My younger brother gave me a copy of The Fault in Our Stars for Christmas this year, and when he gave it to me, he made an interesting observation. Like me, my brother is an avid reader and he'll read just about anything -- but apparently, John Green is not for him. He tried and just could not read The Fault in Our Stars, but apparently his female roommates are just in love with not only that book, but all of John Green's novels. When I mentioned that I was reading Looking for Alaska, he just rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, that's their favorite one," his tone suggesting that there was no way he could get it.
I'm surprised by this, honestly. I mean, I have no surprise that his female friends love these books, especially given how much I enjoy them, but I am surprised that he couldn't get into a Green novel. Here's why: a LOT of Green's main characters are teenage males, and obviously Green is a male author himself. But my brother, a nice, smart, and relatively emotionally attuned guy who is not too far out of high school yet, found no points of connection with Green or his characters. I'm not sure what to make of this. Since this conversation, I've wondered if perhaps I should talk to my students about how they respond to Green's work or ask my librarian if many boys check out his books. Maybe my brother's aversion to the novel stems from the stereotyping of American males -- they are still often taught to bottle up emotions, a lesson that comes from more than just parents in our society. Maybe the frankness of the emotions as Green writes them are too much to deal with or are too real and suppressed. I don't honestly know, and it's especially confusing to me because my brother and I are fairly close; I know he's not emotionally suppressed, nor does he have trouble expressing cares or grief or any other major emotional player in a John Green novel. Ultimately my only answers are just pure speculation, but I am curious nonetheless.
I don't feel that I'm really giving anything away here (the symbolism of the snuffed candle on the book cover is pretty heavy-handed), but nonetheless: I'm going to spoil part of the book in this post. If you don't want me to, despite all the clues Green himself lays, stop reading now.
The main character of Looking for Alaska, Pudge (aka Miles, so nicknamed Pudge thanks to his super-skinny figure), starts the novel by attempting to change his life. He moves to a boarding school, away from his traditional but boring high school, leaving to seek what he calls "a Great Perhaps." He wants something beyond his average existence, and he certainly gets it.
Life at Culver Creek Preparatory High School could be boring, but not with friends like the ones Pudge finds. The Colonel, Pudge's roommate, instantly adds drama to Pudge's life, and the introduction of Alaska Young only heightens that drama. Pudge develops an instant crush on Alaska, a crush that can't be realized since she has a college boyfriend. But that doesn't stop the friendship that grows, and Pudge becomes one of the gang before long. He learns the underlying rules of the school, and he develops loyalties that are deeper than anything else he's experienced in his life.
Pudge is happy, at least for the most part. His intelligence is above average and often piqued by challenges that put off his friends -- challenges like his religion teacher's off-the-wall ideas about religion's place in civilization. Exploring the world is right up Pudge's alley, and he does his best, but he usually ends up spending more of his time playing pranks with his friends. He is more functional than many of his peers, many of whom drink or smoke themselves silly or struggle in their personal relationships. Pudge is a character of depth, that much is for sure; in fact, even as I enjoyed getting to know him, I wondered at times if perhaps Green had written him too well, too wise and reasonable to be realized as the mere high schooler he is.
Sometimes while reading I wondered if he was quite real, and then I watched Alaska die.
Any novel (or at least the good ones) that deals with death, especially the death of someone close to the main character, must deal with the five stages of death and grief. In order to earn the respect of a reader, the author must demonstrate that rudimentary understanding and application of psychology, lest someone cry foul when they read it. But even with that in mind -- knowing that I'm expecting that Pudge will go through each one, knowing that the stages change order and repeat and move about, knowing from sadly personal experience what makes those stages real -- even with all of this in mind, Alaska Young's death feels real, like I too was her friend.
Part of what makes us human is how we deal with death, and the characters here are no exception. Sadly, I have watched too many teens deal with death -- a close friend lost her father when we were only 16, and my district and students experienced the very sudden loss of three students at the beginning of this year. We all experience the same horror, the same disbelief, when death occurs, and we all travel through those stages. Death is a part of life, and its handling is an important part of what makes us human.
Sometimes, like Pudge and the Colonel, we struggle immensely with the 'why' of death. Alaska's death leaves an enormous "why" behind: the boys honestly don't know what happened, why she drove off in such a hurry in the middle of the night, how she didn't see the cop car she fatally collided with, what the white tulips in the passenger seat mean. The second half of the book is their investigation into Alaska's death, and it chronicles not only their discoveries but also their struggles with denial, with anger, with mind-numbing depression. Like many teen boys, Pudge and the Colonel sometimes face death by taking their lives into their hands. This is the stereotypical teen reaction: I am invincible, so even in the face of loss, I am not going to back down. They do crazy things, and sometimes I had to step away to process just how dumb they are being. (This feeling is familiar as a teacher, but nevertheless, I don't enjoy it.) But at other times, they make decisions that are heartfelt and warm and filled with reverence for their friend. It's a moving and heart-wrenching thing to witness, but an impressive accomplishment for John Green as an author.
With all of the crazy behavior of this novel, I have to wonder at the comparison between this novel's high school existence and my own. This is a common thought for me; as a high school teacher, I see crazy teenage behavior literally constantly. In fact, just today I watched multiple students receive gigantic out-of-school suspensions for drug-related issues. And while that may be an extreme example, and I certainly have never regretted my decision to forgo drug use in any form, I do sometimes wonder if my high school experience wasn't quite normal. Some tiny part of me reads a book like this, watches my students do these crazy things, and wonders, Should I have been doing stuff like this, partying like this, before? when I was that age?
In Looking for Alaska, that crazy life seems to be what Pudge is seeking. He had a relatively boring high school life before he moved to boarding school, with boring school-only friends and not much happening on really any level (or so the exposition of the novel would make it seem). When he finds friends, especially those who are smoking and drinking and having lots of sex and stuff like that, he's happy. He doesn't necessarily engage in all those behaviors, but he obviously wants to engage in some (like sex) and experiments with others (drinking and smoking, just to name two). And he immerses himself in friendships that revolve around those vices; if Alaska and the Colonel aren't drinking or smoking, it's a rare scene.
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| This is Alaska's justification for smoking while studying for a pre-calc test: the cigs might kill her, but dammit, she'll be able to do calculus. |
But if I could, would I change any of that, exchange it for parties and drinking and all that crazy stuff that Pudge and the Colonel and Alaska seem to find so crucial? No. I know this is related to the kind of person I am, but still: I wonder about why this is the mainstream picture of high school that we so commonly receive. I wonder if, indeed, people's high school experiences were actually like this, or if this is just a projection of what we all assume high school should have been, even if we didn't actually get it.
Final Note: I know this post jumps around a bit, and for that I'm sorry. It took me a long time to process and write, and so the transitions became a little rough out of thinking and necessity.
