Looking For Alaska

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

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
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"...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.