Looking for Alaska is a novel written by John Green set in Alabama specifically the campus at the Culver Creek boarding school with the exception of a few important locations such as the Smoking Hole. The story is narrated in the first person through the perspective of Miles “Pudge” Halter, which has its disadvantages as he turns into a mental wreck after the death of Alaska. The novel “Looking For Alaska” focuses on many themes such as friendship, death, mortality and rules and order. These themes are seen predominately throughout the course of the novel and inspire character development of each character in particular “Pudge”.
The themes that will be focused on in this report are friendship and death. The main protagonists, Miles leaves his hometown to find his so called “Great Perhaps”. He finds this in the people he meets of Alaska and The Colonel. Together the three of them form a bond and begin to value friendship equally if not more than any other Disney story. Even through his new friends introduce him to all kinds of illegal mischief such as underage smoking and drinking, but what he really values about these new friends is that they accept him for who he is and don’t try to manipulate or change him.
As well as highlighting the highs that come with a friendship, the novel also highlights the lows that come with friendship. The novel shows that friendships can be messy, as friends don’t always like each other, friends tell each other the truth no matter how hard it might be for them to hear and friends even get into fights, both verbal and physical. However these experiences only make the friendship stronger as seen in the relationship between Pudge and The Colonel after Alaska’s death. Alaska’s death is a turning point in the novel and brings out the importance of friendship between Pudge, The Colonel, Takumi and Lara.
However, the bonds that Alaska created with her friends help them come to terms with her death and continue through the grieving process. Looking for Alaska is riddled with the theme of death. For Miles, it is his obsession with people’s final words, for Alaska it is her mother’s death, which is a significant moment in her life, Alaska frequently references death in all the jokes and banter with her friendship group. However the theme of death is most prominent in the novel with the death of Alaska, which affects the entirety of the campus but predominately Pudge and The Colonel.
Eventually the two come to terms with Alaska’s death and overcome the grief. The ‘Old Man’a teacher of the two assigns the boys their final exam essay which asks each student how they personally get over their own labyrinth of suffering, which they call upon their experiences with grieving for Alaska to complete. The two boys write about the struggle to get out of their labyrinth of suffering about Alaska. As seen in the quote… At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid, and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.
This quote relates to the struggle of the boys during the grieving process, as it resembles their approach to dealing with the death of Alaska. This metaphor symbolises how the boys can tackle the situation, by either pulling at it slowly and going through long periods of pain or by ripping it off, which in the case of Alaska’s death would be accepting it, talking about it and moving on by celebrating her life, which would be painful at the start but bring relief in the long run. Literary techniques used in Looking for Alaska include symbolism and setting.
Symbols are seen in many aspects of the novel even in the characters names of Alaska Young and Miles Halter. Miles’ last name, ‘Halter’ is more than just a name, it has a meaning that corresponds to him as a character and the meaning is “a strap or rope placed around the head of a horse or other animal, used for leading or tethering it”. This is relevant to Miles life as his has always been the safe and conservative type willing to be lead. While Alaska’s name ‘Young’ is also relative to her personality as she is young, wild and free.
Which is seen in her need to be rebellious and urge to constantly break the campus rules by smoking, drinking and having sex. Green uses following themes and literary techniques to communicate the potent message from Looking for Alaska to the audience by incorporating them into all aspects of the novel such as jokes, quotes and even into the environment such as the smoking hole as people connect smoking with death. These themes and literary techniques give clues to the reader of the eventual end to the novel of Alaska’s death.