47 pages • 1 hour read
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
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Themes
Debunking Narrative Tropes
A trope can be a phrase, motif, or theme that commonly recurs in literature or other forms of storytelling. In the case of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Greg seeks to overturn certain tropes to ground his readers in his version of reality. Focusing on how other books, movies, and television portray coming-of-age cancer stories and other forms of existence, Greg compares his experience to what we have come to expect from a typical story about cancer or high school or being a teenage boy.
From the very beginning of the novel, Greg warns readers that they, like him, will most likely learn nothing from his story. People don’t fall in love, Rachel doesn’t bestow eternal wisdom upon him the sicker she gets, and there is no deeper meaning to any particular event or reaction to an event in this book:
My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there aredefinitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics (3).
If readers have come to expect soft, fluid narratives that focus on the emotional insight someone gains through the deeply human experiences of falling in love or witnessing death, Greg promises this story does not provide it. His reality is more jolting and chaotic, and there is very little time for him to reflect or learn from his interactions with Rachel, Earl or other characters in the book.
The result tightly focuses readers on experiencing the story, rather than analyzing it. Greg’s brisk pace, coupled with a narrow timeline, give very little breathing room to the reader between the time Rachel is diagnosed to the moment Greg must bid her farewell. By playing against readers’ expectations that death is organized and meaningful, or cancer patients are calm and meditative, or even that someone dealing with either suddenly matures and understands his world, Greg continuously reinforces that this book is indeed not your typical cancer story.
Coping with Illness, Death, and Other Difficult Life Events
Greg doesn’t want to experience anything too exciting or too painful, such as reciprocal attention from a girl or expected rejection by any one of the many high school cliques. So, he designs a system of niceties that keep him afloat in the social standings of his peers without forcing him to align with any of them. His system guarantees that Greg remains known, but not that well known; no one cares enough about him to love him or hate him, so he survives on his neutral likability.
Much like the rules Greg creates for himself to navigate the temperamental waters of high school, he also finds ways to avoid heavy, emotional moments through his use of diversional tactics. When he first enters Rachel’s room after learning about her cancer, Greg panics, and instead of offering a fist bump or a simple hello, he tries to hug her but ends up doing an awkward zombie impression, which upsets Rachel. He has no concept of how to converse with anyone under normal circumstances, let alone under heightened ones such as this. Any time he offers background about Earl’s home life, Greg lists a few facts in a condensed paragraph or two, then will refuse to analyze it or consider it any further. At one point, while discussing Earl’s home, Greg says, “It was a hard place for me to understand,” (80). Greg repeatedly comes up against awkward or difficult situations but will either do something inappropriate or change the subject completely, showing his readers that he’s not skilled in how to react to the world.
When Greg’s mom first tells him about Rachel’s diagnosis, Greg interrupts the scene by revealing that he’d been looking at women’s breasts on his laptop just prior to the conversation. He sandwiches in information about Rachel’s leukemia between uncomfortable dialogue with his mother about what real breasts look like and asking her whether anyone else knows about Rachel’s condition. These diversions show that Greg doesn’t yet have the emotional maturity to deal with such life-changing news and, on a narrative level, keeps the story from becoming overly sappy.
The more we see Greg interact with Rachel or respond to Earl’s challenges, we see that neutrality will not be sustainable. Rather than concentrating his efforts on invisibility, Greg eventually must make choices and participate in his own life.
The Use of Humor to Show Emotional Growth
Greg is funny; there is no doubt about that. And it is his humor and sarcasm that brand him the number one candidate, in his mother’s eyes, to be able to help Rachel cope with her impossible circumstances. To her, being funny is Greg’s strength; it is his key to building and sustaining a friendship.
At first, making Rachel laugh comes easy. Greg is a natural storyteller, and his quirky view of the world entertains Rachel, allowing her to feel like a normal teenager. When she begins her chemotherapy treatments, she becomes so weak that it physically pains her to laugh, so Greg must find another way to connect with her. What she once sought from him, his humor, she now asks of Greg to bring another part of himself to the table.
Greg, in turn, brings her his films to watch. This is something he would never have done before, had he not been asked to be vulnerable. The films are not necessarily funny, but they make Rachel happy, and Greg finds satisfaction in that.
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