“The Semplica Girl Diaries” is told from the POV of a father struggling to make ends meet, who writes about his experiences in the diary that we read. The first person narration creates a very internal effect on the conflict, as it feels less about the problems that happen in the plot and more about how the father handles them. The first issue is that the family is poor and the father worries that this will affect his kids while they grow up. He doesn’t want to disappoint them or make them feel as if they are inadequate in comparison to the other kids at school, so he is doing everything in his power to get Lily what she wants for her birthday, which are very expensive figurines. By a stroke of luck, he manages to win the lottery, buy her the figurines, and completely remake the yard for her birthday, but this only complicates things further.
Throughout the story, the father is constantly trying to balance making his kids happy and teaching them lessons he thinks are important for life; he thinks, “Growing up in paucity, won’t they become too cautious?” (126) The theme of passing down knowledge is essential to the story, as that is the mode that the story is told in and its reason for existing, as well as how the world carries on. To have the Semplica Girls (SGs) displayed in the lawn like objects removes them from that cycle, and it creates a sort of cavity that separates them from the world– they aren’t even touching the ground in the narrative. I think that this theme is further emphasized by the way the Torrinis use their wealth to amass things from all over the world, yet they don’t seem to understand its context or connection to its culture in any form.