Looking for Alaska, by John Green, is the coming of age story of Miles (Pudge) Halter who goes away to boarding school. It was on the page of her death that it happened. I found myself staring down at the dark crack between the pages, before and after. And I thought. This is where she died. How could he continue? To live and breathe with the crushing guilt that would get to so many. He is stuck in a labyrinth, a maze of problems and wrong turn. And in the end, was that the answer, his ticket out of the labyrinth of suffering? Forgiveness, but also growth, growth through maturity. Pudge grows so much during this book, transitioning from a nobody into a somebody, and all that time Alaska Young is leading him there.
In the beginning of the book, Pudge lives with his family in Florida. There, he leads a life fit for the vastly uninteresting, his only friends were the people he sat with at lunch by necessity. so he goes to boarding school to find the great perhaps. The last words of Francois Rabelais were “I go to seek the great perhaps.” And Pudge followed suit. In my opinion that’s where it all started. The moment he met Alaska, in that moment I knew he had found his great perhaps, and from that moment on he began to change. Alaska was “the larger than life creativity force behind it,” she did not force him to change, but rather push him into the deep end of a pool without telling him how to swim. Because of her life he learns to keep his head above water, as he struggles to become who he wants to be.
His next change is triggered by Alaska’s death; when she rammed head on in to a cop car without swerving. So many questions remained, was it suicide? an accident? She had been drunk, but too drunk to swerve? When he met her she said “’when you’re walking at night, do you ever get creeped out and even though it’s silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?’ it seemed too secret and personal to admit to a virtual stranger, but I told her, ‘yeah totally.’ She was quiet for a moment, then she grabbed my hand and whispered ‘Run run run run run.’” And that’s what she did; she pulled him in, as a person who he could find safety in, whom he could love, then spit him out new, shiny and battle worn with only the scars from his memory. It was then he began to take shape; it was then he began to take control. He stopped following people around like a puppy; he became his own person from then on. As they searched for the answer to her death, he started to play by his own rules. He wasn’t who the others wanted him to be, or the one that was never angry. He could speak for himself without agreeing. For example when the Colonel says “’we need to figure out where she was going and why’ he says ‘I don’t want to talk to Jake!’” He stands up for himself, and learns about his own limits.
By the end of the book, Pudge’s great perhaps has just begun. But in the beginning of the book Alaska read to him, The General and his Labyrinth and it said, “’he—that’s Simon Bolivar—‘was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at the moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. ‘Damn it,’ he sighed. ‘How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!’” this question follows Pudge throughout the book, morphing into the question, “how will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” He answers this question by saying forgiveness. I agree with his point but also believe that he forgot one small bit of it. Growth; he wouldn’t have been able to find his way out of the labyrinth a year ago. He would barely have begun to grasp the questions true meaning, because without experience you wander through the labyrinth unknowing. Alaska led him to not only the answer, but also to the question. Without her he would not have known that he was trapped in the labyrinth at all. Because of his seach for Alaska, Pudge was able to find his way out.
In the end, we are all stuck in a labyrinth of suffering. Sometimes we make mistakes and we must forgive ourselves, and the horrible mistakes we have made. And other times we must forgive others for the damage that is past. I think that the main lesson of this book, is that you cannot dwell in the past. Pushing forward is the only real way out of the labyrinth whether through forgiveness or acceptance, we must all grow up.
