Amy’s not a bad character—she just fell victim to being Jonah’s counterweight

I was reading the big thread on Amy that got posted recently and it got me thinking about how her character is written. You see, I wasn’t an Amy fan for awhile but, after thinking deeper about her character, I think she just fell victim to being written as the counter balance to Jonah. Let me explain.

Jonah’s a relentless, naive optimist and that’s his whole schtick. Amy is a pessimistic, jaded cynic and her ideologies are the exact opposite of Jonah’s. This is shown from the beginning with the “American Beauty” scene. You could go into how Jonah’s privilege allows him the room to be an optimist while Amy’s lack of opportunity could only lead to jadedness and that’s definitely intentional. See the bits about how Jonah can go back to business school whenever he wants and the privilege conversations in those bits. I think the main way to sum it up is that the most accurate worldview is somewhere in between their worldviews though and their roles as characters are both simply counterweights—Amy just got the harder end to empathize with

Thoughts?