The story is set in an average neighborhood, at an average high school, with average situations and average high school seniors who end up graduating as the story unfolds. The main characters are initially two outcast girls. As the story progresses one of the girls[Rebecca] moves aside in importance when another character[Seymour] enters the picture, spending more time with the main girl, Enid.
Enid is the failed art student. She is the main character that never leaves the picture in importance. It is strange that this is so, considering she is characterized as the overlooked in society. She is the more aggressive, and verbally abusive of the two girls. She is extremely judgmental and has no future goals. Her way of seeking attention is to verbally put down others, aggressively putting herself up on a pedestal. She shows little remorse for her actions even to her loyal friend who practically follows her.
Rebecca is this follower friend. She's sarcastic and tends to only add similar commentary to Enid's verbal abuse and judgments. Rebecca stays at Enid's side no matter what the abuse and tags along in Enid's abusive games towards others such as Josh.
The other characters have other stereotypical character traits. Melorra is the hated ambitious and positive student. Todd is the friendly average awkward guy. Dennis is the dubbed nerd and loser. John is the obnoxious, big ego, asshole. And Josh is the common sensed and honest hard worker who Enid verbally abuses and takes advantage of.
The primary theme of the screenplay is self-exploration and discovery. Enid goes through the entire story by judging each and every character. It is her exportation of people that makes her more confused about her own self. She seems to be a child, afraid, and lacking courage. In her art class, we see glimpses of self-discovery from the other students, however, Enid seems to always fall short. She meets Seymour, an older man who is similar to Enid's childish manner. She sees in him herself, a lost existence, lacking courage.
She becomes very involved in Seymour's life, leaving her friend Rebecca forgotten. Enid feels like she has to help Seymour gain a life, her view being very shallow and undeveloped. She pushes Seymour to see women and makes him feel uncomfortable situations. Enid easily makes people uncomfortable wether she means it or not.
In the end, Enid learns a lot about herself(we can only hope so), and she leaves Seymour to get back to his lonely lifeless life. Enid gained self-discovery and realization that she actually doesn't want to be like Seymour at all, even though at the end she was practically alone just like Seymour. She doesn't want to be alone, yet she is because of her verbal abuse, her negligence towards her friendship with Rebecca, and her lies with Josh.
The two girls could either continue to be friends or just be acquaintances. I believe in the latter because Rebecca seems to have moved on. Rebecca got the guy[Josh], Enid lost him, she moved on from Seymour, and now she is alone. Stereotypically I would believe that Enid would have some sort of underlying jealousy towards the happy couple, and use her aggressive nature against them. I doubt their friendship would last much longer. Their friendship would either slowly dissipate into an acquaintanceship or be completely severed from something Enid would say. Nevertheless, Enid will be alone. She will have to start over in relations with people. And if she hasn't learned from her self-exploration and discovery, she will continue to be the stereotypical verbally abusive alone girl that she is.
