Diary of a Wimpy Kid Literary Elements

Graphic Novel; Young Adult Fiction

The events of the story take place in Chicago, Illinois. Greg starts middle school and sets off on a long journey to popularity.

The story is written in a form of a diary, so it is told from the first point of view. The narrator is Gregory.

The story is hilariously funny and—consequently—the mood is light and optimistic. Tone depends on Gregory’s mood. It can be arrogant, boastful, happy, frustrated, disappointed and so on.

Any popular kid from Gregory’s class is the antagonist, at least according to him, for they prevent him from being the most well-liked guy in school.

The major conflict is person vs person, for Gregory has to compete with other kids for a certain position, popularity, girls’ attention, and respect from friends and adults.

Gregory and Rowley’s final conflict is the climax of the story.

"So, don’t expect me to be all “Dear Diary” this and “Dear Diary” that."

This sentence, which comes in the first few pages, shows Greg’s fear of being not cool. As it is revealed later, this fear is one of his biggest problems, for it makes him make really strange decisions.

"Remember in second grade how Marty Porter had head lice? Do you really want him touching YOUR money?"

Gregory doesn’t understand why it is really not very nice to spread rumors about his classmate. This boy thinks only of himself sometimes.

The novel alludes to the Guinness Book of World Record, the Wizard of Oz, and Broadway.

We get many images of things Greg imagines throughout the book, including the Giving Tree Guy getting the sweater and scenes of girls giving him attention.

When Rowley gets in trouble for something Greg did during Safety Patrol, Greg's mom tells him to do the right thing. But Greg thinks the right thing is avoiding getting himself in trouble, so he lets Rowley take the fall.

While Greg is feeling soured on Rowley and everyone in his grade, he finds Rodrik's old middle school yearbook and sees a parallel between how Rodrik viewed kids his age and how Greg himself views kids his age.

"So I went into the fridge and emptied out the milk and orange juice and filled the jugs with sand." (The milk and orange juice are synecdoches, for it refers to a container by the name of the contents.)

"You can kind of tell because that’s when they start coming to the door in their pajamas and giving you the evil eye." (The evil eye is metonymy that denotes an angry look.)

Mrs. Norton performs personification by giving various non-human objects in the Wizard of Oz — such as a shrub and a dog — as roles to kids in the school.