Having being an English major in my undergrad, I am trained at finding commonalities between texts. While having very few real world purposes (other than sounding really smart at parties), it is the perfect fuel for random blog posts. And so, a very examination of the use of secrets in Beth Goobie's Hello, Groin, Barry Lyga's Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl and Melvin Burgess' Doing It.
For Burgess and Goobie, the secrets of the main characters act as accelerants for the plot. Dylan's world revolves around hiding the fact that she is a lesbian and in love with her best friend. The boys of Doing It have a myriad of issues (sleeping with a teacher, cheating on girlfriend, parents getting divorced, possible medical problems with you-know-what) that they each deal with. In both books, the characters spend most of their time dealing with their secrets on their own, regardless of friends and significant others. Their secrets are too big to tell anyone else, especially as they view their problems and secrets as being unique to them. This leads to the fantasizing of the devastating effects that will happen if these secrets escape the world of the character.
Secrets work differently in Fanboy, but are no less important. The book begins and ends with the declaration that, "There are three things in this world that I want more than anything. I'll tell you the first two, but I'll never tell you the third." Donnie and Kyra have lots of secrets, ones that are mentioned openly (his Schemata and The List, her suicide attempt) and ones the reader is left to figure out (her cars). While revealing their secrets to each other seems to bind them together, the reader knows that neither character is being completely honest to the other. Friction and chaos ensue.
It is quite easy to theorize why secrets were figured so prominently in these books. Even with friends and support systems in place, each character was unable to fully reveal themselves, fearing being laughed at, exiled or some other punishment. And can't every reader, teen aged or not, identify with that? Isn't that why there is a whole website devoted to people mailing in their secrets and 4' x 6' pieces of paper?
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