Scott Kamens Mrs. Getler English 7 Honors 28 April 2023 Is Greg Heffley a Sociopath In Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Sociopaths will do anything to help themselves, even if it hurts others. They don’t care about anyone, and use people to get what they want. This perfectly defines Greg Heffley, from the Children’s Novel Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. Greg Heffley is a kid in middle school and doesn’t have any friends except for Rowley. He hates school, and wants to be famous one day, but doesn’t put effort into it. Because he is selfish, manipulative, and uncaring, Greg Heffley is a sociopath. Greg shows himself as selfish when he takes advantage of Rowley. Greg was trying to knock Rowley off of his bike with a football for a game, but when he …show more content…
He tries to manipulate people into doing what he wants constantly. Rowley was mad at Greg, so he stopped hanging out with him. Greg didn’t like that, so he decided to get a new friend to show Rowley he doesn’t need him. He admitted to this in the quote, “I went up to Fregley’s with my overnight bag so Rowley could see I had other friend options too" (Kinney 191). Greg doesn’t care about Fregley. He hates Fregley, and he, and everyone else, think that he is very weird. Greg knows that Fregley doesn’t have any friends and is desperate for one, so Fregley took him in without even thinking about it. Greg abandoned him later that night and didn’t even say anything to him. Greg tried to use Fregley to make Rowley jealous. Greg continued being manipulative when he had a chance to make money. Greg and Rowley made a haunted house for little kids and said that it only cost 50¢ to go in. A lot of kids showed up, and Greg realized that if he charged them $2 each, he could make a lot of money. He decided to lie to them and say, “Now, I know that the flyers said admission was 50¢, but I could see we had a chance to make a killing here. So I told the kids that admission was $2, and the 50¢ was just a typo" (Kinney 56). The little kids didn’t know any better and some of them gave him the $2. Greg had no problems with what he did until Rowley’s dad showed up and shut it down. Greg tried to convince him that he was being nice to the kids and that the kids …show more content…
He had made some teenagers angry and then hid inside his Grandma’s house. The teenagers toilet-papered it, and the next day o his way to school, Greg noticed it. When he saw it, he was thinking “Grandma is retired, so she probably didn’t have anything planned for today anyway" (Kinney 76). He didn’t care that it was his fault that her house got toilet-papered. He didn’t help her clean it up and didn’t even tell anyone that it was his fault. He didn’t feel any remorse for what he did and left his old Grandma to clean it up by herself. Greg continued to be uncaring when he was called an embarrassing name by his little brother. His brother Manny called him, “Bubby”, and Greg felt very embarrassed. He decided to do “some quick ad-libbing and I was able to deflect the embarrassment over to Archie Kelly" (Kinney 109). It worked, and everyone thought that Manny was talking to Archie. He had successfully deflected the embarrassment to Archie. Greg continued what he was doing and didn’t think about it until the next day. He then admitted to the reader that “I saw Archie Kelly getting hassled in the hallway after fifth period today, so it looks like I can finally start to breathe a bit easier” (Kinney 114). Greg didn’t care that because of him, a random kid was getting bullied and made fun of for something he didn’t even do. This shows very well that Greg doesn’t care about other people. To