Essay Questions

How does Cath's actual college experience differ from how she fears it will be?

At first, Cath's college experience is exactly how she fears it will be; she is rather lonely and misses Wren, who has changed a great deal, as well as being too frightened of new things that she won't even ask for directions to the dining hall. However, once others start to impose friendship upon her, her experience improves dramatically; she has a best friend, in her room-mate, Reagan, a caring and handsome boyfriend, study partners and a 4.0 GPA. Eventually Cath has the college experience that she imagined Wren would have.

Do you think that Cath's "unreliable narrator" essay was plagiarism, as Professor Piper maintained?

Both Professor Piper and Cath make valid arguments for and against the essay being plagiarism. From Cath's perspective, fan fiction is not considered plagiarism so she was not aware that it would be considered so in a college context. She believed the characters were a springboard for her entirely original work of fiction. Professor Piper's viewpoint was that as the characters were not created by Cath they were not hers to use, resulting in an original essay with plagiarized characters. However since the story was Cath's own work she was not actually officially censured by the college, but given her punishment in the form of an uncharacteristic F grade.

Was Wren wrong to accept her mother's overtures of friendship?

Wren was not wrong to want to meet her mother again, bad to see of she felt they could forge some kind of relationship, but she was wrong in making Cath feel obligated to do the same. Telling Cath that she was unsupportive for making Wren meet Laura alone was very unfair as Cath was also considering her father's feelings, not just her own. Wren also was inconsiderate in missing the entire Thanksgiving celebration with her family to stay longer with her mother's new family, sometimes considering only her own feelings and nobody else's.

How does Cath's position as a 'fangirl' affect the course of the novel, particularly of her interpersonal relationships?

Cath's obsession with the novel "Carry On" and her obsession with the fanfiction she is writing serves to isolate her from the world around her at the start of "Fangirl." She essentially withdraws from reality in favor of a safer, more controlled world contained within a written work. As the novel progresses, however, Cath moves more into a social sphere, and this move is paralleled by a movement away from fanfiction (at least in the extent that it was at the start of the novel).