52 pages • 1 hour read
Raina TelgemeierGuts: A Graphic Novel
Nonfiction | Graphic Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Coming of Age Before Middle School
As described by the author, 10-year-old Raina is immersed in the hectic, complex world of a budding fifth grader in San Francisco. Besides the physical and emotional issues that emerge, Raina’s existence is on the cusp of change. The living arrangement she has always known, sharing a bedroom first with her sister and then her baby brother, is on the way to becoming inadequate. Her parents recognize that their tween daughter will soon become a young woman, and to provide her with privacy and personal space, they cordon off a portion of their own bedroom as a stopgap. Even this change proves insufficient when Raina’s grandmother temporarily moves into the tiny apartment. Her parents work diligently to accommodate the wishes of their children. Raina notes that this sometimes results in chaos, as when the five family members sit down to supper, each eating a different meal. The author suggests this backdrop may be unsustainable mainly because Raina and her siblings are growing.
Beyond her home situation, Raina is now at the top of the elementary school ladder. Her fifth-grade teacher has creative expectations for everyone in her class and expresses particularly heightened expectations for Raina, whom he has taught before. On those occasions when she visits her physician, Raina receives notice that changes are afoot for her biologically. Other girls are dealing with the onset of puberty, and Raina knows it looms for her as well. Beyond her current school experience, which she finds particularly challenging—especially when she must speak in front of the entire class—Raina knows that middle school inevitably lurks just ahead with its even greater demands and uncertainties.
In addition to her compressed home life and the mounting claims of the grownup world, Raina dwells among rapidly changing classmates. She learns that even the most stable friendship must continue to grow, and unforeseen changes can happen in any relationship. The mistreatment she witnessed in fourth grade becomes more acute in fifth grade. Adults exacerbated the problem by insisting that Raina accept the injustice she experiences.
Raina lives in multiple worlds—home, school, peer relationships—each inevitably changing, each with increasing expectations for her and none offering the dependable security she desires. Like any young person coming of age, Raina has little control over her circumstances at home and school. However, for Raina, this lack of control brings an added challenge because it affects her health. Learning techniques to manage her emetophobia and IBS and reduce her stress and everyday worries are part of Raina’s coming-of-age journey, which adds an original element to this classic theme and connects it to the other two themes.
Overcoming Life Issues as a Child
Early in the narrative, Raina describes herself as someone who avoids the spotlight. By nature, she is shy and anxious. Readers may view Guts as Raina’s journey as a reclusive soul through the obstacles of important, sometimes grownup, life issues while she is still a child. The troubling bullying she observed in fourth grade erupts in her life unavoidably in fifth grade when Michelle singles out Raina and Jane for teasing and taunting. As a fifth grader, Raina loathes seeking the help of adults for this problem because she fears other students will see her as childish. When she does seek help, the teacher she thought she could trust asks her to empathize with her attacker. Raina must find a way to cope with unacceptable bullying not only with no recourse but also within the observation of an authority figure who supports the bully.
Raina must also deal with changes exhibited by her friends and classmates. She finds herself isolated as girls in her grade divide into distinct groups she initially does not understand. Once she realizes that the newly reclusive girls have experienced the onset of puberty, she struggles with how to relate to this new reality of which she is not yet a part, though it impacts many of her relationships. The one true friend Raina assumed she could depend upon, Jane, seems to betray her late in the narrative by forming a kinship with Michelle. Raina finds herself in the position of allowing Jane to befriend her one true enemy without summarily deciding that she must let go of Jane.
The greatest life issues she must deal with are IBS and panic disorder. As Lauren points out, these two problems create a vicious cycle, each spurring outbreaks of the other. To help Raina understand what is happening and manage these two grownup problems, Raina’s parents take her to Lauren. While the therapist gradually helps Raina manage her panic attacks, which in turn lessens the prevalence of IBS attacks, the fact that Raina visits a therapist creates another issue: Raina worries that being in counseling might make her friends think she is “crazy.” During her fifth grade year, Raina learns how to calm her IBS symptoms and manage her panic attacks, and she later summons the trust to share with her best friends that she is in therapy.
Overcoming these life issues upends Raina’s perceptions and assumptions. When she learns the truth about Michelle’s health, she digs deep and leads the class in a compassionate and supportive response. When Jane befriends Michelle, Raina initially pulls away, but she ultimately defers to Jane’s pleas and attends her end-of-year sleepover. During the sleepover, she talks on the phone to Michelle and realizes how much she has in common with her. When she reveals to her friends that she is in therapy, she realizes that seeking help for problems isn’t unusual. As Raina faces pressing life issues, she learns to move past her initial fears, release her preconceptions, and extend compassion to others and receive it back in return.
Self-Expression Through Art
A prescient moment in the narrative occurs when, as a fourth grader, Raina returns to class after a doctor’s appointment just in time to take a math quiz. Though she answers only two questions, Raina draws cartoons all over the test paper. The teacher summons Raina, telling her she is clearly a visual learner and she got a D-minus on the test. She also asks Raina if she has any problems at home. Before and after she gets support and insight from Lauren, Raina uses her drawings to cope with the difficulties she faces. While she fears verbally complaining to her parents, standing in front of her class to make a presentation, or even communicating verbally with Lauren, Raina expresses herself creatively and continually through her art.
Readers may detect that, when Raina tells Jane just to dump her shoes in the pile of shoes inside the Telgemeier apartment, Raina feels discouraged by her living circumstances. While she never complains about fussy little Will Telgemeier, she and Jane create cartoon strips in which they can express whatever they want about their little brothers. Amid her household's constant noise and confusion, Raina escapes upstairs, puts on her headphones, and draws comic strips about the absurdity of her family situation.
Through her arrangement with Jane, in which Jane writes the family stories and Raina illustrates them, Raina strengthens the bond with her best friend. They share these comics with classmates, who express their admiration. The person who mocks this process is Michelle, who characterizes what they are doing as childish. Yet, when Jane forges a friendship with Michelle, they create comic strips together, which reveals that Michelle’s criticism comes from feelings of jealousy. For Raina, because nothing is more intimate than the comics she draws with Jane, the comics made by Jane and Michelle are an act of betrayal, causing her to believe she has lost her friend.
Healing and reconciliation for Raina also come through her artistic expression when she suggests that the entire class create a giant, wrap-around get-well card for Michelle’s hospital room. As drawn by Telgemeier, Raina oversees this effort, spacing the personal and shared elements of the giant card so that it is pleasing to the eye and undeniably affectionate. Readers may surmise that because art served as her most powerful, functional form of communication during the formative time she describes in Guts, Raina remained an artist in service of her primary mode of self-expression.
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By Raina Telgemeier
