I found it incredibly interesting
that Jeff Kinney made it known that Diary
of a Wimpy Kid was originally intended for an adult audience because this
is a book that is sophisticated in many subtle ways that I think often go over
the heads of the children it is generally marketed to. While I was reading this book around
campus, it got a reception that I couldn’t have ever anticipated—basically all
of my friends with younger siblings gushed about how hilarious they found the
books to be (when they stole them from their little brothers or sisters to
read, of course). This left me
wondering what exactly it was about Greg Heffley’s story that resonated with
not only the elementary and middle school demographic I always assumed it was
restricted to, but also with my college-aged peers and myself.
I
think that at its core, Diary of a Wimpy
Kid accesses a period of time in the readers’ lives during which they were
exceptionally confused and uncertain of what they were expected to become. Adolescence is a time of continuous
transition and oftentimes represents a point when a child must somehow realign their
identity to fit with a newly maturing environment and social group. Kinney’s humor comes from the,
more often than not, botched navigation of these uncertainties and
insecurities. It is funny for us
to see Greg struggle with issues of popularity and acceptance not because we
enjoy his pain, but because we sympathize with it. It is a form of humor that is unaware of its
self-deprecation, as Greg is too self-centered to see the hypocrisy of his
actions and irony (a word he even defines for his reader) of the situations he
finds himself in.
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