Literature Analysis #2

Looking for Alaska by John Greene

1.  Miles Halter is socially awkward and has no friends when he leaves his home for a boarding school, Culver Creek in Alabama. He has an interesting passion of memorizing last words. His roomate is immediately aggressively friendly who is known as the Colonel. He nicknames Miles, Pudge. He also meets the beautiful Alaska Young who he is immediately attracted to but finds out she has a boyfriend. Pudge begins to adapt to life on the campus with his rebellious friends who pursue rebellious lifestyles smoking, drinking, and breaking rules, but Pudge manages to keep interest in his religion class as well as maintain stable grades in other classes. However, he begins to fall more into the life of Alaska and her obsession over the labyrinth as well as her mood swings and transforms into a somewhat different person. Pudge also befriends Takumi and Laura with whom he forms a brief fling with. Alaska and the Colonel are known for pulling off pranks and Pudge, Takumi and Laura take part in their master plans putting blue hairdye in the Warrior's hair products who are the rich stuck up kids, setting firecrackers on campus, and changing the Warrior'a grades that would be sent home. One night, the Colonel, Pudge, and Alaska hang out in Alaska's room completely drunk when Pudge and Alaska start to make out but eventually fall asleep. Alaska awakes to pick up the pay phone line which is a call from her boyfriend. She returns very upset and insisting she leaves. They help her by setting the firecrackers in a different direction while she drives off. The next morning they find out she died in a car accident. The Colonel and Pudge  feel responsible and obsess over finding out the truth behind her death. They try different things including asking questions to the police officer who owned the car that Alaska drove into but learn that she directly drove into it without even swerving. They even try drinking as much as the toxicity level that Alaska had that night to see if they were as unconscious enough to not even swerve. Their last resort is her boyfriend, but give up with the only clues being that she had lilies in the back of her car and that she didn't even swerve when hitting the cop's car. They do however carry on her legend of pranks by hiring a stripper as a speaker for their annual guest speaking. Pudge is able to conclude while looking at the payphone that the lilies drawn on there were the lilies that Alaska drew which were in the back of her car that night. She was going to her mother's grave as she had once mentioned a while ago that her mother died the day after they went to the zoo together. Her death still remains a mystery but Pudge is able to move on and accept her death.

2.  Themes of the novel include obsessions and relationships. Pudge had an obsession over last words and Alaska had an obsession over the labyrinth of life. These two obsessions in a way foreshadowed Alaska's death and it's complicated nature. The relationships in the novels were very important to the story's development in creating strong friendships that were tested.

3.  The tone of the book was melancholy and negative anticipating Alaska's death. "Although I was more or less forced to invite all my "school friends" i.e., the ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks I sat with by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria of my public schools, I knew they wouldn't come." 

4.  Diction pg 3

"She festooned our living room and green and yellow streamers, the colors of my new school."

Overstatement pg 9

"Unfortunately, the shower seemed to have been design for someone approximately three feet, seven inches tall, so the cold water hit my lower rib cage."

Reflection pg 20

"The phrase booze and mischief left me worrying I'd stumble into what my mother referred as "the wrong crowd," but for the wrong crowd, they both seemed awfully smart

Foreshadowing pg 44

"Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." 

Setting pg 64

"I vaguely remember Laura standing in the doorway, the room dark and the outside dark and everything mild and comfortable but sort of spinny, the world pulsing as if from a heavy bass beat."

Symbolism pg 88

"So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

Hyperbole pg 114

"The thousand-yard stare of intoxication, I thought, and as I watched her with an idle fascination, it occurred to me that, yeah, I was a little drunk, too."

Personification pg 148

"The cold wind buffeted against the door..."

Metaphor pg 148

"...and I sat in my bed and thought of the Colonel out there somewhere, his head down, his teeth clenched, walking into the wind."

Imagery pg 171 

"I picked up a blue chair and threw it against the concrete wall, and the clang of plastic on concrete echoed beneath the bridge as the chair fell limply on its side, and then I lay on my back with my knees hanging over the precipice and screamed."

Theme pg 220

"But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin cannot end, and so it cannot fail."

1.  Direct characterization:

"I stared, stunned partly by the force of the voice emanating from the petite girl and partly by the gigantic stacks of books that lined her walls."

"But even in the dark, I could see her eyes -- fierce emeralds."

Indirect Characterization:

"And we'll call you... hmm. Pudge."

"Still, my mother persevered, awash in the delusion that I had kept my popularity secret from her all these years."

2.  The author's diction does not change when focusing on the character, remains descriptive and dark.

"She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die."

3.  The character is round and dynamic. Miles begins with being unsocial and very proper to a rebellious and confident with his friends. He is fully developed as a character through the descriptive language, reflections and innermost thoughts.

4.  I feel like I met Miles because I was really able to relate and sympathize with his raw emotions after losing Alaska. I was able to relate to him even more as he goes through the awkward phases of adapting to college for the first time and sharing his sadness and struggles. The sudden questioning of life after experiencing the loss of a close one.