Tolog Review: Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska
by John Green
reviewed by Ellis DeJardin

One word that comes to mind when referring to high school is “rough.” In his novel Looking for Alaska, John Green does a great job at highlighting the ups and downs in which one can experience during those four years of high school: making friends, pulling pranks, curiosity, getting in trouble, trying new things, romance, and loss.

Transferring high schools to Culver Creek, a boarding school, the main character Miles “Pudge” Halter is faced with the grueling heat of Alabama and the embarrassment having no friends. He has a unique hobby of learning the last words of famous figures: not the typical pastime of teenaged boys. He especially obsesses over two quotes that seem to make him question life more deeply: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps,” and “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!” Both statements contain a hidden meaning that Pudge constantly ponders on, and they set an overall theme for the book.

Upon starting his junior year at a new high school, he makes new friends named Chip “Colonel” Martin, Alaska Young, Takumi Hikohito, and Lara Buterskaya. In the beginning of the novel, Pudge is actually bullied for being friends with the Colonel by the Weekday Warriors, the group of snotty rich kids who get to go back home every weekend, but this occurrence only makes the bond between Pudge and the Colonel even stronger. Pudge also is attracted to Alaska as soon as he lays his eyes on her, but finds out that she already has a boyfriend. Her attitude and behavior towards him, however, nearly drives him insane, for she can be flirtatious one moment, then angry the next.

When an unfortunate event turns the world upside down for the group of colleagues, their visions become blurry and the meaning of life becomes more important than ever. As a product of this tragedy, however, the band of comrades investigates the true meaning of the “Great Perhaps” and look for the way out of “this labyrinth of suffering.”