John Michael Green was born on August 24, 1977. He is an American author, YouTube content creator, and podcaster. He won the 2006 Printz Award for his debut novel, Looking for Alaska, and has had several of his subsequent books debut at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list, including his most popular novel, The Fault in Our Stars.The 2014 film adaptation of The Fault in Our Stars opened at number one at the box office and was a commercial and critical success. In 2014, Green was included in Time magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World.Another film based on a Green novel, Paper Towns, was released on July 24, 2015.
Looking for Alaska is John Green’s first novel, published in March 2005 by Dutton Juvenile.
Looking for Alaska follows the novel’s main character and narrator Miles Halter, or “Pudge,” to boarding school where he goes to seek a “Great Perhaps,” the famous last words of François Rabelais. Throughout the ‘Before’ section of the novel, Miles and his friends Chip “The Colonel” Martin, Alaska Young, and Takumi Hikohito grow very close and the section culminates in Alaska’s death. In the second half of the novel, Miles and his friends work to discover the missing details of the night Alaska died. While struggling to reconcile Alaska’s death, Miles grapples with the last words of Simón Bolívar and the meaning of life, leaving the conclusion to these topics unresolved.After Alaska’s death, Pudge and Colonel investigate the circumstances surrounding the traumatic event. While looking for answers, the boys are subconsciously dealing with their grief, and their obsession with finding answers transforms into a search for meaning. Pudge and Colonel want to find out the answers to certain questions surrounding Alaska’s death, but in reality, they are enduring their own labyrinths of suffering, a concept central to the novel. When their theology teacher Mr. Hyde poses a question to his class about the meaning of life, Pudge takes this opportunity to write about it as a labyrinth of suffering. He accepts that it exists and admits that even though the tragic loss of Alaska created his own labyrinth of suffering, he continues to have faith in the “Great Perhaps,'” meaning that Pudge must search for meaning in his life through inevitable grief and suffering. Literary scholar from the University of Northern British Columbia Barb Dean analyzes Pudge and the Colonel’s quest for answers as they venture into finding deeper meaning in life. Because this investigation turns into something that is used to deal with the harsh reality of losing Alaska, it leads to Pudge finding his way through his own personal labyrinth of suffering and finding deeper meaning to his life.
There are a lot of interesting quotes that i would like to talk about, but they are so much so i will present few of them and then i will talk about, my favorite one.
1.“I’ve always liked quiet people: You never know if they’re dancing in a daydream or if they’re carrying the weight of the world.”
2. I still did not know her as I wanted to, but I never could. She made it impossible for me.”
3. “I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart.”
4. “Because memories fall apart, too. And then you’re left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow.”
5. “It’s like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.”
6. “I needed … to really know her, because I needed more to remember.”
7. “I’m really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.”
My favorite quote is the last one. “I’m really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what.” I love this quote so much, I liked that the girl Alaska didn’t like to answer any question that started with how, when where, why and what because I think she was scared that if she answered any of those question, everyone will know everything about her, they will figure out her problems, they will start to know her. I think she liked being by herself, she didn’t want anyone to start living with her live, her problems, everything that belonged to her.
Ռուզան Գասպարյանի բլոգ 