A trope can be a phrase, motif, or theme that commonly recurs in literature or other forms of storytelling. In the case of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Greg seeks to overturn certain tropes to ground his readers in his version of reality. Focusing on how other books, movies, and television portray coming-of-age cancer stories and other forms of existence, Greg compares his experience to what we have come to expect from a typical story about cancer or high school or being a teenage boy. 

From the very beginning of the novel, Greg warns readers that they, like him, will most likely learn nothing from his story. People don’t fall in love, Rachel doesn’t bestow eternal wisdom upon him the sicker she gets, and there is no deeper meaning to any particular event or reaction to an event in this book:

My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there aredefinitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics (3).