Greg Heffley

Gregory "Greg" Heffley is an American middle school student and also the main protagonist and an anti-hero of the book series Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Why He Is Far From Wimpy

 * 1) He is a great writer and a decent painter.
 * 2) He does his best trying to survive middle school and gives tips to kids his age about surviving as well.
 * 3) He has exaggerated, but bright ideas for his future.
 * 4) Despite showing hatred for diaries, he is not afraid to share personal experiences in his journals.
 * 5) He always gets himself into crazy and unpredictable adventures, such as when he camped outside a video game store just to enter a tournament that only he and Rowley attended in the end.
 * 6) He is willing to give himself to people he loves, such as Rowley.
 * 7) He does a great job dealing with his family, even more so in the films as he managed to get back at Rodrick by tricking Manny to read Rodrick's bikini magazine and getting Rodrick blamed for it and was grounded as a result.
 * 8) He has an amazing memory since he can remember moments before he was born.
 * 9) Despite being bad with school work, he's pretty smart when it comes to coming up with ideas like getting Rowley to become the school's student council.
 * 10) Zachary Gordon did a very great performance of taking a role from Greg as the greatest son of The Heffley Family from three movie trilogy.
 * 11) Although Greg has a fair number of unlikeable moments (see "Bad Qualities"), a number of them are rather relatable to the everyday reader, specifically those growing up while in grade school. He comes off as rather unintentionally sympathetic (i.e. the type of protagonist the audience knows is not perfect, but we still root for him nonetheless).
 * 12) His design in books is pretty decent. (Especially in the recently released 2021 movie).
 * 13) For all of his many faults, Greg has a heroic and noble side, which he demonstrates occasionally.
 * 14) *Most notably in the first book, when he takes the blame for Rowley and claimed that he ate the cheese to spare his friend from humiliation in order to redeem himself for his mistreatment towards Rowley.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) He is mostly narcissistic, egotistical, and possibly sociopathic.
 * 2) * It is the reason that many of the fans have hated this character is because of his sociopathic traits.
 * 3) He often never takes responsibility for his own actions.
 * 4) Most of the time, he abuses his best friend Rowley, especially in Diary of a Friendly Awesome Kid.
 * 5) * Speaking of Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid, it was revealed that he was always like - in that series, he is portrayed as nothing more than a selfish and manipulative jerk who abuses him all the time.
 * 6) He does nothing to make his wishes come true, as he is very lazy and is a complete slacker, as he does not pay attention to his schoolwork, only paying attention to video games and comics, despite being relatable enough. This he learned from his brother Rodrick.
 * 7) Although he can be bright, he can also be pretty dimwitted and have false opinions of things.
 * 8) He is incredibly vain as he thinks he's going to be "rich and famous one day" yet he doesn't say how.
 * 9) He is shown to be quite unloyal and disrespectful to those around him. Especially his movie counterpart, who calls Angie a crazy freak job, and he states that every kid in his school is a bunch of morons.
 * 10) Jason Drucker did a very wasted performance of having a role of Greg as a bratty and an idiot troublemaker from the movie, The Long Haul, even though he did very well in the movie of Bumblebee (a spin-off of Transformers movie franchise).
 * 11) Compared to his movie counterpart, Greg tends to exaggerate his flaws to be viewed as more sympathetic and blames others for his wrongdoings, and it tends to contradict his intended realistic portrayal.
 * 12) In the Wrecking Ball, he conned people into buying useless items, and when his parents revealed that one of his dead great aunts was rich and had given the family money, he, alongside Rodrick and Manny, celebrated it like it was Christmas, which is disrespecting the dead.

Trivia

 * According to Jeff Kinney, Greg is based on his own worst qualities in middle and high school.