John Green’s Looking for Alaska is a standalone novel.
Miles “Pudge Halter has lived a long boring life. His obsession with the last words of famous people has caused him to crave a more exciting life. In search for excitement, he transfers to Culver Creek Boarding School. There he meets a number of friends including the self-destructive Alaska Young. Her clever and reckless behavior pulls Pudge into a new world and changes his life forever.
Pudge is a very relatable protagonist. In almost all ways, he is average. He isn’t particularly brave, intelligent or courageous. He lives a seemingly meaningless life and craves excitement. While his only unique quirk is his obsession with last words, his average personality makes his stand out. He feels and thinks like a real complex person. He learns, grows, and falls apart with each new experience. He is the average relatable teenager yet he is also the reader.
Looking for Alaska is an amazing read. It is well written and asks questions about suffering and loss. The plot progresses at a decent pace that doesn’t change. This book is a coming of age story. While many coming of age stories are about the characters, this one is about questions. While each character has a unique quirk, none of them is particularly deep or special. While this is normally a problem, John Green manages to make it amazing. These characters have qualities we can find in our own friends and Pudge is a character that could be the reader. Instead of detracting from the experience, the characters make the book more personal. Pudge could be anyone. He meets someone he is attracted to and picks up many bad habits because of this person. He grows and changes, suffers heartbreak and loss, and is forced to deal with it. While this is my interpretation of the book, I believe that it could be interpreted in many ways. This is why the book has mixed reviews. It is a book with questions that also describes what it is like to be a teenager.