John Green's Symbolism In Looking For Alaska

The labyrinth is the most important symbol in Looking For Alaska. The labyrinth is an allusion towards the main characters as they take different paths in the labyrinth. For Alaska, her only way out of the labyrinth is ‘straight and fast’. The colonel’s way out of his labyrinth, is to suffer through it. But Pudge, believes that the only way out of the labyrinth, is to forgive.

John Green’s, Looking For Alaska, is a book about the lives of a group of teenagers and how their experience, alone and together, shape their lives as they grow towards adulthood. The main character, Miles Halter, lives a boring and lonely life. He has no friends and wonders what he is missing and decides to go to boarding school in Culver Creek to try to search for his “Great Perhaps” (5), what lies beyond his known, safe life. The reader follows Miles’ journey as he makes friends, falls in love, takes risks, has fun experiences and deals with immense grief at death of Alaska. Looking for Alaska has been the subject of much debate, controversy and complaints and has been banned numerous times due to the inclusion of sexual content, alcohol

Pat Conroy’s memoir, “The Water is Wide,” is about his life on Daufuskie Island, also known as Yamacraw Island in the book. Conroy spent a year teaching on the island in a little two room schoolhouse. The Yamacrawans were rural African-American people that by leaving on the island had basically no knowledge of anything beyond the island. Conroy tells of all the troubles he faced while teaching on the island and all the struggles he faced with outside forces. Conroy uses the setting, the title of his book, symbolism, and different themes to express what the year he spent teaching there was like.

Despite his inexperience at living off the land, Chris Mccandless managed to survive in the Alaskan wilderness for a time. His adventures across the United States contributed to honing his skills at surviving with inadequate supplies, little money, and few essential tools. Unfortunately This was not enough, and his inexperience on the finer points of outdoor living and general knowledge of particular subjects proved to create more challenges, and finally this inexperience killed him. Particularly, with his successful kill of a moose we see a perfect example of his ignorance, “Then on June 9, he bagged the biggest prize of all: “MOOSE!” (166.) His tendency to brashly tackle everything head on with will and determination ultimately led to his demise, “Overjoyed, the proud hunter took a photograph of himself kneeling over his trophy, rifle triumphantly overhead, his features distorted in a rictus of ecstasy and amazement.” (166.)

After reading the excerpt from Looking for Alaska by John Green it is evident that the speaker is an extremely introverted individual who feels indifferent towards his guests. He mentions how he could “feel their pity”, but then goes on to say that “they needed more pity than I did”. This implies that although the speaker is most certainly an introvert he does not feel the need to make acquaintances with others. He does not have any desire of becoming friends with people who only speak to him out of pure pity. The speaker also mentions how the dip and chips were “intended for my imaginary friends”, which shows that he does not usually expect company any ways. The fact that his friends are “imaginary” clearly shows that he never had any friends

In the book Looking For Alaska by John Green, we learn about a quiet and very shy going to his graduation party with only two friends from high school. The young man's name is Miles halter and he is leaving for prep school at Culver Creek Preparatory School. This young man seems to have a personality that's very shy and antisocial. It even says in the book “Said cavalry consisted of exactly two people: Marie Lawson, a tiny blonde with rectangular glasses, and her chunky (to put it charitably) boyfriend, Will. (Green 1)” What this shows is that Miles doesn't like to do many extracurricular activities and is very shy in school. The point when he decides to not become shy and step out of his shell is when he decides to smoke a cigarette. In

Pudge liked staying alone in his house, reading biographies, and keeping quiet. After Pudge met and fell in love with Alaska, he changed. Before Pudge had gone to Culver Creek and met Alaska, Pudge was significantly different, Pudge thinks to himself,“Although I was more or less forced to invite all my ‘school friends’... I had kept my popularity secret from her [Pudge’s mom] all these years.”

