick likes to pull pranks on him. In fact, Kinney introduces Rodrick by saying that during the summer “Rodrick woke [Greg] up in the middle of the night. He told [Greg] [he] slept through the whole summer, but that luckily [Greg] woke up just in time for the first day of school” (11). Rodrick is never caught and faces no consequences for this prank, whereas Greg gets in trouble for eating breakfast in the middle of the night. Greg’s relationship with his older brother influences the way Greg interacts with Rowley and Manny because just like Rodrick played tricks on Greg, Greg feels entitled to pull pranks on others.

Greg complains that he very rarely gets to pull pranks on his little brother Manny because “Mom and Dad protect Manny like he’s a prince or something” (21). Greg may find this frustrating because Rodrick gets away with pulling pranks on him, but he can’t exert the same power over his little brother. Greg also feels like “[Manny] never gets in trouble, even if he really deserves it” (21), unlike Greg, who often gets into trouble. Greg resents Rodrick’s bullying, but he envies the protection and grace Manny enjoys as the baby of the family. This may be part of why Greg manipulates Rowley because Rowley serves as a surrogate little brother who Greg can get away with bullying.

Dishonesty and Manipulation

Like most protagonists, Greg Heffley isn’t perfect. In fact, he has a special talent for dishonesty and manipulation. Greg lies throughout the novel, sometimes outright and sometimes by omission of the truth. Kinney uses Greg’s long history of twisting the truth to show that although dishonesty might temporarily fix a problem, it often creates longer-lasting complications.

At the beginning of the novel, Greg learns that he has been placed in the Gifted reading group at school. He is disappointed because “last year, [he] did [his] best to make sure [he] got put in the Easy group” (14), and now he is stuck in the Gifted group where he will actually have to work hard. Greg claims that his older brother Rodrick taught him how important it is to “set people’s expectations real low so you end up surprising them by practically doing nothing at all” (15), so Greg often tries to downplay his intelligence and take the easy way out. Similarly, he pretends to go play outside at his father’s insistence, and when he returns from playing video games at Rowley’s house, he “[runs] through the neighbor's sprinkler a couple times to make it look like [he] was all sweaty, and that seemed to do the trick for Dad” (27). Greg is very comfortable with lying to his parents, and he exhibits no remorse when he fools someone.

Greg’s comfort with dishonesty extends beyond his family. He grows annoyed with Rowley’s dad, who won’t allow Rowley to play violent video games, so Greg decides to “put one of [his] discs in Manny’s ‘Discovering the Alphabet’ case, and that’s all it takes” (43) to fool Mr. Jefferson. Greg doesn’t care that Mr. Jefferson is actively trying to protect his son from inappropriate content; he only wants to be able to play with Rowley’s video game system, and he feels no guilt at all about lying to his friend’s parents. This causes Rowley’s father to not trust Greg and to start treating him like a bad influence.

Greg also tries to lie about gaining weight for wrestling by “stuff[ing] [his] clothes with a bunch of socks and shirts to get [him]self into the next weight class” (85). Greg fails to realize that weight classes are meant to keep him safe, and if he had been successful in fooling his gym teacher, he could have gotten seriously injured by wrestling with someone who was much heavier than him. Greg also becomes jealous when Rowley injures his hand and starts getting attention, so he “[takes] some gauze from home, and [he] [wraps] up [his] hand to make it look like it was hurt” (143). Greg isn’t thinking of Rowley’s pain from the break; he’s only thinking about the attention and increased popularity his friend is getting. Greg’s dishonesty rarely leads to him getting what he wants, and it often causes more trouble for him than he was expecting.