Looking
For Alaska
By
John Green
Bibliography:
Green, John. Looking For Alaska. New
York: Dutton Juvenile, 2005. ISBN: 9780525475064
Summary
and Critical Analysis:
Johns Green’s stunning novel Looking for Alaska is at times, hilarious, moving, sweet,
harrowing, and tragic. When Miles Halter
announces to his parent’s that he wants to go to go away to boarding school at
his father’s alma-mater to seek “the great perhaps” we are transported to the
seemingly sheltered life of the Culver Creek School in Alabama. Miles, who is fascinated by the last words of
the famous and infamous, believes his life up to this point has been on big
nothing, so he sets out to find the something, religion, philosophy, meaning in
his life.
Once at Culver Creek he becomes friends with Chip “The
Colonel” Martin, Takumi Hikohito, and of course the troubled, beautiful young woman who
has named herself Alaska. Miles, or
Pudge, as he is known at school describes Alaska, saying “If
people were precipitation, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane…”
And Alaska is a hurricane. Determined to break all the rules, pull
outlandish pranks, and dwell on her belief that her mother’s death was her
fault is the center of the group of young friends, and each boy falls in love
with her in some way.
Green Structures the book, not in regular chapters
but in “...days before” and “…days after” the tragic event at the center of the
novel, an event that will send Pudge and his friends, and their Religious
Studies teacher Dr Hyde on a journey of discovery looking for the why and the meaning
of that event and how it will shape them for the rest of their lives.
The pranks played on “The Eagle,” who is the Dean of
Students Mr. Starnes are hilariously staged, though the escalation of the pranks
begins to show the cracks in the tough exterior of Alaska and foreshadow the
tragic event that sets up the second half of the book. The first half of book builds slowly but
steadily, with a great deal of character development, humor, lust, and even a
controversial seen of teen sexual activity.
This sexual activity, which has been the subject of much controversy since
the book’s publication, seems to me to be an argument against casual dalliances
and how meaningless and degrading such encounters can be. Contrasted with the section, just pages later,
where Pudge and Alaska kiss, the scene is filled with an intimacy, closeness,
and meaning that is completely absent from the more graphic sexual encounter
The second half of the book, filled with wonderful
philosophical inner monologues by Miles is a meditation not on the “great
perhaps” but on the great why. When
going through letters and belongings, Miles and his friends learn that the
answer to that question is beyond them, and is, indeed beyond us all.
Ambiguity in fiction is often a very beautiful
thing, and there is much ambiguity in this novel. Why did the tragic even occur? Was it purposeful of accidental? Was there something that any of the character
could have done to prevent the event from occurring? Green does a great job of not answering these
questions allowing the reader to decide for his or her self or to accept or even
to rejoice in the ambiguity. That ambiguity
is, I believe, “the great perhaps” that Miles sets out to find. That there are no easy answers, that we
cannot really know someone else’s mind or soul, and that sometimes things just
happen and that we are powerless to stop them is both terrifying and thrilling,
and that the searching for the answers to questions that can never be answered
is the stuff of which life is made.
A Note: This
book is for mature readers. In addition to
a rather graphic scene of sexual activity, there are many words that parents
might find objectionable. As librarians
or teachers, it is our duty, if readers or parents can’t see these things for
their literary merit that they can at least look past them to the greater core
of this excellent novel.
I’ve done my best in this review to talk about the
literary merit of this novel without revealing the tragic event at its
center. I believe that a complete and meaningful
discussion cannot be fully engaged without that knowledge. But that is for reflection of classroom
discussion after reading the book.
I truly hope that educators and parents understand that
the material they may find objectionable is essential to both the plot and the
themes of the book. Writers, librarians,
and educators run the risk of denigrating the meaningful into the puerile, and
that would be a great tragedy for the young people who would take great
pleasure in the themes of this very fine book.
AWARDS:
Winner, 2006 Michael L. Printz Award
Finalist, 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
2006 Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults
2006 Teens’ Top 10 Award
2006 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
Finalist, 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize
2006 Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults
2006 Teens’ Top 10 Award
2006 Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
Review
Excerpts:
Caution!
This review excerpt contains an enormous spoiler that I have avoided above. You’ve been warned!
From School Library
Journal
Grade 9 Up - Sixteen-year-old Miles Halter's adolescence has been
one long nonevent - no challenge, no girls, no mischief, and no real friends.
Seeking what Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps," he leaves Florida
for a boarding school in Birmingham, AL. His roommate, Chip, is a dirt-poor
genius scholarship student with a Napoleon complex who lives to one-up the
school's rich preppies. Chip's best friend is Alaska Young, with whom Miles and
every other male in her orbit falls instantly in love. She is literate,
articulate, and beautiful, and she exhibits a reckless combination of
adventurous and self-destructive behavior. She and Chip teach Miles to drink,
smoke, and plot elaborate pranks. Alaska's story unfolds in all-night bull
sessions, and the depth of her unhappiness becomes obvious. Green's dialogue is
crisp, especially between Miles and Chip. His descriptions and Miles's inner
monologues can be philosophically dense, but are well within the comprehension
of sensitive teen readers. The chapters of the novel are headed by a number of
days "before" and "after" what readers surmise is Alaska's
suicide. These placeholders sustain the mood of possibility and foreboding, and
the story moves methodically to its ambiguous climax. The language and sexual
situations are aptly and realistically drawn, but sophisticated in nature.
Miles's narration is alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor, and his obvious
struggle to tell the story truthfully adds to his believability. Like Phineas
in John Knowles's A Separate Peace(S & S, 1960), Green draws Alaska
so lovingly, in self-loathing darkness as well as energetic light, that readers
mourn her loss along with her friends. - Johanna Lewis, New York Public
Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
"...Miles is a witty narrator who
manages to be credible as the overlooked kid, but he's also an articulate
spokesperson for the legions of teen searching for life meaning (his taste for
famous last words is a believable and entertaining quirk), and the Colonel's
smarts, clannish loyalties, and relentlessly methodological approach to
problems make him a true original....There's a certain recursive fitness here,
since this is exactly the kind of book that makes kids like Miles certain that
boarding school will bring them their destiny, but perceptive readers may also
realize that their own lives await the discovery of meaning even as they
vicariously experience Miles' quest."
Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books
Connections:
This is a perfect book for an open, honest, no-topic
barred classroom discussion of the themes and events in the book.
Discuss the aspects of religion represented in the
book and what they mean to Miles and the other characters, especially within
the model of Christianity
Discuss the meaning of the two scenes of intimacy in
the book and how they differ in tone, language, and meaning. This may be a very difficult subject for some
teachers and should be handled carefully.