10th Grade Summer Reading Assignment: Entry One: Looking For Alaska

For my summer reading assignment I chose Looking For Alaska by John Green. The three major characters in this novel are Miles Halter (Pudge), Chip Martin (The Colonel), and Alaska Young (Alaska). The lesser major characters would be Takumi and Lara. Minor characters include Dr. Hyde, Kevin, The Eagle, and Jake (Alaska's boyfriend). The setting of this book is a present day (2005) boarding school named Culver Creek Preparatory School, just fifteen miles south of Birmingham, Alabama.

There are several main conflicts in this book. The first of which would be Pudge's smitten troubles towards Alaska. Pudge had fallen in love with Alaska early on in the storyline and, and Alaska comments on his "cuteness" several times throughout the before section, or first "half" of the novel, but then immediate always says "too bad I have a boyfriend". Another one of the main conflicts throughout the novel would be Pudge's search for a 'Great Perhaps'. "I go to seek a Great          Perhaps" were Francois Rabelais's last words, and Pudge's reason for going to Culver Creek, seeing as his obsession, like that of coin collecting, is memorizing famous people's last words.

The last main conflict in this novel word be that of 'The Labyrinth'. Alaska, knowing of Pudge's obsession with memorizing last words, asked if he knew Simon Bolivar's last words. When Pudge replied 'no', Alaska proceeded to tell them to him. His last words she read from a book called The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, were "Damn it, (sigh), how will I ever get out of this Labyrinth?" This 'Labyrinth' seems to be Alaska's equivalent of a 'Great Perhaps'. After a bit more of conversational talking, Alaska proceeded to make a deal with Pudge. If he were to figure out what the Labyrinth is and how to get out of it, she'd get him laid, "(Or at least get him a girlfriend.

At this point, I predicted that Alaska and Pudge would eventually become boyfriend and girlfriend, and with the knowledge of the after "half" of the novel, "After. Nothing is ever the same," straight from the back cover, I predicted that something horrible would happen to one of them. My biggest and most pressing question is "is Pudge Alaska's escape from her 'Labyrinth', whatever the 'Labyrinth may be?"

Looking For Alaska connects more/most closely to Navigating Early by Clare Vanderpool first off by the last word of the title being a secondary major character's first name. It also relates in that the main protagonist goes off to a border school, far from the place he calls home. the third way it relates is through the Mathematician named Dr. Stanton, who predicts that the number pi will end, seeing as the number one, pi himself, is no longer appearing in the latest string of discovered digits. This is the equivalent of the 'Great Perhaps'. The equivalent for the search of what the 'Labyrinth was is equivalent to Jack (Jackie) Baker and Early Auden's 'quest' for the searching and finding of 'pi'.