Looking for Alaska by John Green

A Brief Summary

Looking for Alaska starts off with the main character, Miles Halter, coming to an Alabama boarding school, Culver Creek Prepatory School, from his home in Florida. Readers will immediately notice that the book is seperated into two sections, one called “Before” and the other called “After”. The beginning of each chapter has a countdown to the next section or a countup from the event that causes the switch. The reader is also given a nice long look into Miles' personality, establishing some of his little quirks and generally getting to known him. Afterward, Miles quickly gets introduced to his roommate Chip Martin, an older student and resident of Culver Creek. Chip further introduces Miles to his friends, the most interesting of which is the titular Alaska. It should be noted that, soon after the characters meet, they rarely use their names. Miles will go by the name Pudge, despite the fact that he is built like a bendy straw, while Chip is known as The General. The stories behind these names are amusing and endearding, something that is important to the later half of the narrative for many reasons.

The first half of the book follows Pudge's experiences as Culver Creek, as he learns more about his new friends and the local social order. Readers get to know his teachers and things are fairly normal for a slice of life piece. It is only when things change and the book enters the second section, the After, that things become wickedly dark. Pudge and The General become obsessed with their search for answers, for the right questions, and for some sort of hope.

Thematic Elements

Looking for Alaska has strong elements of growth and development that are common with teenage novels, at least in the Before section of the book. The running theme is more of youthful innocence and discovery than anything else. The reader goes through many of the same sorts of themes as were present in The Perks of Being a Wallflower, such as being the new kid at school and discovering how one fits in. In contrast, After changes the game up entirely and the theme shifts to the darker questions about life and human purpose. The themes become more about obsession and the burning need to know; I would say more, except that it would be giving too much away.

Analysis

Overall, Looking for Alaska is a good book, but it hits the reader hard if they allow themselves to get attached to the characters. (Which they should be doing, as that helps to convey more about them and about the author's intent.) The themes are definitely more adult than some of the other books that you will find listed on the blog and this reading should be kept for those at the Junior and Senior levels of High School. Unlike Perks, which allows younger readers to connect well with the feeling of being the new kid, Looking for Alaska has a greater emphasis on growth and coming to accept the facts of life.

A Little Something More

Looking for Alaska is a little harder to connect with the other books that you will find on the blog because it has a feeling of being unique by comparison. It could be connected with other stories of life and loss, but this is not a common topic for most school cirriculum. Rather, this book should be encouraged as a good out of class reading for those students who are looking for something that is a little more adult. It works well as an independent reading project and its author is easily available through YouTube where he is active in the VlogBrothers project with his brother Hank and Don't Forget to be Awesome records.