Module 1 Review - Looking for Alaska

 

Bibliographic Information

Green, John. 2005. LOOKING FOR ALASKA. New York: Penguin Group. ISBN: 978-0-525-47506-4

Plot Summary

First drink. First prank. First friend. First love. Last words.

Before. Miles “Pudge” Halter is done with his safe life at home. His whole life has been one big non-event, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave “the Great Perhaps” even more (Francois Rabelais, poet). He heads off to the sometimes crazy and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young. She is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart. Then. . . .

After. Nothing is ever the same.

Critical Analysis

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a story of teenage emotions, friendship, and loss. I began reading this novel with zero expectations of what I would be reading. Based on the title, I expected a wilderness adventure, maybe a story of a boy exploring the wilderness of Alaska, like Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, perhaps. Instead, I was transported into a private school in Alabama where Miles, our protagonist, is searching for what he called “the Great Perhaps”. For the past 16 years, Miles has lived a relatively normal life, but he is craving more. He wants adventure and to truly experience everything that life has to offer. His life immediately changes as soon as he meets Alaska Young, a 16 year old girl with a chip on her shoulder, who uses humor to deal with the trauma of her past. Alaska is wild, moody, and unpredictable, and Miles is drawn to her right away. This book absolutely drips with symbolism and themes for something deeper. The title itself references the fact that Pudge was always looking for Alaska but never found her; He was looking for her when she was alive, trying to figure her out and find out if she loved him, and then he was looking for her when she died, trying to figure out how and why she died and to find out if she loved him.

Personally, I know that I would have enjoyed this book more as a young adult versus now as a 30 year old. While I was reading, I knew there would be several students of mine who would love this book, but I didn’t personally enjoy it that much. The ending of the novel felt rushed, and the reader is left with unanswered questions. Perhaps that was John Green’s intention. Not all questions can be answered in life. When we lose someone, we are often left wondering Why? Even if this book was not one of my personal favorites that I have read, teenagers will highly relate to the adventure seeking, rebellious attitudes of the kids in this book, and enjoy the pranks they pull and the stories they tell. 

Awards Won & Review Excerpt(s)

*Winner of the Michael L. Printz Award

*A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist 

*A New York Times Bestseller

*A USA Today Bestseller

*NPR’s Top Ten Best-Ever Teen Novels

*TIME magazine’s 100 Best Young Adult Novels of All Time

*A PBS Great American Read Selection

*Kirkus Reviews - “The Alaska of the title is a maddening, fascinating, vivid girl seen through the eyes of Pudge (Miles only to his parents), who meets Alaska at boarding school in Alabama. Pudge is a skinny ("irony" says his roommate, the Colonel, of the nickname) thoughtful kid who collects and memorizes famous people's last words. The Colonel, Takumi, Alaska and a Romanian girl named Lara are an utterly real gaggle of young persons, full of false starts, school pranks, moments of genuine exhilaration in learning and rather too many cigarettes and cheap bottles of wine. Their engine and center is Alaska, given to moodiness and crying jags but also full of spirit and energy, owner of a roomful of books she says she's going to spend her life reading. Her center is a woeful family tragedy, and when Alaska herself is lost, her friends find their own ways out of the labyrinth, in part by pulling a last, hilarious school prank in her name. What sings and soars in this gorgeously told tale is Green's mastery of language and the sweet, rough edges of Pudge's voice. Girls will cry and boys will find love, lust, loss and longing in Alaska's vanilla-and-cigarettes scent.”

*School Library Journal, starred review - “Alive with sweet, self-deprecating humor.”

Connections

*Much of Looking for Alaska is devoted to teenagers’ perceptions of themselves and each other, juxtaposed with adults’ perceptions of teenagers.

Teachers, ask students to consider:

• How do adults see me?

• Why do adults see me in this way?

• How do I see myself?

• Why do I see myself in this way?

• Why do adults’ perceptions of me, and my perceptions of myself, differ from one another?

*Read the following article (or selected excerpts) from National Geographic magazine, published in 2011: http:// ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text

• Consider the following questions: Who or what makes teenagers’ experiences possible? Who or what is making Miles’s experiences possible? Could these things have happened for Miles if he stayed in Florida? Why or why not? How do your friends influence the decisions you make and the experiences that you have?