An In-Depth Analysis of Looking for Alaska by John Green:
Disclaimer- this is just my interpretation of the novel, please feel free to comment down below and I’d love to start a discussion!
Warning- there are a TON of spoilers, so I don’t recommend reading until after you’ve finished the book.
Also, before I begin, I’m planning to post a lot more book analyses on my blog so if you have any recommended books for me to analyze (or even better, a book you’ve written yourself), feel free to send me a message!
I’ll begin by saying that my first thought about this book was ironically immediate dread. The first few chapters were unpredictable and ambiguous in where the story was going to go (just like our unpredictable and ambiguous Alaska Young). My second thought about this book was that it’s a more contemporary The Catcher in the Rye, especially regarding the protagonist’s attitude and narrative and the boarding school setting. My third thought about this book was, God, I absolutely love it, and I kept loving it the more I kept reading.
But since this is an analysis more than it is a review, let’s get started with a little bit of background. Our protagonist, Miles “Pudge” Halter’s life changes the moment he meets Alaska Young, and then changes once again when he finds out about her death.
Foreshadowing- The foreshadowing in this book is unbelievably amazing. Alaska’s most famous quote, “Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die” foreshadows her death while adding to the question, was it suicide or was it an accident? (but we’ll get to that later).
8 pages later, Alaska says, “I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart,” another indication of her unfortunate fate. It also shows the kind of person Alaska is; her intelligence mixed with her bluntness was a powerful weapon.
Pudge mentions that Alaska goes “from a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond”, which foreshadows her instant death while also hinting at her unpredictability.
Pudge’s infatuation with famous last words also serves as foreshadowing, and him not knowing her last words just adds to the fact that she is a mystery.
Symbols:
Cigarettes- Cigarette smoke is on the cover because of its significance to the characters and the book itself. Smoking is one of the ways Pudge was able to relate to his friends at Culver Creek, especially Alaska, being that he had his first cigarette in Room 43. It also represents the crew’s objection to authority, which also stems from Alaska herself, as rebellion was a major part of her personality. At the end of the book, the crew threw their cigarettes in the water at the Smoking Hole as a tribute to Alaska, reestablishing the fact that cigarettes are one of the things that tie them to her. The book cover also goes back to the quote, “You smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die” because it is the most telling of Alaska’s mysterious, impulsive personality and, as I previously mentioned, a foreshadow of her death.
White flowers- Alaska is given white tulips by her boyfriend Jake, and when she was young, her mother used to put white daises in her hair. The white daises she doodles when on the payphone with Jake triggers her memory of the anniversary of her mother’s death, thus prompting the car ride of doom. Generally, white daises are a symbol of motherly love and white tulips are a symbol of forgiveness but I also think that the white flowers are a symbol of death, love, and loss.
The Great Perhaps- The Great Perhaps is the reason Pudge comes to Culver Creek in the first place. Pudge remarks, “For she (Alaska) embodied the Great Perhaps- she had proven to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybe, and now she was gone with her my faith in perhaps…You left me perhapless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth.” (172) The Great Perhaps ended up being Alaska herself; he was looking for the Great Perhaps, and he found Alaska only to lose her, or it can be argued that he never found her to begin with because she was such a mystery. Later in the book, however, Pudge decides, “So we gave up. I’d finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be discovered…She didn’t leave me enough to discover her, but she left me enough to rediscover the Great Perhaps.” (212). Although the Great Perhaps had once been Alaska, her death allowed the Great Perhaps to be found in the Colonel and Takumi instead because “…we knew what could be found out, and in finding it out, she had made us closer- the Colonel and Takumi and me, anyway.” (212)
Labyrinth- The labyrinth is a huge symbol that goes hand in hand with suffering. When Pudge found the book The General in His Labyrinth in Alaska’s room after clearing out anything he didn’t want the Eagle to find, he sees an underlined quote, “How will I ever get out of the labyrinth of suffering?” In response to the question she writes, “Straight and fast,” which was the way she died, indicating that her death might have been a suicide after all. The question also served as the theme of her essay for Mr. Hyde’s class, prompting Pudge’s response as the last passages of the book. Alaska was a labyrinth all in herself; no one could figure her out when she was alive, and no one could figure out if her death was a suicide or an accident. At the end, the Colonel notes, “after all this time, it still seems to me like straight and fast is the only way out- but I choose the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows, but I choose it.” (215)
Themes:
Forgiveness- Forgiveness also ties into the symbol of the labyrinth, as Pudge mentions, “He (Takumi) was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive the labyrinth.” (218) This indicates that the answer to the labyrinth is forgiveness, and when Alaska responded “straight and fast” to the famous question, maybe she meant that we must forgive straight and fast.
Enlightenment- This is mentioned briefly toward the end of the novel, and this quote by Pudge speaks for itself, “The Colonel seemed resigned to that, but if the Investigation had once been his idea, it was not the thing that held me together, and I still hope for enlightenment.” (197).
Death- the theme of death is extremely prevalent, of course, since it centers around Alaska’s own death; but this theme also circles Mr. Hyde’s religion class when Pudge’s main question for his essay asks, what happens when we die? This also ties into the foreshadowing we explored earlier.
The theme of death also is prevalent in Pudge’s knowledge of last words- I already mentioned that Pudge’s interest in last words foreshadowed Alaska’s death, but there’s another interesting quote worth highlighting: “Last words are always harder to remember when no one knows that someone’s about to die.” (187)
Another quote to wrap up the theme of death: “As much as I wanted to know how Alaska had died, I wanted to know where she was now, if anywhere…I felt the total loss of her, still reeling from the idea that she was not only gone from this world but from all of them.” (174)
Ambiguity- Ambiguity is mostly found in Alaska’s character herself, but it also returns in the “after” section of the novel as the painful question of, “was it a suicide or an accident?”
