Cabin Fever

Part 1 of Cabin Fever acts as a lead-in to all of the difficulties that Greg will soon encounter in connection with the Christmas season, and Greg’s reflections on the holiday prove that he is a typical 12-year-old in many ways. Because he finds Christmas to be more stressful than exciting, he becomes too concerned with the whimsical traditions that his parents have created, and the proverbial elf on the shelf reminds him that those in authority are always scrutinizing his behavior. He hates the idea of being watched and finds the moral logistics behind the concept unnerving and unfair. As a result, Greg is always on edge, waiting for something to go wrong, and both his current experiences and his memories prove that something always does. Because he knows that his own desires and antics often get him into impossible scrapes, he sees his mother’s strategic relocation of the elf all over the house as evidence that he can never escape the pressure of being judged. These early pages therefore set up the book’s focus on the importance of Learning From Mistakes, and Greg’s anxiety about avoiding trouble foreshadows the fact that there is quite a bit of trouble headed his way. Because Greg is infamous for always getting into trouble, he knows that having to behave all the time in the days leading up to Christmas will be particularly challenging.

Greg’s life is presented in the form of short stories and anecdotes that illustrate The Echoes of Past Experiences and act as a window into Greg’s mind. Because he is skilled at making abstract connections, moments in the present remind him of moments in the past, and he interprets his latest experiences based on the lessons he learned from previous scenarios. However, despite his sophisticated inner reflections, Greg never really changes or learns from his past errors, and his tendency to fall afoul of the same missteps every day indicates that he has a great deal of trouble with truly Learning From Mistakes. 

Within this context, it is clear that Kinney has written Cabin Fever for the benefit of both middle grade and adult readers. For example, as Greg cringes with embarrassment at the thought of hanging up old pictures of himself on the Christmas tree, Kinney simultaneously invokes a common anxiety among middle school children—the embarrassment of being seen as “little kids”—and contrasts it with the idea that Greg’s parents cherish ornaments that remind him of their boys’ younger days. Thus, while Greg’s perspective remains dominant, the subtler details of Kinney’s comic-strip world hint at other points of view about the holiday season.

As Greg reflects on his various Christmas experiences, it soon becomes clear that he is an unreliable narrator, in part because of his age but also because he tends to speak in hyperbole and demonstrate his own recurring acts of dishonesty. A prime example occurs when he recalls tampering with Christmas gifts during a previous holiday season, and he also has a penchant for embellishing the truth to prove his point, as when he declares, “If you ask me, I think people are getting too carried away with all this safety stuff. I went to Manny’s peewee soccer game, and all the kids had to wear bicycle helmets” (27). This bombastic description is designed to be deliberately over-the-top, and Greg’s words reflect his childish perspective, which often portrays small issues as enormous problems.

Similar examples of hyperbole appear when Greg compares the state of recess to prison, even though he is clearly aware of just how different the two scenarios really are. His tendency for catastrophizing is also reflected in his memories of being tormented by the dreaded “Nasty Pants,” and he is so focused on describing the terrors of being chased by a kid with a stick that he strategically neglects to mention just how young the culprit is. Rather than owning up to his exaggeration, Greg doubles down, exclaiming, “Let me just say in my defense that when some kid is chasing you with a stick, you don’t stop to ask him how old he is” (22). However, despite the deliberate humor that Kinney builds into this incident, the author also conveys the more serious message that bullying at any level should not be tolerated. Greg’s fear of bullying isn’t completely unfounded, as he is frequently teased by his peers and has endured the less-than-gentle attentions of his siblings as well. 

Because Cabin Fever does not follow a traditional graphic novel format, its pages are characterized by a variety of whimsical doodles that lend the entire novel the appearance of a diary. Similarly, the simple illustrations are free from any sort of border, which makes them blend into the page and implies that Greg is the one who drew them. By keeping the drawings extremely simple, Kinney means to replicate the halting illustrations that a young boy might feasibly draw in the pages of his notebook during moments of creativity or boredom. However, despite the series’ deceptively simple aesthetics, Kinney still employs more sophisticated storytelling techniques, and examples of irony abound, often appearing in the illustrations themselves, as when the large-bodied teacher, who is sitting on a bench, yells at the kids and demands that they stand up and be active. Many of the illustrations are also intentionally hyperbolic, as when Manny is portrayed with dozens of presents and Greg is shown with one single gift on Christmas day. The reliance on hyperbole emphasizes Greg’s tendency to focus on worst-case scenarios and to exaggerate the troubles that he stumbles across each day.