Friendship is an important part of everyone’s life, the basis of friendship is trust and loyalty. Loyalty isn't all good, it can lead to amazing events, but also devastating ones. In John Green's book Looking for Alaska loyalty proves both good and bad, it leads to both happiness, sadness and regret which in turn affects each character. The characters Alaska, Miles and Chip all display the distinct characteristic of loyalty. This character trait leads to many positive aspects of life, such as friendship, but consequently it leads to Alaska’s death.

Alaska. The word conjures images of majestic mountains, deep-blue glaciers, adventure, and quite possibly the most extreme and rugged place on Earth. My family spent one of the greatest weeks of our lives there this past summer.

He came to Culver Creek in search of "The Great Perhaps" which were François Rabelais (The great poet, 1483-1553) last words; Miles quoted "Francois Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps." He eventually got his great perhaps in the form of Alaska Young when he falls deeply in love for her. He had his own theory of escaping the labyrinth in the beginning when he came to Culver Creek. “Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by the last words of the already dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.” But the company of Alaska and Chip transformed him from an obedient teen to a rebellion who drinks alcohol and smokes cigarettes. His life took a great turn again when Alaska dies and she leaves him high and dry; trying to find the reason she died and the guilt of not making any effort whatsoever to change the outcome of the night she died in a tragic accident. But this death of Alaska changes his views about life and labyrinth that he experienced after the

In the book, Looking for Alaska by John Green, Pudge had multiple sources of help. The many people who had influenced him or helped him were the Colonel, Takumi, Lara, the Eagle, the police officer, his parents, and even Dr. Hyde. Pudge had lots of support throughout the long process of overcoming his grief. The Colonel, Takumi, and Lara all knew Alaska and they supported each other. The Eagle had thought of Alaska as his own daughter, and even Dr. Hyde liked Alaska and had the students write a paper about Alaska’s ending papers question.

It seems natural to think about novels in terms of dreams or psychoanalytical realities. Like dreams, novels are fictions, inventions of the mind that, though based on reality, are by definition not exactly and literally true. Conversely, dreams may have some truth to tell but like novels their truth must be interpreted before it can be grasped. Such is the case with John Green's young adult novel, Looking for Alaska. It holds many truths that are relevant to young adults, but to extract those lessons, one must first view the plot and characters through a lens of psychoanalytical theory.

John Green argues within looking for Alaska for a view the world is a labyrinth. In general life is not fair “I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist”(Green 219) Pudge(the protagonist) says this in his essay to answer the question “damn it! How will I ever get out of this labyrinth.” “You've got nothing to be sorry for chip there was nothing you could have done”. But if only she knew. Madame o'malley tells this to the Colonel as he was having a mental mishap. Even though that the author never said Colonel feels damned about Alaska's death. He implies, it “the colonel was screaming inhale,scream I realized he was screaming “I'm So sorry”. (Green 141) Colonel thinks that it's all his fault

John Steinbeck Uses Symbolism to show how the main characters have hope in there american dream.  Hope is symbolised as light and hopelessness is symbolised as dark, in the book the characters notice “When Curleys wife first apears in the bunkhouse, both lennie and george notice the rectange of sunshine in the doorway is cut off.”  When they first arrive full of hope with the sunshine(light) coming in through the door than Curleys wife blocks it, it symbolsis that Curelys wife is blocking off there hope for there american dream.  This qoute is also foreshadowing that Curelys wife will also will ruin there american dream and cut of all of the little hope they have left.  He also uses the of the sun in the seanory of each paragraph “The sun came

Looking for Alaska is a book about a boy named Miles that goes away to a private school called Culver Creek were he meets a group of friends that he starts to hang out with throughout the year. He becomes very good friends with everyone and they begin to let him in on their secret spot called "the smoking hole", where they all smoke their cigarettes without getting in trouble. Soon he starts to get a crush on a girl named Alaska, which seems to already have a boyfriend. As soon as Miles starts to fall in love with her a horrible thing happens. Alaska dies in a terrible car accident, which turns into a very mysterious and confusing death. When Miles and the other boys get the news, they start fighting to find out the truth on what really happened. After reading this novel, one is left with the question, "How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?"