Be More Chill

“And then she’s gone as if, you know, a giant dragon coiled its way up from the floor of the theater and decided to take her for its mate.”

As Christine Caniglia leaves the theater, offended by Jeremy’s firm denial of writing her a letter, the novel employs a simile that compares her exit to a classic fairy tale trope. The allusion to a dragon abducting her suggests that Jeremy must be braver, like a knight, if he wants to win her love. The logic of the simile shows that Jeremy still does not understand the situation: Christine is not being taken from him by a hostile monster. Rather, she chooses to leave because he was rude to her.

“See, because being Cool is obviously the most important thing on earth. It’s more important than getting a job, or having a girlfriend, or political power, or money, because all those things are predicated by Coolness.”

Jeremy equates sexual, economic, and political success with “coolness,” juxtaposing what most readers would think of as power with the type of power that teenagers have. While adolescents are typically excluded from having influential jobs, financial freedom, sexual relationships, and political office, they do have social influence over one another. The use of the term “obviously” draws attention to the absurdity of this perspective, as most people would be likely to disagree with Jeremy’s perspective.

“I tell people I’m a child of divorce in an entirely different way from most kids.”

This pun evokes the familiar cliché that children whose parents are separated are “children of divorce.” The phrase personifies divorce, as though divorce itself were a parent. However, Jeremy uses it playfully to mean that his parents work as divorce lawyers, making the concept of divorce like a parent to him because it is how his family makes their living. This detail explains some of Jeremy’s confused perspective on romantic relationships: His parents still love each other, but he grew up surrounded by reminders of ways that love can fail.

“So now I do this thing: I look at houses and speculate about the people inside. Are they old? Are they pretty? Are they girls that like me?”

Describing why he enjoys riding in the car, Jeremy uses a series of rhetorical questions. While the first two questions seem like reasonable possibilities, the third indicates that Jeremy’s imagination is fixated on romance. Even though it is unrealistic, the possibility of being desirable to a pretty girl makes Jeremy enjoy car rides through his neighborhood.

“She rubs herself on him like she was trying to get barnacles off the backs of her upper thighs.”

Jeremy’s jealousy as he watches Christine dance with Jake causes him to construct a simile that contrasts the sexual context of the dance with the image of an annoying and unpleasant chore. Scraping barnacles from the hull of a ship is a difficult and sometimes dangerous form of manual labor. By using this highly unromantic, unsexual comparison, the novel indicates Jeremy’s dissatisfaction with Christine and Jake’s relationship.

“It has been discussed for projects ranging from large-scale materials fabrication to time travel. But Sony seems to have simpler plans.”

A newspaper article reporting on the development of quantum computers draws attention to corporations’ employment of advanced science to solve superficial problems. While the quantum computer could be used to make some of the incredible technologies often depicted in the science fiction genre—creating enormous amounts of valuable resources or traveling through time—Sony plans to use it to create devices that help teenagers socialize more effectively. The novel satirizes companies’ use of scientific breakthroughs for relatively unimportant commercial products.

“Finally, he looks me in the eyes and smiles, his front top teeth a row of gold shingles, like a zipper in his mouth.”

At the bowling alley, Jeremy meets a trader who knows where to buy a SQUIP and uses his own SQUIP to count cards at a casino. The gold grillz denote wealth and affiliation with hip-hop culture, but they are figuratively compared to a zipper. The image of the trader’s grillz foreshadows that the SQUIP can grant a person wealth and status but symbolically silence the person’s true voice. In the same way that the zipper closes a jacket, the grillz visually portray the mouth as closed.

“It looks natural, like Mother Earth intended for Jersey to be colonized by suburbanites. She grew roads and power lines to welcome us. The tops of her trees and our houses mesh like lichen.”

On the roof of his Aunt Linda’s house, Jeremy enjoys the view of the New Jersey suburbs. The personification of nature as Mother Earth creates a humorous contrast between the natural world and the manufactured environment of New Jersey. Roads and powerlines do not typically grow from the earth, but Jeremy views them as natural to the suburban environment. Houses and trees mesh together, combining construction with the organic world. This symbiotic relationship between human construction and biology foreshadows the merging of Jeremy’s organic body with the artificial SQUIP.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, transcendent pain, from temple to temple, death, fear, agony, like a spike bent through my ear … and then it’s over.”

