Summer Looking For Alaska Response

Margot Supple
Blog Post #1

There was before, then there was after. In John Green’s “Looking for Alaska” the main character Miles goes to a new boarding school, (Colver Creek), to “find a great perhaps”. There he meets his new friends, Alaska Young, Takumi Hikohito, and Chip Martin, (Otherwise known as the Colonel). All three take Miles under their wing and show him how they function at Colver Creek, from smoking, drinking, and fooling their school headmaster, for once Miles feels at home. Throughout the book Miles learns about his friends and himself, while he finds his way through the “labyrinth of suffering”.

Alaska Young is a very complex character. But, behind every complex character is story, so I’ll start there. When Alaska was a kid her mother suffered from a seizure. Young, clueless, and mortified Alaska was unsure of what to do. She sat and watched her mother die until her dad came home. He then blamed her for it, and still did even when she was in boarding school. Later in the book you can find out that behind all the daring things that Alaska did, her memories were always haunting her. My theory is that she wanted to forget, and get out her “labyrinth of suffering”. For example, at one point Miles asks Alaska why she never goes home for vacation. Her reply was, ‘ I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them.’. Also, while every one is smoking together she says, ' You all smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die.'. At the end of the book, you realize her answer to escaping her labyrinth was death. At the end of the book Alaska hits a car driving and not swerving out of the way, killing herself. She thought that to head out the labyrinth straight and fast would be the real true answer, because no matter what you ignore or see your labyrinth is always there.

Miles thoughts on the labyrinth of suffering are very different from Alaska’s. He was always looking for a great perhaps, something he originally thought at the beginning of the book was automatically at the end of the labyrinth of suffering. But towards the end of the book he looked back at all the things he did with his friends that he would never do if he hadn't been with them, and he thought that the great perhaps is not the reward at the end of your journey. It's the journey itself. A feeling that you have completed your life, no matter what bad things happen in it. That's how he ended the book, handing in his end of year essay about Alaska. ' So I still believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe it in spite of having lost her.'.

We will all have our own labyrinth, and we will all have our own great perhaps. Many small actions can affect something very big. However, like Miles we should except what comes, when it comes. During your labyrinth you will find things you never knew about yourself, but wait for your great perhaps. As said in the book, ; Thomas Edison's last words were, "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I know it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.'