Looking For Alaska By John Green

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Recommended: Importance of young adults literature in educational curriculum

Looking for Alaska
Literary Research Project

Introduction:
Looking for Alaska is told from the perspective of Miles, and his experience. This leads a reader to hypothesize that John Green wrote this book based on personal experiences, to capture experiences of his youth, and conveyed through the eyes of Miles Pudge Halter.
Looking for Alaska was written by John Green, in 2005, and was his first novel. This novel is aimed at an audience of young adults. It is a story of a teenage, high school boy, named Miles “Pudge” Halter, whom leaves Florida to attend boarding school in Alabama. This novel discusses the journey of Miles’ search for a greater understanding of life and the world around him. He refers to this as the “Great Perhaps” (Green, 2005). Miles’ has led a non-eventful life, with few friends and few events of “interest or excitement” in his life in Florida. For his junior year, Miles’ decides he will attend Culver Creek High School, an elite boarding school in Alabama, in search of a higher understanding and experience life on his own terms, despite his parent’s beliefs that it is because he has few friends. Miles also loves to memorize “famous last words” of famous people (Publishers Weekly 7Feb2005).
Miles meets and immediately becomes friends with a teenage boy named Chip. Chip has given himself the nickname of “The Colonel”, and ironically bestows the nickname of “Pudge” to Miles. This is humorously ironic, as Miles is a taller, skinny young man, and not pudgy in the least. As Miles begins to adjust to this new school, he experiences a significant level of hazing by rich students that are referred to as Weekend Warriors. As Pudge continues at Culver Creek, his favorite class becomes World re...

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... themes of love, loss, grief, and finding purpose in life are easy to relate to.
The novel says a great deal about humanity. It covers global topics that many if not most teenagers and even adults deal with every day. This novel represents for most of humanity, even in the face of feeling lost, or suffering grief, that there is always “hope” and personal resiliency, and a way to move on a forward. Even if we are searching for a greater meaning in life, and determining our personal beliefs of religion, that you can still celebrates someone’s life, no matter how short or long a life they live. Even if it is “prank” to commemorate someone’s life. We can always take something good away from the interactions of those that impact our life. You define who you are, but can find love, enlightenment, joy, sorrow and resiliency from the friends that become family.

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