Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Critical Thinking Question: How does this text address the points of view of other groups, especially those who don’t usually get to tell their side?

An interlocking story of love, friendship, intellect, and destiny, Will Grayson, Will Grayson tells a story of two teens with identical names and how their lives, in the most unexpected, mystical way, interconnect. A story by John Green and David Levithan, the story is told in a first person perspective, and alternates between the points of views of two totally different characters–Will Grayson and Will Grayson. The way this text is formatted gives the reader multiple personal and complex points of view. I believe the structure of this story greatly impacts it’s tone and effect on the reader.

The novel starts out with Will Grayson, a boy living in Chicago. Although he isn’t  fully outgoing, Will has a more inward personality. He has his best friend, Tiny Cooper. Tiny is gay, and is known throughout the school as “Tiny” as a rhetorical title in spite of his largeness. As the story moves on, he establishes a love and relationship for Jane, who is also part of the Gay-Straight Alliance at their school. Throughout the book, it is clear that Tiny is in fact a bigger, more major protagonist, yet the authors’ chose to tell half the story through Will’s view. I believe this is a significant choice. When writing, the way you introduce and provide the voice of various character changes the way the reader sees the characters. “ I stand there for a moment, still hoping he’ll see me, and I don’t even know that I’m crying until this crooked sound comes out of me as I inhale. I close the door. If Tiny ever sees me, he doesn’t pause to acknowledge it.” (Green & Levithan, 218). In this segment of text, Will is feeling certain anger towards Tiny, yet if the book were written in Tiny’s perspective, there may have been a different overall feeling. We only see Tiny through Will’s eyes–so clearly, our opinions are forming and being influenced through the opinions of someone else. In summary, the authors used the character Will Grayson as a lens to view the events, places, and people within his world.

The other point of view is through the eyes of the other Will Grayson–a teen who feels his life is screwed-up, pointless, and simply stupid. His use of language includes curse words, and seldomly spoken parts of the human body. For example, on the seventh page of Will’s first chapter, he writes, “Or ttyl. Bitch, you’re not actually talking. That would require actual vocal contact. Or <3. You think that looks like a heart? If you do, that’s only because you’ve never seen scrotum.” (Green & Levithan, 28). Clearly, Will has little to do with his life then nitpick each and every thing that annoys him. Almost ready to kill himself, he has one friend at his school; Maura, who evidently has a crush on him, yet he is not quite sure what she means to him. Yet the one person keeping him alive is Isaac, a boy he met through the internet. He is clearly in love with him, yet they’ve never met. They chat almost every day online through instant messaging. It is later revealed that Maura, in desperate search to find out whether or not Will is gay, is actually pretending to be the fictional personnel of Isaac. Yet again, Maura and Isaac have major influences on the actions of Will Grayson, the second protagonist. If their was a chapter through their internal thoughts, this may have given a reader another insight on to the realities of the situation. In summary, there are many ways the authors could have portrayed the reality of this character and his situation, but they chose to do it a certain way.

Finally, I realized that with alternating chapters with two different perspectives, it was clear to me that maybe each author portrayed a different character. After reading books by both authors, I made an educated guess on which author wrote which. After doing some research, I found I was correct. John Green wrote the Will Grayson friends with Tiny, and David Levithan wrote the Will Grayson in virtual love with Isaac. As a collaborative novel, each character must reflect, in a certain way, the personalities of each author. Therefore, the choices they made really reflected two truly different people, which is beneficial to the writing the reader reads as it is actually written by two different people! As a writer, this intrigues me. The collaboration of two different authors greatly affected the tone and rhythm of this story.

In conclusion, Will Grayson, Will Grayson allowed me to explore the effect of perspective. The choices the authors made, the personalities of each character, and how the writer of each character influenced their actions are a big part of how one interprets the story. This was very interesting for me, as a writer, to explore, and I will be more aware of the choices I make having to do with perspective in my further writing.