Summer Reading Post #2: Looking for Alaska

The first thing I want to talk about is the “before/ after” sense of the book. I have come to discover what that means, but haven’t gotten that far in the book. It makes the story have a depth that I haven’t experienced in any other book, that I can relate to. A theme flows out of this that I can’t find the right words for but I can describe from personal experience. Death of someone who is a big part of your life (in my case, a parent) turns your life into a before/ after. I literally feel this day to day experiencing my ‘after’ and thinking about my ‘before’ and how lucky I was without knowing it. I hope that shows the theme I feel. Miles is a very complex person in that he goes “in search of a great perhaps” at the boarding school and he has a curiosity for people’s last words. He wants satisfaction of knowing and physically having answers. I want to talk about Alaska in greater depth in a future post when I feel like I know enough to judge her into words, but she simply wants to feel either complete, or numb, and I can’t decide which at this point in the book. I'll leave you a quote since I can't do much at this point of the book to accurately show you her complexity. In this quote, Alaska and the gang are all talking about the worst day of their life, and Alaska describes the day her mother died. "So I just sat there on the floor with her until my dad got home an hour later, and hes screaming 'Why didn't you call 911?' and trying to give her CPR, but by then she was plenty dead. Aneurysm. Worst day. I win. You drink," (Green 119). I think this exemplifies her thought process in a way I can't squeeze into a phrase to give you to get a good judgment. The Colonel simply wants the most out of what he gets. If he goes to a party, he’s going to party hard. If he has a test, he’s going to study hard. But I don’t know much about him yet. And a newer major character who has come in is The Eagle. As the Dean at the boarding school, he wants nothing more than order. Things must be his way or he is angry. I’m getting increasingly excited to venture further into the book. I'll leave a quote from the book I really like.

"If people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane."

Summer Reading Post #1: Looking for Alaska

The major characters in Looking for Alaska so far are Miles “Pudge” Halter, Chip “The Colonel” Martin, and Alaska Young. Miles is the protagonist, and the story is from his point of view. Something interesting about the book is that it is set up in “before” and “after” and instead of chapters, they are titled like “74 days before,” leaving a big hole and cliff hanger in the reader’s head. It is set mainly at a boarding school in Alabama, present day. They all attend it and hang in the more “rebellious” crowd. Alaska really just does not care about much, but she is a very complex person, and I think that is why Miles is attracted to her. The Colonel is a complex character but I haven’t read to the point of knowing much about this. I see similarities in this to The Fault in our Stars, another work by the same author, John Green, in how real the characters are.  John Green is a very straight forward writer in this sense. I predict that the before/ after is revolved around Alaska, and that she goes missing. Maybe it’s a little of me being gullible, but “Looking for Alaska” kind of gives me the sense of that. I look forward to reaching the “After” of the book. 

Click this link for an about of John Green, because I believe the more you know about the author, the better you can understand your book.