Be More Chill

William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream symbolizes the way that people perform certain roles in order to be accepted by society. Although Jeremy Heere has social anxiety when talking to people in real life, he enjoys acting in plays and has performed in many of them. Performing on stage causes Jeremy to forget his problems. He describes the experience as depersonalizing, referring to “the sense of self that always gets lost when I’m on stage” and “that divorce that I feel as I deliver lines numbly” (266). During the play, Jeremy wears a costume and makeup, which parallels the way that the SQUIP changes his clothes and his hygiene habits to make him more desirable to other teenagers. The SQUIP helps Jeremy remember his lines in the same way that it tells him what to say in everyday conversations. When Michael Mell is attempting to obscure the name of the SQUIP to prevent Jeremy from getting one, he even uses the term “script” as a substitute. Acting in a play is essentially the same as playing a role in the real world.

The novel uses A Midsummer Night’s Dream because the content of the play parallels Jeremy’s confused love life.