Monday, August 1, 2016

SUMMER ASSIGNMENT: Entry one

 Looking for Alaska by John Green tells a great story of a group of friends who all share the same traumatic experience but comprehend it in their own differents ways. It begins in Florida with the main character Miles, who later get renamed Pudge, as he prepares to go off to boarding school. The rest takes place at Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama where he then meets his soon-to-be best friends Chip Martin (aka coloniel) and Alaska. Pudge comes to this school in search of "A Great Perhaps" or in other words, some sort of meaning to his life. This becomes an internal conflict for him as he begins his endless earch. All throughout their time at this school, they begin to learn a lot about each other's past lives which unravels one of Alaska's internal conflicts. Her mother died when she was at a very young age but something about her mother's death had caused Alaska to carry a lot of guilt with her throughout her entire life. She had noticed her mother had fallen over one day and she just sat by her mother's side not knowing what to do and didn't think to cal 9-1-1 until it was too late; her mother had died of an aneurysm. This guilt later pushes Alaska to do something which creates the major conflict of the book. On the day of her mother's death, Alaska had gotten terribly drunk and had forgotten that she always puts flowers on her mother's grave. She then becomes angry with herself and decides to leave the school late at night driving as fast as she could. Pudge and the Coloniel later find out that Alaska is dead. Both characters along with several others begin to struggle with the idea that she is dead. They cannot figure out if Alaska simply just crashed, or succeeded with a plan of suicide. One question I have is how will Pudge's interest in last words play a part in the book? Will this story have a happy ending after Alaska's death? Looking For Alaska Collage Poster


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