Summary
Diary of a Wimpy Kid starts with a diary entry about how our narrator Greg Heffley thinks it's dumb he has to write in a diary. As we'll come to learn, our narrator thinks a lot of things are dumb. But this is a dumb thing his mom is making him do, and Greg wants us to know that the only reason he's even agreed to do it is so that there will be a record of his story when he later gets famous.
What else does Greg think is dumb? Middle school. He says it's a place where kids who haven't hit their growth spurts yet are bullied by the kids who have. It ends up that this first entry is written on the first day of school. Greg tells us that the big thing you have to be careful about is who you sit next to on your first day, since that becomes your assigned seat and you're stuck with them all year. He says he should try to sit between a bunch of hot girls, but remembers that when he did that last year, he just ended up passing notes between them. On the subject of girls, Greg seems miffed that other boys who didn't use to care about girls are now getting all of their attention. He takes particular issue with Bryce Anderson, who is also the most popular guy in their grade. Greg seems to care about popularity, even though he himself isn't particularly popular. He thinks he'll rank above Charlie Davies, for instance, who is about to get braces.
Next, Greg tells us about The Cheese, which is a piece of cheese that's been sitting on the basketball court since last spring. One day, Darren Walsh touched the cheese and this resulted in a game known as the Cheese Touch, where whoever last touched the cheese had to touch someone else to pass it onto them. The game ended when the last person who had it, Abe Hall, moved to California this past summer. Greg is glad that he doesn't have to stress about getting the cheese touch anymore.
Greg then tells us about all of his relationships. His older brother Rodrick is a terror, and played a prank on him at the beginning of the summer where he woke Greg up at 3 AM one night and told him it was the first day of school. Greg bought it since Rodrick was all dressed to go to school himself. Greg woke his father up while making breakfast, and when Greg and his father went to Rodrick's room to confront him about the prank, Rodrick was fast asleep in bed like he'd bee there all along.
Greg's dad likes to wake up at 6 AM every day, and he wakes Greg up at that time, even on Saturdays. On one Saturday, Greg heads to his friend Rowley's house. They originally met when Rowley moved to Greg's neighborhood from out of town a few years before. He's reluctant to call Rowley his best friend. In school, Greg is pretty embarrassed by Rowley, and out of school, Greg is always playing mean pranks on Rowley. Then Greg moves on to the subject of his little brother Manny, who their parents adore, even when he draws all over the walls. Their parents would never let Greg get away with playing the kinds of pranks on Manny that he plays on Rowley. Manny has given Greg the nickname "Bubby," and Greg works hard to make sure no one ever hears it.
When Greg's dad makes him go outside instead of staying in and playing video games, Greg goes to Rowley's house. Rowley's dad always screens the video games they want to play to make sure there's nothing offensive in them, which means Greg and Rowley can only play boring games like Formula One Racing together. Greg's secret for beating Rowley is just naming his car something funny so Rowley gets distracted when he passes him, and it works every time. When Greg gets home, he runs through the sprinkler so that when he sees his dad he looks sweaty. Greg's dad makes him go outside again the next day, and that's when he encounters Fregley, one of the weird kids. When Fregley has to pee, he starts yelling "Juice! Juice!" and the teachers never know what he's talking about.
Rodrick is in a heavy metal band called Löded Diper and therefore is always listening to heavy metal at home. When he brings home a CD with a Parental Advisory sticker on it one day, Greg really wants to listen to it, so he tells Rowley to bring his portable CD player to recess the next day. They try to listen to the CD, but the player doesn't have any batteries in it. That doesn't stop a teacher from yelling at them, telling them rock and roll is going to ruin their brains. Rowley starts crying that he doesn't want his "brains" ruined. Greg finally does listen to the CD one night while everyone is asleep, but forgets to plug the headphones in, waking his dad up. His dad's form of punishment is just throwing whatever he has in his hand at Greg, but his mom usually waits a while to choose a good punishment. She chooses a video game ban, which means Greg is stuck watching Manny play kid's video games. Greg has an idea, though, and stashes a video game he wants to play at Rowley's house in one of Manny's kids' video game cases, sneaking it past Rowley's dad.
At school, class elections are happening, and Greg decides to run for treasurer so that he can delegate money to the things girls do, and get one over on the jocks. Greg's dad loves the idea that Greg is running for treasurer, since he was class secretary of his high school, so he helps Greg make posters. The only issue is that Greg's posters make up a bunch of lies about the opposing candidate Marty Porter. Mr. Roy makes Greg take all of his posters down, and there go his chances for being elected treasurer.
Analysis
Diary of a Wimpy Kid starts off in a way that almost seems cliché: our narrator is forced to write a diary by his mom, but he doesn't even want to call it a diary. But while there are no surprises that the book opens this way, this little introduction stands as quite an effective characterization. For one, it shows us Greg's annoyed affect and the kind of above-it-all attitude that only an angsty middle school boy could have. He thinks diaries are dumb—and this is only the first of many things that Greg finds dumb. It's such a good introduction because it sets the tone for a book which is effectively a catalog of a kid's grievances, something that just about any middle schooler reading this book can identify with.
But we also get another key aspect of Greg's personality: his ambivalence and, in turn, his conflicts with himself. If he thinks diaries are so dumb, then why does he continue to write in this diary for the whole school year? A smarmy middle schooler like Greg might tell you that obviously the author Jeff Kinney had an entire school year's worth of story to write, but the fact of the matter is that Greg coming around to keeping a diary gives a little hint at the way Greg's character will develop. In this book, we'll watch him make a series of 180s, whether that's on how he feels about his best friend Rowley or how he feels about lifting weights. Something this book captures so well is how even the most stubborn kids are always changing their minds on things.
Lastly, Greg's introduction helps introduce him as an anti-hero, or a protagonist who isn't the typical type of person that the audience might root for. He's telling us that he doesn't even really want to tell us his story, but figures it might come in handy one day when he's famous and people want to know more about it. Right off the bat, we know that Greg is a little kid with a big ego, and that as likable as he is, he's also a little self-centered. This sets us up to laugh with him when he makes a good joke, but also to consider the bad things he does as a middle schooler trying to figure things out.
Jeff Kinney has said in interviews that he sees Greg as an unreliable narrator, that he's often writing in a way that contradicts what you see in the pictures. For Kinney, this makes Greg a pretty true-to-life middle schooler, as someone who isn't fully formed and therefore doesn't always tell the truth or make the best decisions. He reflects on being a kid when you're "thinking of yourself because you can't yet see outside of yourself."
This is summed up well a few other times in this opening chapter. Greg is so committed to listening to his brother's forbidden heavy metal CD that he forgets to plug the headphones in when he blasts the music in the middle of the night. He wants to get elected class treasurer to win the attention of girls in his class, but doesn't think about the potential impacts of making up lies about his opponent Marty Porter and posting them all over school. The story is a keen insight into a boy who is so worried about doing things that might get him bullied, but doesn't quite understand how his own actions can make other people feel bad too.
