48 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff KinneyDouble Down
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “October”
Part 1, Chapter 5 Summary: “Sunday”
All of the work that Greg and his family put into decorating their house for Halloween is ruined by a gang of geese that have been terrorizing the town. The geese fly through their town every year during the fall on their way south, and usually, they do not cause any problems. For some reason, this year, “they’re SUPER aggressive toward people” (53). The geese smash the jack-o’-lanterns that Greg and his family have carved. Greg and Rowley get ambushed by the geese on their way home from school every day, and they even go after Mr. Heffley when he goes to get the mail. Greg’s father wants to call Animal Control, but Mrs. Heffley will not let him. She argues that the geese were here first, and that humans are “the ones intruding on THEIR lives” (55).
Greg argues that he is okay with animals “as long as they keep their distance” (55). He thinks about how dogs got close to humans thousands of years ago, and now they have very comfortable lives. He also thinks that cats are smart for convincing humans to feed them, sometimes to the humans’ detriment. Greg’s family has “problems with [their] own pet” (57), a pig. The pig does not have a name, but Greg is uncomfortable with how smart it seems to be. He thinks that the pig tries to communicate with the human family members using Manny’s “See-and-Talk” toy. Greg describes how the pig uses the toy, and how sometimes, it “manages to put together a full sentence” (58).
Greg wants to team up with the pig and use its superior sense of smell to sniff out the Halloween candy that his mother has hidden. So far however, the pig has been unhelpful in this plan. Greg thinks that the time of year before Halloween is torture for kids, as they are surrounded by candy and candy commercials everywhere they go. He thinks it is especially cruel that his mother will not let him have any candy until Halloween night. However, Greg has a plan to “get [his] hands on some candy BEFORE Halloween” (60).
Every year, Greg’s school hosts an event called the “Balloon Brigade,” where students release helium balloons. Each balloon has a note with a student’s name and address attached to it, and when people find the balloons, they return them to the correct student. The student whose balloon travels the farthest wins a prize. This year, the prize is a giant jar filled with candy corn. Greg is determined to win, since it is the only candy he can access. He writes a long letter to attach to his balloon, in which he says that he is “a lonely child without any friends” (63) and that he hopes that a kind person will bring the balloon back to him “and bring some joy to [his] life” (63).
Part 1, Chapter 6 Summary: “Monday”
After lunch, the whole school goes to the basketball court to launch the Balloon Brigade. Greg admits that he is nervous to go to the basketball court, as “that’s where the Cheese sat for a year and a half” (63)—a reference to a superstitious trend at Greg’s school earlier in the Wimpy Kid series. Though it has been a long time since “the Cheese terrorized [the] school” (64), some kids have tried to start up “the Cheese Touch” again. Greg reflects that some kids must like having something to be afraid of, because students are “ALWAYS trying to start some new thing” (65), like an unlucky chair in the assembly room. He thinks that “the last thing you need in middle school is anything EXTRA to worry about” (65).
The students release their balloons. Unfortunately, most of the balloons get caught on a nearby cell phone tower and do not go any further. In a stroke of luck, Greg’s balloon is so weighed down by the long note he wrote that it actually flies under the cell phone tower and continues on its way. Greg is optimistic that this year, he will win the jar of candy corn.
Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary: “Wednesday”
Two days have passed and Greg has received no news about his balloon. He has also been having trouble concentrating in school, and is glad that his homework has not been difficult. He is given a reading assignment “to write a biography on a famous author” (68), and he chooses the writer of the Spineticklers series, I. M. Spooky. Greg is happy with his choice, because “there’s barely ANY information on him” (68), so he is able to leave much of the report blank, finishing the entire assignment “in about two minutes” (69).
Greg wishes he had never started reading the Spineticklers books, because “they’re starting to affect [his] everyday life” (69), giving him nightmares. He is even more afraid to go to the dentist than usual after reading a book where the dentist is the devil. In one of his nightmares, he has a tail; in another, he dreams he has been captured by zombie pirates. Mrs. Heffley has a book about interpreting dreams, which Greg reads. He learns that dreams about having a tail “mean [he is] ashamed of something in [his] past,” and that “the dream about the pirates means [he is] stressed out about not being a good enough friend” (77).
Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary: “Thursday”
Greg’s reading teacher, Mrs. Mott, is upset with the whole class. Almost every student chose I. M. Spooky for their biography assignment, and “NOBODY could find any information on the guy” (78). She makes everyone stay inside at recess every day until they complete their assignments properly. Greg thinks that Mrs. Mott is getting fed up with the Spineticklers’s popularity, particularly given that one of the books is about a cannibal teacher.
