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.
Character Analysis
Nikki Maxwell
Nikki Maxwell is the protagonist and point-of-view character of Dork Diaries. Nikki wants to be popular but fears she’ll only ever be seen as a dork. When she’s excited, she tries to act calm and cool on the outside, but inside, she’s “jumping up and down and doing [her] Snoopy ‘happy dance.’” (3)—a reference to the dog from the Charlie Brown stories, who shows excitement by waving his arms and legs around. Throughout the story, Nikki’s experiences lead her on a journey toward self-acceptance. In the early chapters, she wants nothing more than to be accepted by her school’s “CCP” (cool, cute, and popular) crowd. She denies her own tastes and interests, tries to seem as if she has more money and access to expensive things than she really does, and longs for attention from MacKenzie Hollister, a “popular” girl whom she actually dislikes. Her greatest fear is being labeled a “dork”—a term as nebulously defined as its opposites, “cool, cute, and popular.” Deep down, Nikki knows she doesn’t fit in with the CCP group. Her appreciation of Brandon’s offbeat humor, her distaste for people like MacKenzie who are nasty to everyone they don’t approve of, and her love of reading and art lead her to develop genuine friendships with less “popular” kids with whom she has more in common. When Nikki tries to act like the popular crowd, it doesn’t last because that’s not who she is. By the end of the book, she realizes it’s okay to be her true self. When she closes the book with the all-caps exclamation “I’M SUCH A DORK!!!” (326), it completes her character arc. She has taken ownership of her own identity, turning a derogatory term she once feared into a mark of pride.
MacKenzie Hollister
MacKenzie is the main antagonist of the novel and in many ways embodies the contemporary archetype of the popular girl. She has blonde hair and blue eyes and dresses “like she [has] just finished a photo shoot for the cover of Teen Vogue” (26). MacKenzie is a two-dimensional character, rarely behaving in ways that stray from the type she represents. This one-sided characterization results in part from the diary format of the book. Since the story is told only through Nikki’s diary entries, it presents other characters only as Nikki sees them. In Nikki’s mind, MacKenzie exists as both an antagonist and an aspirational figure—someone who insults Nikki and causes her pain and at the same time someone Nikki looks up to and wishes to be like. Still, there are moments in the story when it becomes possible to glimpse the complicated human behind the archetype—for example, when Mackenzie cancels her own birthday party and then goes to great lengths to obscure the real reason for this decision, it becomes clear that she is, in her own way, as insecure and as afraid of her peers’ judgments as Nikki is. By embodying a villainous archetype and then, in rare moments, breaking through that archetype, the character of MacKenzie reveals how Nikki’s intense self-consciousness often prevents her from seeing other people as they really are.
Brandon Roberts
Brandon is Nikki’s love interest. Though he’s very cute, he doesn’t strive for popularity or take advantage of his looks, which makes Nikki think he seems like “the quiet rebel type” (66). Nikki’s assessment of Brandon adds to the reader’s understanding of how she views the world. For much of the book, Nikki doesn’t understand why someone as cute as Brandon wouldn’t use his looks to gain popularity. Since popularity is the ultimate goal for Nikki, she is both confused and somewhat awed by Brandon’s apparent lack of interest in it. She labels him a rebel because, by possessing the tools to become popular but choosing not to, he subverts the accepted social structure of the school. At the end of the book, Brandon and Nikki become a couple, which symbolizes Nikki’s complete character arc and acceptance of her dork nature.
Chloe and Zoey
Chloe and Zoey are Nikki’s new best friends at Westchester. Chloe’s full name is Chloe Christina Garcia, and she’s described as Latina. Zoey’s full name is Zoeysha Ebony Franklin, and Nikki describes her as “African-American,” using the now-disfavored hyphen. Chloe and Zoey do everything together, and neither appears in the novel without the other. Their bond—which eventually expands to include Nikki—presents an ongoing example of the importance of genuine friendship as opposed to the aspirational, status-oriented friendship Nikki initially seeks with MacKenzie. Chloe, Zoey, and Nikki initially bond over their dislike for MacKenzie, but when the girls start gaining popularity with Nikki’s tattoos, Chloe and Zoey take advantage of this to be part of MacKenzie’s cool-kid circle. When they realize they’ve hurt Nikki, they make it up to her by entering her tattoos in the art contest, recognizing that Nikki deserves to be acknowledged for her work. At the end of the book, the girls still dislike MacKenzie, but their friendship has grown beyond this one commonality.
Nikki’s Family
Nikki’s family (mother, father, and little sister) plays a supporting role throughout the novel. Nikki’s mom is rarely seen and mainly mentioned to note how unfair Nikki’s life is, particularly in reference to cell phones. Nikki’s father owns an extermination company, and Nikki attends Westchester on a scholarship she received as a result of the school’s contracting his services. Nikki is embarrassed of her dad’s work van, which she terms the “roachmobile” because of the giant cockroach attached to its roof. An unavoidably visible symbol of her father’s socially stigmatized profession, the van embodies the perceived difference in social class between Nikki and the popular girls she wishes to emulate. When the van is the only way for Nikki to get to the art contest on time, she overcomes her embarrassment, choosing her passion for art over her desire to be seen as “cool” by her peers. Like MacKenzie, Nikki’s little sister is a character defined by Nikki’s skewed perceptions. Throughout the novel, she is described only as an annoyance because this is how Nikki views her most of the time. The one exception is when Nikki’s sister beats up MacKenzie. In that moment, Nikki cheers because her sister is doing something Nikki approves of and perhaps wishes she could do herself. However, as soon as MacKenzie leaves, Nikki is back to thinking her sister is annoying for locking herself in the bathroom and putting them in a situation where MacKenzie could have found them.