Jeremy’s description of the SQUIP’s entering his mind uses specific imagery to describe his pain and general concepts like death and fear to convey the extreme sensation. The ellipses emphasize that the feeling suddenly abates; the pain becomes intense and then anticlimactically vanishes.

“YOU HAVE TO SHUT ME OFF BEFORE YOU DRINK. I’LL START ORDERING YOU TO KILL PEOPLE.”

The SQUIP warns Jeremy not to use any drugs or alcohol, alluding to the science fiction trope of a killer robot. Robot characters such as HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or Skynet from The Terminator (1984) depict artificial intelligence as malevolent and destructive. The SQUIP’s joke never comes to fruition in the novel, but it may create a sense of unease in the reader, who is likely familiar with the trope of evil AI.

“I turn the SQUIP off in school so I can think about the stuff I used to think about.”

Although the SQUIP is helping Jeremy become socially accepted, he still wants to be able to maintain his individuality and judge things for himself. The repetition of the word “think” makes the sentence seem circular and redundant, suggesting that what Jeremy is trying to do should be incredibly easy and automatic, but the SQUIP interferes with that.

“In this enviable state—cleaned up, decked out, well dressed, flake-free, and at once socially hyperconscious and totally at ease—I give Chloe $25 for my roll.”

The description of Jeremy’s new style uses the repetition of short phrases to create a rhythm and an oxymoron that draws attention to the inherent contradictions of being cool. By repeating several two-word compound adjectives to describe himself, Jeremy emphasizes multiple aspects of his transformation. However, the oxymoronic description of being both “hyperconscious” and “at ease” demonstrates his paradoxical need to constantly monitor how he appears to others while giving the impression that he does not care.

“REMEMBER, ASHTON KUTCHER BEST REPRESENTS THE SEXUALITY THAT ENTHRALLS PRESENT-DAY FEMALES […] BOYISH YET CASUALLY SUPERHUMAN.”

The SQUIP’s reference to actor Ashton Kutcher indicates the role of celebrity culture in creating unrealistic social standards. The oxymoronic contrast of being both boyish and superhuman implies that the body type that a Hollywood celebrity possesses is impossible for a regular person to achieve. The adverb “casually” draws further attention to the comedic absurdity of looking superhuman. Being casual implies a relaxed or careless attitude, while being superhuman means going above and beyond the standards of what is possible.

“Chloe and I fall like slow trees to the mattress, tongues working like philosopher starfish.

The simile uses figurative language that evokes nature to describe Jeremy and Chloe’s making out while on ecstasy. The prose pairs together unexpected words like “slow trees” and “philosopher starfish” to indicate the way that the drugs are influencing Jeremy’s mind. Trees falling are not usually slow, and starfish cannot learn philosophy, but these phrases convey implications of a strange, pleasurable, and dreamlike experience.

“She wears a black Goth semidress that’s less like human clothing and more like one of those choker vines that destroys its host tree and leaves its dead shell clinging to thin air.”

Jeremy’s description of Stephanie’s outfit uses a simile drawn from nature to suggest the way that her desire to be beautiful and desirable is harming her. The image of a parasitic vine that destroyed the tree it wrapped around implies Stephanie’s destruction by the clothing that covers her body. This imagery connects to Stephanie’s substance misuse and self-harm, showing that her wish to be beautiful is destroying her true self.

“If you stopped thinking about yourself and just thought very academically about moving lightly so the girl could follow, you’d be fine.”

At the house party, Christine encourages Jeremy to stop letting his insecurities control him, instead indicating that he could use his strengths to make up for his deficits. While Jeremy feels awkward about his motor skills, Christine suggests that he would be successful if he treated dancing in the same manner that he treats other topics—as an academic subject that he can solve through analysis. The SQUIP already established that social reputation is simpler and more academic than one might think, and Christine unknowingly recommends that Jeremy think of dancing in the same way.

