Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Jeff Kinney (2007)
“A brutally honest diary from a kid who thinks he's the smartest person in the room — and is almost always wrong.”
Characters in Diary of a Wimpy Kid
by Jeff Kinney · 2007 · 6 characters analyzed
Cast: Greg Heffley, Rowley Jefferson, Rodrick Heffley, Manny Heffley, Susan Heffley (Mom), Frank Heffley (Dad).
Character Analysis
Greg is one of children's literature's great unreliable narrators — a kid who documents his own selfishness with perfect clarity and zero self-awareness. He's not malicious; he's myopic. His schemes to climb the social ladder consistently fail because they're based on a flawed model of how social relationships work. He treats friendship as a transaction, popularity as a resource to be mined, and family as an obstacle course. The comedy comes from his confidence; the pathos comes from his blindness.
Suburban middle-class vocabulary — references video games, brand names, mall culture. Confident register that overreaches his actual social position.