Thoughtful… As in Filled with Thoughts
Welcome to Will's head, Shmoopers, a place filled with angst, uncertainty, depression, and other creepy crawlers. You might want to bring a flashlight because it gets pretty freaking dark in here, and it's where you're going to hang out for the entire book. By the time you're finished reading, your head will be as filled with Will's thoughts as this book is. It is all Will's thoughts, all the time—so much so, in fact, that sometimes it's hard to tell whether he's addressing himself mentally or filtering in someone else's speech.
Will is stuck, lost, paralyzed by grief and sadness, and the writing style reflects the paranoia, self-doubt, and obsessive thinking that happens when a person suffers from depression and isolation. Here's a glimpse inside our main man's brain:
Once again you are out there, out in the nowhere corridor with no one. Well, you are there, aren't you, so you are not quite with no one. Never alone if you are with yourself, isn't that right? (612)
Will's brain never quits—in the excerpt above, he's alone but then not alone—moving quickly through thought processes. Since he generally keeps to himself, it's great that we get to know his thoughts. Otherwise, we're not sure what we'd make of him… or how we'd come to do so.
To dig a little deeper into this, be sure to check out the "Tone" section and also Will's analysis over in the "Characters" section.