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.
Symbols & Motifs
Nikki’s Diary
Nikki’s diary is both the framework for the book and an object in the story. Nikki receives the diary in Chapter 1 and fervently vows never to write in it again, a vow she immediately breaks in Chapter 2. The diary contains Nikki’s unfiltered thoughts about her life, school, and other people, but it isn’t necessarily always completely honest. The diary as a story framework explores the effect of our outlook on the world biasing us. Nikki frequently writes about how something MacKenzie does causes a problem while also subtly acknowledging that the problem was truly no fault of MacKenzie’s and actually came about because of something Nikki did or didn’t do. One example is entering the art contest. Nikki initially blames her choice not to enter on MacKenzie’s ridicule, but Nikki also dances around admitting that she doesn’t enter the contest because she’s embarrassed, which is not MacKenzie’s doing at all. Nikki writes events in her diary as she wants them to be, rather than as they are, which shows how we tend to twist events to make ourselves look better while placing blame on others.
Art
Nikki’s growing passion for art throughout Dork Diaries stands in contrast to her misguided pursuit of popularity and serves as a symbol of authenticity. It’s what she really wants, not what she thinks she should want. Nikki has gone to art camp for several summers before the start of the book, and she took art classes at her former school. When she starts drawing tattoos, her skill is made evident, and art is ultimately what makes Nikki realize what’s important to her and who her real friends are. By not entering the art contest right away, Nikki shows that what other people think is more important than how she feels in the early chapters. When she does decide to enter the art contest, she brings one of her best paintings, fearing that anything less will brand her as a loser and invite mockery from MacKenzie. The destruction of the painting is the moment Nikki starts to realize that other people’s thoughts matter less than her own opinion of herself. Listening to MacKenzie’s insults caused Nikki to be careless and let the painting get ruined. If Nikki hadn’t been distracted by MacKenzie’s meaningless insults, she may not have forgotten to move the painting. It may also be that Nikki’s painting wouldn’t have won the art contest, which symbolizes the idea that things happen for a reason. If the painting hadn’t been destroyed, then Chloe and Zoey wouldn’t have entered Nikki’s tattoos in the art contest, and the girls may have never made up.
Status Symbols
Consumer goods like clothes and cell phones recur as a motif throughout the novel, illustrating the superficial and class-bound nature of middle-school popularity. Many of MacKenzie’s insults toward Nikki are related to her clothing, which does not match MacKenzie’s definitions of stylish or cool and does not come from a designer store. Nikki longs for a cell phone because she believes having a cool phone will give her an instant invitation to the cool crowd. As an elite private school, Westchester is mainly attended by kids from families with money. Nikki is the only scholarship student noted in the book, and though she rarely considers the wealth gap between her and the other students directly, it underlies her overall fear about fitting in as she considers more visible markers of her social status, such as her clothes, her phone, and her father’s extermination van. Throughout the novel, Nikki looks to objects as talismans that she believes will magically make her popular. When her tattoos draw the attention of the popular crowd, she believes she’s found the right magical object at last, but she soon learns that popularity is a choice, not something to be bestowed upon her.
