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In my previous post I jumped the gun and wrote about finishing Looking For Alaska by John Green before I actually had. I had about fifteen pages, give or take, left. As I finished the book I was struck and I had to sit there in silence for a while before I turned the book over and saw that it was published in 2005. If anyone is interested in reading the book so I wont spoil it I'm going to finish my post under a cut.
Two years before Nick died in a car accident was this book published.
The main character's name is Miles and he leaves his home where he has grown to seek a Great Perhaps, something fulfilling and enlightening. Something he knew he could not reach or find if he stayed where he had grown. He goes to a new school where he meets a girl named Alaska, who chose her name because of its meaning, which is "that which the sea breaks against", it comes from an Aleut word, Alyeska. Now, Alaska is troubled with the question "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" So much that it becomes something Miles is obsessed with as well, it is the question he feels everyone thinks throughout their life, the labyrinth is a metaphor for numerous things depending on how you can relate it to your own life. Everyone makes their own labyrinth.
Nevertheless, Miles is in love with Alaska, he never really knows her, but he loves a girl named Alaska. She loves white flowers. She gets in a car accident, she has been drinking and she is killed instantly. She is killed on January 10th.
Miles troubles himself with questions that I once troubled myself with. I think that if I would have had this book then it would have helped me understand and think about life and death a little differently.
"Awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need to be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."
Two years before Nick died in a car accident was this book published.
The main character's name is Miles and he leaves his home where he has grown to seek a Great Perhaps, something fulfilling and enlightening. Something he knew he could not reach or find if he stayed where he had grown. He goes to a new school where he meets a girl named Alaska, who chose her name because of its meaning, which is "that which the sea breaks against", it comes from an Aleut word, Alyeska. Now, Alaska is troubled with the question "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?" So much that it becomes something Miles is obsessed with as well, it is the question he feels everyone thinks throughout their life, the labyrinth is a metaphor for numerous things depending on how you can relate it to your own life. Everyone makes their own labyrinth.
Nevertheless, Miles is in love with Alaska, he never really knows her, but he loves a girl named Alaska. She loves white flowers. She gets in a car accident, she has been drinking and she is killed instantly. She is killed on January 10th.
Miles troubles himself with questions that I once troubled myself with. I think that if I would have had this book then it would have helped me understand and think about life and death a little differently.
"Awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need to be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail."