Labyrinth Of Suffering In Alaska Young

Death- the one thing in life that no one can avoid. One of the main characters, Alaska Young, learns this firsthand. Alaska is Miles’ love interest at Culver Creek Boarding School. She is smart and she loves quoting poetry, but she can also be moody and unpredictable. Alaska decides that the biggest question in life is how to “escape the labyrinth of suffering.” In actuality, Alaska hides her true inner conflict, the death of a loved one which fills her past. John Green exemplifies the theme of death through the characterization of Alaska Young.

The background of Alaska young was taken over by the death of her beloved mother when she was just eight years old. John Green emphasizes the impact of Alaska’s mom’s death through a direct quote from Alaska. Alaska says, “So I just sat there on the floor with her until my dad got home an hour later, and he’s screaming

‘Why didn’t you call 911?’ and trying to give her CPR but by then she was plenty dead” (119). This shows that Alaska’s mom had a pretty traumatic death and Alaska had panicked when it happened. Alaska thinks that her dad blames her for the death, but it appears as if Alaska blames herself. Miles starts having thoughts after Alaska tells him the story and he states, “There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow- that in short, we are all going” (120). Miles is saying that everyone will die at some point and they don’t always get a chance at saving themselves. Alaska didn’t want to believe that her mom just went away like that. Alaska has accepted this now but her guilt and emptiness still get the best of her. This is when she was first introduced to death and now she wants to figure out the best way to die. Death came into her life at a very young age and it had never left her mind.
Alaska thinks about and talks about death more than anyone she knows.

She says some enthralling things and has a spur of thoughts here and there that lead her to start asking questions about it. On page 44 Alaska says, “Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.” Due to the guilt that consumes her from her mom’s death, Alaska participates in self-destructive activities like smoking. The substances provide her with an escape from her sadness. After reading a novel by Simon Bolivar, Alaska is fascinated with a specific question and she tells Miles that she wants to try and answer. Alaska says, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth. Suffering. Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering” (82)? This quote relates perfectly to Alaska because her pain is her mom’s death. She suffers every day of her life and she wants to end all that suffering but she doesn’t know how to yet. While her friends are trying to figure out how to live, she is figuring out how to escape from

life.
Alaska’s actions in the book led to her personal death. Alaska leaves Culver Creek at night when she’s drunk and gets into a car crash. When cleaning her dorm room a couple days after her death, Miles and the Colonel find the book by Simon Bolivar and they flip to the page where it talks about the labyrinth. “The whole passage was underlined in bleeding, water-soaked black ink. But there was another ink, this one a crisp blue, post-flood, and an arrow led from ‘How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!’ to a margin note written in her loop-heavy cursive: Straight & Fast” (155). This shows that Alaska’s death could have possibly been a suicide. Straight and fast was the only thought that she had when she had aimed at the other car. Alaska must have believed that their was no other way for her to die. After much thinking of what went into the death, Miles says, “And if Alaska took her own life. That is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother and her friends and herself- those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct.” Miles is saying that it was not necessary for her to commit suicide. He believes that she could have lasted a little longer and that she was living to much of her life in the past. He feels guilty just like Alaska did when her mother passed and it is hard for anyone to not feel any guilt after any death because there is always that one thought that’s telling you that you could have helped the person avoid it.
John Green exemplifies the theme of death through Alaska’s past life, her speech and thoughts, and her own actions.