“YOU NOW REJECT THE NOTIONS THAT YOU HAVE BEEN FED BY TELEVISION AND THONGS AND XXX THE MOVIE AND XXX ON THE INTERNET. YOU NOW WANT TO DEVOTE YOURSELF ENTIRELY TO THE CARE AND REDEMPTION OF CHRISTINE CANIGLIA, WHO SETS YOUR HEART AFLAME?”

The SQUIP reacts with confusion to Jeremy’s desire to shift the paradigm and change his goals. The polysyndeton, a list connected by the repeated use of the same conjunction, uses rhythm to make it seem as though Jeremy is rejecting a massive and insurmountable force. The language of the second sentence contrasts with this by employing a poetic synecdoche, a phrase in which a part of something stands in for the whole. Jeremy’s heart’s being set aflame uses a romantic cliché to indicate that he is fervently in love with Christine.

“BECAUSE THEY PRODUCE CHILDREN […] AND THEY MOTIVATE YOU. THEY DEFINE YOU, REALLY. THEY MAKE YOU HUMAN.”

When Jeremy asks the SQUIP why the sight of Christine’s walking back into her house is so compelling, it replies with an answer that reduces the feeling to simple biological impulse but then expands to encompass the entirety of the human condition. The SQUIP’s first answer—Jeremy enjoys looking at girls because of the drive to procreate—minimizes the influence of emotions. However, the SQUIP amends this to suggest that desire is what motivates all human behavior and, therefore, is what makes someone human. The SQUIP then laughs because it, as a nonhuman, finds this idea funny.

“I ask the SQUIP for help and it drops my synapses off into sleep, but it can’t control my dreams: Rich all charred up, making fun of me, with no face, holding his head out for me to slap it like a hand, with a pill swimming in alcohol inside.”

Jeremy has a symbolic dream of Rich after the fire, metaphorically depicting the way that the alcohol prevented his SQUIP from helping him to avoid injury. The image of Rich holding his own burned head demonstrates that Rich’s mind and his body are disconnected. While his SQUIP would remind him of his rational goals, his body’s urges are separate and in conflict with that advice.

“Now Mom is crying, and I learn something I didn’t know about the human body: if your mom cries, you cry.”

By phrasing the sentence as though it were an interesting scientific fact, the novel creates a surprising emotional moment. Because Jeremy is a highly analytical character, the prose creates distance between his inner emotions and his reaction. Rather than focusing on Jeremy’s sadness and stress, the novel presents his crying as a simple biological necessity.

“Everyone has pregnant eyes like Mom had yesterday, and they’re bent over and heavy in a way that’s different from the heaviness that comes with their backpacks.”

The use of personification and physical description depicts the combination of mental and physical sadness in the Middle Borough High School students. The personification of the eyes as pregnant implies that they are not yet crying but have the signs that they might be able to release a tear, like a pregnant body about to produce a baby. Similarly, the contrast between being bent over due to a heavy backpack and being weighed down by fear and grief indicates the way that emotions have physical impacts upon the body as well as the mind.

“Noises come from the audience; they’re small but so important: shuffling as people go through their programs to see who the skinny weirdo is who almost ruined the play, whispers to delighted siblings, vibrator buzzes on cell phones as kids text their friends about what happened.”

Jeremy notices the sounds of the audience after his rejected love confession, fixating on small details that serve as evidence of his social undoing. Throughout the novel, the SQUIP points out subtle physical details that have significant meaning, like the signs of a girl being attracted to him or a boy being afraid of him. Jeremy does that himself, as his senses are limited by pretending to be asleep on stage, extrapolating from the sounds that he is about to have his reputation ruined.

“And then I laugh in my head, and then aloud, and then with my friend, and then with the whole night and all of New Jersey and this big stinking silly little planet.”

After Jeremy learns that the SQUIP can be destroyed by Mountain Dew Code Red, he laughs. The sentence employs a polysyndeton, a literary device wherein the same conjunction repeats several times in a list, to show Jeremy’s expanding perspective on his situation. His problems seem less urgent when compared to the entire planet. The cumulative list of adjectives “big stinking silly little” uses an oxymoron to convey that the world is both large and terrible but also insignificant and ridiculous. While Jeremy previously treated his problems as very important and serious, this moment shows that he is beginning to understand that they are not as big as he thought they were.