Individual Text Feature: "Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" by Jesse Andrews

Individual Text Feature
Gabrielle Scott
"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl"
By Jesse Andrews 

             The novel, “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” by Jesse Andrews is told in the perspective of a senior in high school named Greg Gaines. For his entire high school career, he has chosen to remain a member of all groups that attend Benson High School. Greg feels that as difficult as this is to maintain, gaining access to every group avoids the excess drama that high school has to offer. While he aims to remain fairly invisible without a label, his view of the world will shift towards the end of the book. His seemingly easy-going and uncaring attitude is at many times humorous, which this books offers plenty of. Although it is about a dying girl, Greg’s humor tends to overthrow the sadness of what the character Rachel Kushner has been diagnosed with.

                One day, when Greg gets home, his mother abruptly tells him that Rachel, a former girl he had been dating, has a rare form of Leukemia. At first, of course, he is not certain what this means, and he does not seem to grasp the gravity of what his mother is seemingly forcing him to do. She begs him to hang out and be a good friend to Rachel, who is alone while suffering from this newfound diagnosis. When Greg tries a couple of times on the phone, and even being funny about it, Rachel does not want to. Greg’s mother insists and will not allow him to drop the idea of trying. Eventually Rachel obliges. At first Greg is uncomfortable and does not enjoy being around Rachel. There is an odd elephant in the room that always seems to hang around because Greg comes face to face with the knowledge of illness and death for the first time. Her illness serves as a platform for Greg to shift his perspectives and change his way of living. While he originally sees his life as almost dull, being forced to see Rachel leads him to grow.

                He begins to spend nearly all of his free time with her, ignoring his homework. She pushes him to apply for a college when he admits that he does not know what to do with his life. Greg feels that the movies he makes with his friend Earl are not the best quality, but Rachel spends her time watching them. Earl is his best friend from a young age that he spends most of his time with, other than spending time with Rachel. Earl also pushes him to move away from his less than realistic views. Although they are very different, Earl plays an important role in Greg’s life.

He is at times embarrassed about the movies he makes, and does not want anyone else to see them. In this way, Rachel is doing what no one else has for Greg- building his confidence. He certainly does not have any confidence in himself before hanging out with Rachel, but her company leads to Greg having a deeper appreciation for what life has to offer. He continues to find out about Rachel after she has died, which makes Greg realize that a person can still live on if memories of them are maintained.

                Though Rachel fights in the beginning of her cancer, she begins to accept death rather than going through chemotherapy. While she initially goes through a mourning phase, she deals with the idea because she knows that her stage four cancer is tough to beat. Greg does not accept her attitude towards death because he feels that she is giving up. He tells her to keep fighting and while he is sulking feeling sorry for himself, Rachel is suffering from the graver circumstance. He is forced to change that attitude when everyone else around who knew of Rachel and cared about her tries to tell him to knock himself out of it. Another girl named Madison tells him he should make a movie for Rachel, and he plays the video for her in the hospital when he was about to go to Prom with Madison.

                Throughout the book, Greg does not accept the fact that Rachel will die because he continues to say that she will live. When he is forced to come to terms with reality, he begins to see that all along he was falling in love with her. The saying is true that you miss what is already gone, and this makes coping with the loss of her difficult on him. His perspective shifts from not really caring about others and the world around him, other than hot girls he likes but cannot seem to gain the attraction back, to his life being impacted by the “dying girl.” His mother making him hang out with Rachel was what Greg needed to change his life around. He avoided homework during school and views his relationship with Rachel at first as a burden. He is accepted into a University, but his application is rescinded when he does not maintain his grade point average. Rachel writes a letter to them, and Greg writes the book about his experience, which is how the book is written. It is from the perspective of Greg telling a story about his senior year and how he changed from the impact of Rachel’s death. He writes this book to send it into the college so they can possibly readmit him.  

                This book touches upon many aspects of being a teenager. The awkwardness, the sudden realization that life is not everlasting, the prospect of death and what that can do to others around you and how it can change a person, the realization that a certain way of living needs to change, and how humor ties all of these aspects of being an adolescent together. This is the reason why this book is doing critical work in the field of adolescent literature. 
                 In Greg’s novel, he stumbles along the way to try and find out what he really wants to do with his life with his impending adulthood. I am teetering between many ideas of what my argument could be about. Since there are many aspects of adolescent novels in one book, there are many perspectives I could speak of. For instance, I could argue that teenagers feel nearly invincible and that death “can’t touch them,” but once they encounter someone dying and the realization that death will happen, they change their perspective and grow. Certainly, Greg learns his place in the world and begins to become acquainted with his identity. There is also a quite of bit of nonsense tied into the weightier subject of death, but overall I think my argument could be related to Greg changing once he realizes that Rachel chooses to die and how that impacts him.