Preview
Copywork
About This Passage
This paragraph is a tightly wound display of Kinney's signature comic technique: the unreliable narrator who is so unaware of his own selfishness that the unawareness becomes the joke. The structural progression is precise — assertion of a reasonable principle (New Year's resolutions are good), surprising redirection (but for OTHER people), self-justification through false altruism (just to help them out), and finally an unintentionally damning admission (the list extends to nearly every person in his life, which suggests Greg has been keeping mental notes for a while). The phrase 'if I'm being honest' is a piece of comic genius: Greg is being honest about his bookkeeping while remaining utterly dishonest about his self-image. The passage rewards imitation for its escalating structure (each sentence makes the previous one slightly worse), for the use of all-caps as a tone marker (OTHER, THEY), for the conversational softener 'just to help them out' that exposes false motives, and for the closing admission that quietly demolishes the speaker's self-presentation while pretending to support it.
I think New Year's resolutions are a good idea, but I think they should be for OTHER people. The people I know really need to fix the way they act around me. So I made a list of things THEY could impr...
Full copywork activity with handwriting lines available in the complete study guide.
Discussion Questions
Narration Prompt
Summarize this chapter, then explain what you think the author most wanted the reader to notice or feel. What techniques did the author use to create that effect?
Discussion Questions
- Greg's resolution list for other people is presented in a tone of helpful concern — 'just to help them out.' But the chapter shows that Greg has been mentally cataloging the faults of nearly everyone he knows. Is this evidence that Greg is unusually bitter, or is he doing something most people do silently — keeping invisible lists of grievances against the people they live with? What does the chapter suggest about how much of human social life is built on unspoken catalogs of complaint?
- The book shifts the central antagonist from Rodrick (in the previous book) to Greg's father. This is a deliberate authorial choice. Why might Kinney move from a sibling antagonist to a parental one, and what does the move tell us about how Greg's pressure points evolve as he ages? What does it mean that Greg now has to negotiate with someone he cannot simply hate?
+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide
Vocabulary Builder
Item 1
The cognitive tendency to explain one's own behavior by external circumstances while explaining others' behavior by internal character — a pattern found across cultures and ages
Item 2
The psychological process by which a person attributes their own undesirable feelings or traits to another person, often without awareness
Item 3
The construction of a plausible-seeming justification for an action whose real motives the rationalizer does not want to acknowledge
+ 5 more vocabulary words in the complete study guide
Critical Thinking
+ 6 more questions in the complete study guide
Get the complete study guide — free
Sign up and get your first book with every chapter included. Copywork, discussion questions, vocabulary, and critical thinking.
Sign up free