Framed

While the narrative of Framed relates a series of misunderstandings and misadventures surrounding a valuable missing ring, the primary theme of the novel is friendship, specifically, the essential nature of trustworthy friends. Gordon Korman has chosen the ideal age group and selection of characters to communicate the value of friendship. Griffin and his posse are all 12-year-olds entering middle school. This is the age when young people firmly shift their allegiances from their parents to their friends and base their self-esteem on how their peers accept them. Tweens coalesce into social groups where they feel comfortable, groups that provide acceptance, reflection, and correction. Korman wants to express that there are subtle truths and values behind these friendships that real-world adults, just like the adults in the narrative, may overlook.

One benefit of being in a group of close friends is everyone’s willingness and ability to rescue one another in a crisis. In the opening scene, Griffin loses his expensive new retainer in a muddy field where hundreds of students are doing calisthenics. Two friends standing close by stop their own exercises to help him search for the appliance in the muck. When he is accused of stealing the Super Bowl ring, Griffin’s friends never waver in their belief of his innocence. Korman signals that this is not just blind loyalty; his close friends know Griffin well enough to gauge what he is capable of and what choices he will make. They have no illusions about his often outrageous plans because when he tries to talk them into sending emails to end the morning exercises, each one tells Griffin the plan is a bad one. Thus, Korman expresses the notion that true friends are unafraid to be truthful with one another.

Through the course of the narrative, Korman develops the character of Griffin and each of his friends. The friends challenge one another to grow, and the posse as a whole contributes to the success of those they are empowering. For example, when a smaller person is needed to track the pack rat into his lair, the group persuades Ben that he can overcome his natural fearfulness as they raise him 20 feet on a rope and convince him to wedge himself in a tiny space and retrieve the rat and ring. When Pitch is excluded from the football team because she is a girl, the team surreptitiously sneaks her, wearing Vader’s jersey, into a game, allowing her to vindicate her exclusion.

Korman is not blind to the reality that cliques of young people can be exclusive, cruel, and disempowering. That Griffin and his posse could never be considered a group of popular, universally acceptable kids is the author’s way of showing that young people often judge each other harshly. The novel demonstrates the benefits of belonging to a good group as a counter example to the harmful effects of friendships with people who are unaccepting, judgmental, or cruel. As Korman began the narrative with Griffin’s friends rescuing him, he ends the book with Griffin’s acknowledgment that good friends are more important than clever planning.