John Green and David Levithan's Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a coming of age story that touches on a lot of different issues that the modern teenager may encounter. While the book is for the most part rather literal in the topics it discusses, there is some subtext among the themes that can be highlighted and brought to light.
One of the most prevalent issues discussed is the acceptance of the LGBTQA+ community, both from outsiders and from people struggling to accept their own sexuality. The book is very careful to include different points of view on the issue. Starting with Tiny Cooper, Tiny represents a large section of the LGBT community. He is comfortable in his skin and, and while he borders on being a stereotypical portrayal of a gay guy, he is caring, honest, sporty, and a teenage boy who just happens to be gay. The LGBT characters in Will Grayson, Will Grayson all have actual personalities and are an effort to properly represent homosexuality in the media, something that is rare today, and was even more rare in 2010 when it was first published.
Levithan's Will Grayson (who, for simplicity's sake, will here be referred to here as Will, with Green's Will Grayson being referred to as Grayson) had a very different attitude towards his sexuality. While Tiny was very open and happy with who he was Will had a much harder time coming to terms with being gay. Will was a character that was meant to support kids having a difficult time with self-acceptance and coming to terms with their sexuality. Then there was Grayson. Grayson was a straight boy who saw sexuality, or at least a being publicly open about one's sexuality as an inconvenience. He was mostly accepting but was frequently annoyed with things related to the community. He didn't like that he was a target for bullying because he was friends with very openly gay Tiny, and he didn't like that he couldn't tell whether or not the girl he was interested in was a lesbian, pan, bi, or straight.
This leads into a major point of Will Grayson, Will Grayson; Homophobia, no matter how minor, is often caused by other underlying issues in the prejudiced person. Will couldn't accept his sexuality because he was unhappy with and uncomfortable with other aspects of his life, and Grayson couldn't accept his friend because he was personally so insecure about his own social skills that extra attention grabbers, such as being friends with Tiny Cooper, lead to resentment.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is fundamentally about loving yourself and loving those around you, and the journey of the main characters is about coming to respect and show appreciation and understanding to those they couldn't at the start of the book.
