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A Romantic, Young Adult Novel, Paper Towns by John Green

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Paper Towns by John Green is a somewhat romantic young adult novel. The novel’s overlying central idea is that people are not made of paper. They have dimensions; unexposed sides to themselves that the world may never see. A person can never truly be known, because the human mind is a complex thing, filled with nooks and crannies never to be exposed. Quentin, a nerdy high school senior, is, and always has been, infatuated with his next door neighbor Margo Roth Spiegelman. Quentin describes this situation by saying, “My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivision of Florida, I ended up living next to Margo Roth Spiegelman” (Green 1). Previously best friends, the two have become largely independent of one another, almost never speaking or even sharing a friendly glance. Until one night, Margo breaks into Q’s window and takes him on a wild night of revenge against her enemies. Expecting to run into Margo at school the next day, Quentin finds that she has gone missing, presumably run away. After learning about Margo’s tendency of leaving breadcrumb trails, Q soon discovers the clues, and they are for him. As a whole, the novel is quite cleverly broken up into three parts; The Strings, The Grass, and The Vessel. Each part of the novel corresponds with a metaphor of the same name. The first metaphor, the strings, takes a dark look at things. After the young Q and Margo find the body of a man who killed himself, Margo says, “Maybe all the strings

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