True Identity In John Green's 'Looking For Alaska'

In the text, “Klondike Gold Rush” and “A Woman Who Went To Alaska”, both share many different things. In this case their point a view was different. That is what I will be discussing today!

In A Woman Who Went to Alaska, it takes a differnt perspective of teh Klondike gold rush as to focusing on

The freezing Alaskan wilderness is one in the stars of both To Build a Fire and the Call of the Wild. “The Yukon lay a mile wide and hidden under three feet of ice,” quoted Jack London in his short story, To Build a Fire. The Yukon mention in the previous quote is a river that is located

Following the impulses of his romantic notions, Christopher McCandless finds himself ill-equipped in the Alaskan winter of 1992. A far cry from the “good life,” the terrain is “no picnic” with its “big and fast” rivers and “mosquitoes [that] eat [people] alive” (4-5). Within the forest lies the abandoned remains of a Faribanks City Transit System bus, an ominous reminder of what once was when man lived on the land. However, the vehicle eventually came to be recognized as a refuge for hunters during their expeditions. This all changed “in early

Looking For Alaska is a dynamic novel which was published in 2005 by Dutton Books, and is written by world famous John Green. The story which John Green tells is about a group of intelligent but lost teenagers, who are freshmen in Culver Creek Boarding School. The story revolves around Alaska Young, Miles "Pudge" Halter and Chip "Cornel" Martins. These teens are contrary to shallow, more or less opposite; and their thoughts are as deep as the Mariana Trench. Their complicated way of looking at life, seeking simplicity and grasp in a complex world eventually hurts them.

Through this short story, John Cheever describes this character that goes by the name Neddy Merrill. He talks about his road to accomplishing his dream, which is swimming through the county. During this process Neddy came upon many obstacles to fulfill this goal of swimming across the county, some of these transgressions had physically, mentally, and emotionally hurt him. Needy had many doubts about his journey but told himself he came too far to quit or give up. Wildly expressing the character unfilled decisions, actions and last-minute planning, Cheever illustrates many rhetorical devices that portrays everything Neddy went through during his voyage. The author conveys flashbacks, pathos, and imagery through this short story that gives the reader a clear and understanding visual of Neddys safari.

Simon Bolivar’s last words were, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!” This labyrinth is an allusion of suffering. Francois Rabelais’s last words were “I go to seek a Great Perhaps,” which is an allusion for hope. Pudge, The Colonel, and Alaska are all in a labyrinth of suffering and cope with it in different ways to try and find the exit. In “Looking for Alaska” the characters deal with the labyrinth by thinking that there is no escape, that you have a choice to be in it, and that you can escape by finding a “Great Perhaps.”

And finally, the beautifully damaged, larger-than-life Alaska Young. As her name implies, she is so young to have the problems that she has and meet such an untimely demise. She is also aptly named Alaska because she is (or wishes to be) an unknown, mysterious, possibly dangerous frontier to her schoolmates. We learn well into the novel, that Alaska experienced a horrible tragedy when she was little: her mother had an aneurysm and died in front of her. Alaska, in shock, was unable to take any action to save her mother and has since tried to control situations with her own volatility and unpredictability. She manipulates those around her by alternating between being a misunderstood victim and an instigator of mischief.

“giving him a of the whole icy sweep of the Alaska Range and mile after mile of inhabited country” (164)

“How does the geography of Alaska make it difficult to explore and settle:” both during the Klondike gold rush and still today?” Well, to start this off simple, the cold. The cold is one of the key things, if not the most important reason in this essay. Sometimes in Alaska it can go below freezing, and the cold seems like a very simple answer at first, but! They need to settle, work, and climb in it, the things that they need to do to get what they need, in this case oil, it will not be a very simple job. And most of the time they come back empty handed, so the payoff is worth it, and the money they waste is not the thing they worry about. Because sometimes they go home empty handed, but sometimes they don’t come home at all. And it’s more than you think.

In Jon Krakauer’s adventure novel, Into the Wild, Christopher McCandless goes through a curious topic in his early 20s. One gets to know McCandless throughout the story and witness “the grip wilderness has on the American imagination" as he survives in nature. Krakauer portrays McCandless’s journey as an internal struggle between being isolated from society and forming intimate relationships with others, particularly his family. However, toward this late journal entry, McCandless discovers a need for human contact through his solitary travels and was ready to reenter society, which demonstrates his reconciliation between his want of self-isolation and his deep need of connecting with others.

“The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive”(Green, 213). This seemingly simple sentence from the end of John Green’s novel Looking for Alaska is not as simple as it seems, for it is what identifies the most important theme in the book. The best way to show how this quote truly expresses the greater meaning behind our story, we have to compare the journeys of our two main characters Alaska and Pudge, or more so, their individual endings.

Alaska’s geography is difficult to explore because of the people traveling by foot, lots of snow, ice and dangerous wild animals. Would you go through all this just for a piece of gold? Many people have gone through this in the Alaskan history.

London describes the landscape in great detail saying “North and south, as far as his eye could see, it was unbroken white, save for a dark hairline that curved and twisted from around the spruce-covered island to the south, and that curved and twisted away into the north, where it disappeared behind another spruce-covered island" (850). This quote contributes to the unemotional, and indifferent mood that we as readers get from the story. It represents the attitude nature has toward the man. The Yukon is an immensely vast landscape, "this dark hairline was the trail -the main trail- that led south five hundred miles to the Chilcoot Pass, Dyea, and the salt water; and that led north seventy miles to Dawson, and still on the north a thousand miles to Nulato, and finally to St. Michael, on Bering Sea a thousand miles and half a thousand more" (850). This shows that even when the man attempted to run back to camp he never had a chance. Nature never gave the man a chance. The landscape is so large that he would never have reached civilization in

For example, smoking, the kids go to the beach like shoreline and smoke. The time period in which Looking for Alaska takes place is, modern day twenty first century. The setting is very important to the story; the story would not be what it is without these two unique settings. The story is divided into two very important parts, before the accident, and after the accident. 2.