The author of Paper Towns is John Green. He was born on August 24, 1977, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He went to Kenyon College and earned double degrees in Religious Studies and English. He worked as a student chaplain in a children’s hospital. Green spent lots of time with terminally ill children, who inspired him to become a writer. Because of the sick children, Green was determined to use his power of writing to make the world a better place. He is a New York Times bestselling author of multiple young adult novels. One of them being Paper Towns.
Paper Towns is about a boy named Quentin Jacobsen, who has spent his life crushing on a girl named Margo Roth Spiegelman. When they were younger they used to be friends but they naturally grew apart. One night Margo goes to Quentin or Q’s house to have him help her on a marvelous night of revenge. The next morning after this amazing night Margo has disappeared. Q, with the help of his friends discover that Margo has left clues to her whereabouts and they are for him. Finally, once Q and his friends find Margo Q realizes that Margo is not the person he thought she was.
They kiss and Q realizes that they are headed in different directions and can’t be together. THESIS STATEMENT! “The truth is that whenever I went up to the top of the SunTrust Building-including that last time with you -I didn’t really look down and think about how everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else. And here’s the thing about it. People love the idea of a paper girl.
They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it, too. ” (Green, 293) When I thought about him dying-which admittedly isn’t that much-l always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside of him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass-our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you chose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken.
If you choose the grass, you’re saying the we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root system not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. ” (Green, 301) This quote is so meaning to the novel because at the beginning of the novel Q explains about when he and Margo were younger they went to the park and found a man leaning against a tree dead. Q was scared, but Margo was interested and she did an investigation on his death. She found out that he killed himself and she told Q,” Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
Q never forgot about what she said. As I mentioned above Margo left Q clues to her whereabouts. One of the clues was in a poem called Song of Myself. ” Although the clue she left was one line of the poem Q spent a great deal of time reading the entire 90 some pages. The poem talks about the grass and how everyone is infinitely interconnected. Margo left that poem for Q because she wanted him to think the same way she did and focus on what honestly matters in life. By me explaining these two stories you can see that when Q says this quote he is referencing many important things to his life and the story.
I feel that the author’s word choice and description in this quote is very powerful. It really makes you think about about all the ways that people could imagine life and death connecting and not connecting. Quote of the Novel: “It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-desacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things.
All the things paper-thin and paper-frail,. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters. ” (Green, 58) This quotation is said by Margo, who is tired of living this cookie cutter life. She says this quote on the night of revenge with Q. They are at the top of a skyscraper and Margo is looking down at the city. I agree with Margo’s quote. I feel that many things that should be about family and friends have become a time where the only thing in people’s mind is about what they will get.
For example, Christmas is supposed to be about being with the people you care about, but instead to most people it is all about getting gifts. This quote expands my thinking because I feel that it is a great example of how people’s mindsets have changed and if everyone read this quote they could realize the truly important things in their lives. When Margo calls everything “paper” she means that people skim the surface of life. They don’t go deep inside themselves to find who they are as a person or what matters or about the future.
Everyone is so caught up in buying and owning the “latest and greatest” things, that they don’t know how to be happy and love another human. This quote is very important to the novel because it says so much about Margo. Margo is different from most girls. She isn’t sucked into all the “paper” things. She feels that quiet, peace, love, and care are the most important. She also feels that you only need the basics to live a good life. What I mean by that is when Margo ran away to Agloe, New York she was staying in an old, abandoned barn with a notebook and a backpack. She had to drive to a truck stop to shower and go to the bathroom.