Apparently, some parents are also unhappy about the Spineticklers books. Greg hears that his classmate Danny’s father wants “the books banned because they promote WITCHCRAFT” (80), although the truth is that Danny has just been practicing magic tricks for the school talent show. Greg does not want the books to be banned, however, because they are “the only thing keeping [his] reading grade up” (81). Greg is supposed to read 15 books by the end of the school year; all 15 of his are books from the Spineticklers series.
Mrs. Heffley tells Greg that I. M. Spooky is not a real person, which is why he could not find any information about the author for his project. She explains that some book series are written by lots of people writing under one made-up name. Greg’s mother is trying to help him find a real author to write about when the doorbell rings. At the door are two people: a woman and her son, a boy about Greg’s age. They have found Greg’s balloon and are returning it. Greg is excited at first because he has won the candy corn, but then Mrs. Heffley invites the two inside. They introduce themselves as Mrs. Selsam and Maddox Selsam. Maddox found the balloon in a tree while he was playing his violin, and Mrs. Selsam was excited about the note because she and Maddox live “way out in the sticks” (86). She hopes that Maddox and Greg can become friends.
Greg is not enthusiastic about the idea of befriending Maddox, who he thinks is strange. Mrs. Heffley sends the two boys to play in Greg’s room. Maddox does not say a word, so eventually, Greg just plays a game on his computer. Maddox starts acting excited and agitated when he sees the game. Mrs. Selsam runs into the room and turns off Greg’s computer. She says that Maddox is not allowed to play video games, and that the “reason he was so ‘animated’ was because he’d never actually SEEN one before” (88). Greg hopes that this will not give his mom any ideas about forbidding him from playing video games. Maddox and Mrs. Selsam leave soon after this, and Greg is relieved until he realizes that he never actually got his balloon back.
Part 1, Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Like Greg’s reference to The Truman Show, the Spineticklers books by I. M. Spooky are a reference the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine; the illustrations of the books’ covers make use of a similar stylized font to the Goosebumps covers. Unlike I. M. Spooky, R. L. Stine is a real person. Although there has been some speculation that some of the many Goosebumps books were penned by ghostwriters, there is no clear evidence confirming this rumor. When Greg realizes that there is virtually no information about I. M. Spooky available online, he is thrilled that it means less school work. Greg will do almost anything to avoid working hard at school, which is consistent with his character: he will only put energy into things that he thinks will benefit him directly and immediately.
The Cheese Touch provides connective tissue between Double Down and earlier installments of the Wimpy Kid series. In the first Wimpy Kid book, students at Greg’s middle school found a piece of moldy cheese on the basketball court. When one kid touched the slice of cheese, he was said to have the “Cheese Touch,” which he could then pass on to someone else by touching them. Whoever had the Cheese Touch would become a social pariah until they could pass it on to another student. This detail creates a narrative through-line between books and reminds readers of Greg’s middle-school social milieu. He’s aware that the games middle-school students play are silly, but he still takes them seriously because they impact his social standing.
Although Greg lacks Perseverance and Commitment when it comes to his academic work, he certainly displays both traits when he is in pursuit of something he truly wants, namely Halloween candy. As usual, Greg is willing to lie to get what he wants if necessary, as evidenced by the letter he attaches to his balloon. He even tries to enlist the pig’s help, which is another example of Greg’s vivid imagination when it comes to his plans and schemes. As usual, he is not able to get his plan to work, resulting in humorous chaos consistent with the series’s comedic premise.
Despite the power dynamic in their relationship, there is never any doubt that Greg and Rowley are good friends. Greg is not willing to extend that same Friendship and Loyalty to Maddox when the two meet, even though Maddox brought him back his balloon. Greg struggles to accept the ways in which Maddox differs from him, and even gives up trying to make conversation after a few minutes in favor of “[pretending] he wasn’t there” (87) and playing on his computer.
Greg’s vivid dreams, inspired by the Spineticklers books, reinforce the themes of Reality and Illusion by highlighting the ways in which Greg often utilizes illusion and fantasy to make sense of his reality. While his dreams are not real, they reflect real fears in Greg’s life. Greg tries to interpret the dreams in an attempt to make sense of his experiences and emotions. He finds information that gives him (and by extension, the reader) potential insight into his character. One dream is about past shame, while the other is about being a bad friend. The Cheese Touch saga from the first book ends with Greg watching as Rowley is forced to eat the cheese; Greg escapes the same fate by falsely claiming to be allergic to dairy. Taken together, the dream interpretation scene and the Cheese Touch reference highlight feelings of shame, humiliation and guilt with regard to friendship—all negative emotions that Greg employs fantasy to cope with. However, if Greg thinks anything of these interpretations, he does not say so—consistent with his tendency toward a willful lack of self-awareness.
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