49 pages • 1 hour read
Rachel Renée RussellDork Diaries: Tales from a Not-So-Fabulous Life
Fiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Middle Grade | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Volatile Emotional Lives of Teenagers
The teen years are often described as volatile and dramatic, and the characters and situations of Dork Diaries, as described in Nikki’s journal, support this assessment. Through Nikki’s outsized reactions to seemingly small things, Chloe and Zoey’s desire to run away when they can’t get tattoos, and MacKenzie’s horrified reaction to an exterminator at her house, the novel explores how the teen years lend themselves to big reactions and emotions.
Nikki tends to have big reactions, regardless of whether the situation warrants it. In Chapter 9, when she’s in line to sign up for the art contest, Nikki thinks that “the choice [she] was about to make could impact the rest of [her] life” (54). While entering or not entering the art contest could be a deciding moment in Nikki’s life that influences other decisions she makes, that exact moment is unlikely to change the rest of her life on its own. Given that Nikki decides not to sign up at that moment but later changes her mind, it’s clear within just a few chapters that the decision was reversed and thus did not have any true staying power. The importance Nikki places on deciding whether to sign up for the art contest symbolizes how choices seem more important in the moment than they might overall. Nikki hopes that signing up for and then winning the art contest will catapult her to popularity, and she fears making the wrong decision here will mean she never earns popularity. In fact, she later experiences popularity from her tattoos before they are involved in the art contest. So the contest itself and the decision about entering are not directly related to what happens to Nikki in the following chapters.
While Nikki worries about the impact of her decisions, Chloe and Zoey have over-the-top reactions to the decisions of others. When their parents refuse to let them get tattoos, they are upset about it for days, and they vow to run away and live under the New York Library so they can go to Library Week, regardless of whether the school librarian picks them to go. Library Week is not until the spring, and the book covers the month of September, as well as the first week or so of October, meaning Chloe and Zoey would live in the underground tunnels for months. Their plans to survive are as underdeveloped as their plan to run away, showing that their reaction to not getting tattoos is a knee-jerk one. If they had stopped to think about it, they likely would have concluded that their parents wouldn’t have let them get tattoos and that the idea of getting a permanent tattoo for a middle-school project was rash.
Like Chloe and Zoey, MacKenzie also overreacts to reasonable situations. When MacKenzie sees the extermination van outside her house on the day of her birthday party, she panics because she doesn’t want to have people over if there are bugs in the house. It’s likely that the bugs wouldn’t bother her guests, but MacKenzie’s fear of not appearing perfect causes her to exaggerate the significance of the problem. The following Monday, she makes up a story about saving an older boy because she doesn’t want people to know the truth, and she believes this story will both increase her coolness and ensure no one finds out about the bugs. MacKenzie creates incredible stories to preserve her image, largely because she fears losing her status if it’s revealed she has real-people problems like everyone else.
Nikki, Chloe, Zoey, and MacKenzie all share a tendency to react to relatively minor events in extreme ways. Rather than pausing to consider the actual consequences of a choice or action, they jump right to a far-flung worst-case scenario and do unnecessary damage control to combat that situation. In the grand scope of life, their decisions and stories seem outrageous, but in the context of middle school and the primary fears of that age range, they make sense and provide both story tension and comedy.
Making Judgments Without Facts
Judgments can be a necessary part of making healthy choices, but when we make them without enough information, they lead to inaccurate conclusions. Through Nikki’s hasty assumptions about other people, MacKenzie’s cruelty toward anyone she deems uncool, and Brandon’s ability to brush off criticism, Dork Diaries explores the ways judgments affect us.
Nikki makes many judgments throughout the book, mostly about MacKenzie and the popular girls. Truthfully, Nikki is jealous of their status, but instead of admitting this, she writes mean or untrue things in her diary so she can justify how she feels. In Chapter 29, Nikki sits with some popular girls at lunch and finds out they aren’t as mean as she thought, realizing “it was just a matter of getting to know them better” (257). Up until this point, Nikki thinks all the popular kids are like MacKenzie. A bit later, Nikki understands that some of the popular kids are using her to get tattoos, but when she does, Nikki doesn’t automatically think all the popular kids are doing this, something she would have thought in earlier chapters. Nikki still makes judgments at the end of the book, but they are more based in reality, such as still believing MacKenzie is mean because MacKenzie actually says mean things. Nikki has learned that judgments are not truth.
