Paper Towns: A Literary Analysis

Often people go through life without grasping the importance of their existence or the great impact other people can make on their lives. Once people are thrown into a situation that requires them to look beyond themselves and analyze the world, they recognize ideas that help them comprehend the confusing components of life and the contrasting personalities of others. John Green’s Paper Towns explores these ideas through the eyes of Q Jacobsen, who embarks on a journey to understand and locate Margo Roth Spiegelman, whom he as loved from afar, after she recruits him on a midnight campaign of revenge and then mysteriously disappears. Q’s search for the real Margo has helped me see that there is power in the way one views life and the people around them.

Margo perceives life as though people have strings. The strings represent every aspect of that person and they can visualize the strings crossing and separating with the strings of others. They are also fragile, and by believing in the strings, Margo believes she lives in a world where she is irreparably broken, so she spends her life running away, preserving her last string. The poem Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, which Margo leaves for Q, describes life using blades of grass. People have a common root system and one can use this root system to understand and even “become” another. Whitman describes the optimism and peace he has in identifying with others, even if flawlessly understanding people seems impossible. Furthermore, Q envisions life as though people are airtight vessels. Trials cause the surface to crack, sinking is inevitable, but only through those cracks can one begin to “see out of [himself]...and into another”. Imagining the vessel allowed him to break the cycle of monotony in his life and reach out to his