The title- The title 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.
The cop that witnessed Alaska’s death says on page 164, “'Ah hope y’all find out whatever y’alls looking for,'” which is both ironic and fascinating because Pudge never did find what he was looking for; Alaska had always remained a mystery to him, and now her death will always remain a mystery to him. Before this, on page 145, Pudge realizes, “That is the fear. I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it.” He was, again, looking for Alaska, but he lost her and can’t ever find her because of her heart-wrenching fate. The title reference meets us once again on page 154, “…But with each slow breath the smell faded and I became accustomed to it, and soon she was gone again.” Alaska was always disappearing and now, she had disappeared for good.
The last thing I wanted to add about the title can be found on the same page as the last quote, when Pudge entered Alaska’s room for the first time since her death, “…The haphazard collection of literature that was Alaska. There was one book I wanted to take with me, but I couldn’t find it.” The books in Alaska’s room represented her personality. The book he couldn’t find (The General in His Labyrinth) is parallel to Alaska, because he couldn’t find her either. This brings us back to the symbolism of the labyrinth, which actually represented Alaska’s own life.
Characters:
Alaska Young- Alaska's character can be summed up in this quote she tells Pudge, "You'll never get me. That's the whole point." She’s impulsive, mysterious, outgoing, moody, and unpredictable, but that all stems from her grief and her guilt from her mother’s death and Alaska’s inability to take action.
Miles “Pudge” Halter- He’s trying to find the Great Perhaps at boarding school, but he’s also trying to find himself. I think all that has to be said about Pudge has already been said, the most important aspect of his character being the fact that he is forever changed by Alaska Young.
Chip “The Colonel” Martin- The Colonel has always been a loyal friend. He’s known for his slight anger issues, his witty remarks, and his legendary pranking with Alaska. The Colonel has become the leader of the group because of his assertive personality and his tendency to plan pranks intricately and cautiously. Not only does he strategize pranks, but he also led the Investigation of finding out exactly what happened to Alaska. A quote that sums up the Colonel’s character perfectly lies on page 195, “He flicked his cigarette butt into the creek, stood up, and left. Even in defeat, he was still the Colonel.”
Takumi- We don’t really know much about Takumi, but in in the end, we learn that he was just like Pudge and the Colonel regarding Alaska’s death. He, too, feels guilty because he could’ve stopped her from getting into her car and crashing (literally) into her horrible fate.
Lara- Although we don’t see much of her either, she becomes Pudge's first “girlfriend”. She means less to Pudge than he realizes himself, meaning that she’s just a person to fill the void that Alaska could never (and will never) fill for him. Pudge reflects upon their relationship, “I was caught in a love triangle with one dead side.” (147)
Relationship between Alaska and Pudge- What I would always notice is the fact that whenever the two were joking about flirting with each other, Alaska would always come back saying things like, “I would, but I love my boyfriend too much.” Her overuse of this phrase struck me as fascinating because it could either be a constant reminder to Pudge not to cross a line, or it can be a reminder to Alaska herself since she might be falling in love with Pudge. The latter can be explained with the fact that she hooked up with him on her last night alive, or maybe it can be argued that it was just a drunken impulse that she was always known to have. But we will never know for sure, just like everything else about Alaska.
Pudge compares himself to Alaska, “I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. 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.” (88)
At the end of the novel, Pudge reminisces about Alaska, “She taught me everything I knew about crawfish and kissing and pink wine and poetry. She made me different.” (pg 172) This goes back to when I mentioned that Alaska changed Pudge’s life, and also everyone she came into contact with, including our beloved supporting characters- the Colonel, Takumi, and Lara.
Pudge also mentions, “I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart” (218), which goes back to what Alaska had told him earlier, "We can't love our neighbors till we know how crooked their hearts are."
The enemy- After the story ends, John Green provides answers to some questions, one of them asking who the enemy of Looking for Alaska is. Green says the enemy is subjective, and I believe that there could be two possible enemies. The first possibility is that Alaska is the enemy, how she emotionally ripped apart Pudge and left him looking for her even when it was hopeless. The second possibility is that the enemy is not a person but rather the labyrinth. In fact, it gets everyone; it got Alaska, ever since her mother died and she didn’t do anything about it, carrying that weight of guilt with her throughout her whole life; for Pudge, Alaska herself was his labyrinth (also tying into my first theory of “who is the enemy”), and how he couldn’t figure her out; for the Colonel, it was his poor lifestyle and his anger toward the Weekend Warriors for being privileged.
Now- Was Alaska’s death a suicide or an accident? On page 160, the Colonel shared a theory, “…She’s driving along and sees the cop car and then in a flash everything comes together and the end to her labyrinth mystery is staring her right in the face and she just does it, straight and fast, just aims at the cop car and never swerves, not because she’s drunk but because she killed herself.” This was a frightening conclusion but it almost made sense, also going back to the labyrinth symbolism. Later, the crew learns that she was going to her mother’s grave but it still doesn’t answer the chilling question that was left for the readers to answer. I’d like to think that her death was an accident, but it could really go either way. On page 160, Pudge observes something that is very fitting here, “I’d rather wonder than get answers I couldn’t live with.” So that’s my take, and I’d like to know your opinion in the comments- was Alaska’s death a suicide or an accident?