While Nikki makes silent judgments, MacKenzie speaks her judgments aloud for all to hear. As the most popular girl in school, MacKenzie believes she is above everyone else. Where kids like Nikki are too afraid to say what they think because they don’t want to be ridiculed, MacKenzie believes her popularity will lead others to accept her opinions as truth. Since the book never offers MacKenzie’s point of view, it’s unclear as to whether she truly believes the things she says about other people or if they are her way of knocking others down to make herself look and feel better. Regardless, MacKenzie’s judgments rely on the power dynamic she’s cultivated. The only reason people care what she thinks is because she’s positioned herself as someone who matters. At the end of the book, Nikki decides not to care about MacKenzie so much, meaning future taunts should have less power over Nikki than previous ones.
Where Nikki and MacKenzie participate in the middle-school hierarchy and allow judgments to dictate their lives, Brandon refuses to be a victim to what others think. Nikki describes him as cute enough to be popular and doesn’t understand why he isn’t. Brandon understands that popularity is a shroud behind which people hide their insecurities, and instead of being insecure about himself, he chooses to accept who he is, dorky tendencies and all. He doesn’t care what people say about him, and he helps others feel better about themselves. For example, he repeatedly tells Nikki she’s talented. Like Nikki, Brandon dislikes MacKenzie because she’s mean and self-centered. While not as extreme as Nikki’s opinions, he has unkind things to say about MacKenzie, showing that no one is exempt from making judgments.
Understanding the process of making judgments can help us find our true selves, as shown through Brandon’s character, but even well-adjusted people make judgments, either with or without sufficient information. Brandon’s judgments about MacKenzie come after knowing her for a while and seeing how she treats people. By contrast, MacKenzie and Nikki judge each other after barely knowing one another, and it may be that their opinions change as the series progresses and they get to know one another more.
Expectations Versus Reality
Throughout Dork Diaries, Nikki is surprised when something doesn’t turn out exactly how she wanted. It’s not until the very end that she realizes that things don’t always happen the way we hope. Through tricking her sister about the Tooth Fairy, feeling overwhelmed by popularity, and realizing she’s a dork, Nikki’s character arc shows how our expectations don’t always align with reality.
In Chapter 3, Nikki describes tricking her sister into believing the Tooth Fairy will steal her teeth to make dentures. While Nikki thought this was amusing when she first said it, her sister has since become terrified of the Tooth Fairy. Something Nikki thought would keep her sister from bugging her about teeth actually led to her sister bugging her more, even waking Nikki up in the middle of the night to inspect the bathroom. Later, in Chapter 26, Nikki uses her sister’s fear to hide them from MacKenzie by telling her sister that MacKenzie is an angry Tooth Fairy. In her terror, Nikki’s sister attacks MacKenzie, distracting her so that Nikki has a chance to get the two of them away before MacKenzie sees them. What started as a prank becomes an annoyance and finally reveals its usefulness, something Nikki never thought her Tooth Fairy lie would become.
Nikki’s brush with popularity also shows her realizing things aren’t always as they seem. In the chapters leading up to the tattoos making Nikki popular, Nikki assumes that popularity is effortless—requiring nothing but shopping for fancy clothes, being adored, and sitting with the right crowd at lunch. When her tattoos draw interest, Nikki realizes that being popular takes work and that if she doesn’t keep up that work, she’ll lose the favor she’s managed to gain. When Nikki refuses to make last-minute tattoos for the cheerleaders because she needs to study instead, the cheerleaders turn on her, which makes Nikki realize just how precarious popularity can be. After this, Nikki no longer strives to be popular because she sees what it’s really like and how she’d have to constantly be and do what other people want. This is completely at odds with her earlier image of popularity, showing how things look different when we aren’t part of them.
In addition to the Tooth Fairy and popularity, Nikki also comes to terms with her dork nature and how that’s been who she is all along, even as she tried to deny it. In Chapter 37 when she’s laughing at dorky jokes with Brandon, Nikki thinks, “Hey, I can only be myself, right?!” (326). Earlier in the book, Nikki was completely against the idea, believing that with some luck and denial, she could be someone other than the dork she was. Caught up in the superficial social hierarchy of the school, Nikki didn’t want to admit that her true self was someone worth being. She wanted the notoriety of being popular without any of its drawbacks, and she hoped this would free her from all the problems of being a dork. With Brandon’s help, Nikki realizes that the benefits of popularity are false and that being her true self is the most comfortable way for her to be. Nikki never thought admitting she’s a dork could feel good, but it does, showing how we fit better in our own skin when we stop lying to ourselves about who we are or want to be.
Nikki’s experiences and subsequent development show that we don’t always get what we want how we want it—and sometimes, we don’t really want what we think we want. Nikki really doesn’t want her sister to be afraid, to be popular, or to lie to herself. She thought she wanted all these things because they felt good at the time, but after a while, upholding them is just exhausting because they force her to lie to herself.
