Me And Earl And The Dying Girl Character Analysis

Not everyone in the world has confidence in their body or who they are. If you do not believe in yourself and the things you do, nobody else will. Persisting, and not giving up by improving yourself is the way to gain back your confidence and be stronger than before. Being confident gives you so many things like happiness, freedom from fears, anxiety, and much more. In Jesse Andrew’s novel, Me and Earl and the Dying girl, a lot of the characters go through tough times because they are not confident in themselves. When having poor self esteem in life, it may lead to many tragic moments, just like the main character Greg Gaines. He is a senior high school student who goes to Benson High School, and is a typical teenager who is going through
On the first day of being a Senior at Benson High School, Greg’s mother forces him to become friends with Rachel Kushner. Rachel is one of his old friends because they dated around six years ago. However, his mother tells him that Rachel is suddenly diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. Thus, Greg listens to his mom and follows what she wants him to do. His main goal is to get to know her better since their break up, and help cheer her up since Greg is a humorous guy. This is a person vs person conflict, mom vs Greg. Everyday, after school, Greg always sits on the couch, and watches television. His mom comes in everyday, just to see if he has called Rachel yet. However, Greg keeps on procrastinating. But he knows that no matter what, he will have to call her anyways because he can never ‘‘fight [with his] mom [since she] is unstoppable’’ (Andrews 55). Thus, Greg finally decides to call Rachel although he really does not want to. A week passes by, his mom checks on Greg and asks if he called Rachel yet. This time, Greg tells her that Rachel ‘‘won’t even let [him] say anything. She just hangs up!’’ (Andrews 54). Consequently, Greg is discouraged and gives up, therefore, he does not succeed since the first step on getting closer to Rachel is to call her and set up a date so they can hangout together. Thus, the conflicts shows that giving up will never bring you anywhere in life. Secondly, when Greg and Earl first met in kindergarten, they promise to never show anyone their movies because they think they are embarrassing. However, when Earl meets Rachel Kushner, he breaks their promise since he shows one movie to her just so she can laugh a bit, and forget about her disease. Greg’s conflict with Earl is a person vs person conflict. Once Earl tells Rachel about their movies, Greg and