Looking For Alaska

The novel I chose to study, John Green’s Looking for Alaska, is a young adult fiction and realistic fiction novel. Looking for Alaska is considered a young adult fiction and realistic fiction novel because it is written in the perspective of a teenager and it effectively portrays teenage emotions and thoughts. Also, it uses language and topics that young adults would understand and find easy and fun to read. It is realistic fiction because it tells a story set in a present time frame, and it shares realistic characters with real-life problems. The main conflict and problem in the novel is relatable and realistic.

Looking for Alaska takes place mostly in Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. However, the novel begins in Florida where Miles

At his goodbye party, to which his parents invited his whole class, Miles is only greeted by two people whom he finds incredibly boring. Miles believes, and rightly so, that in order to find excitement in his life and reach his full potential he needs to leave Florida and his parents. He leaves seeking his own “great perhaps,” as the last words of François Rabelais suggests. Miles memorizes last words. He arrives at Culver Creek hoping to make friends and start a new life and sure enough, on the first day he makes friends with his roommate Chip “The Colonel” Martin. At this point in the novel, The Colonel has given Miles the nickname Pudge, because he is skinny. Promptly, Alaska is introduced, and what we know about her so far is that she 1. sells cigarettes 2. has a very flamboyant personality and a sense of humor 3. has books lining her walls and 4. is curvy and beautiful. At this point in the novel, Chip and Pudge are sitting at the lake on the Culver Creek campus and Chip is smoking a cigarette from the pack that Pudge unwillingly bought from Alaska. Being at the beginning of the novel, we know little about the major characters and setting but this passage does a great job of introducing them. I chose this excerpt of Looking for Alaska because it does a great job of introducing the personalities and mindsets of the three major

It portrays teenagers acting exactly how you would expect them to act in the situations they were put in. John Green launches the reader into Miles’s life and story by making him relatable and easy to love. Looking for Alaska is a very well written novel, because it gives the reader a strong bond to Miles and the people in his life. Also, he gives each of the characters a unique personality. Each character is so real and open, so uniquely themselves. To enhance the novel, Green adds details that make readers fall in love with the characters and the setting. He uses multiple literary techniques to give the reader a clear picture of what is going on. He adds details that make readers fall in love with the characters and the setting. Throughout the novel Green builds a passion and tension in the reader’s heart though Miles and his relationships; there is always a tension about the novel, leaving you wondering what will happen next and who will end up together. Green tugs on heartstrings with this novel, making a person feel a very real joy and a very real sorrow. As the story progresses, we learn more about the characters and we learn their histories and why they are the way they are, which only makes them more loveable. John Green also adds an element of suspense to the novel by splitting it in two parts. The reader has no knowledge of what happens