Relatable Characters In Looking For Alaska By John Green

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Pages: 5

Looking for Alaska Analysis In Looking for Alaska by John Green, the author uses relatable characters to pull the reader into the story. The main character Miles Halter, also known as Pudge, is obsessed with famous peoples’ last words. When he leaves home and goes to boarding school, he meets true friends, learns a lot about himself, and through tragedy considers and learns about the best way to escape the labyrinth. The characters learn that one tragic event can forever change people and even seemingly mark time. The main character’s obsession with last words leads him down a path he never could have imagined. The last words of Francois Rabelais give Miles the courage to go to a boarding school where he hopes to find the “great perhaps” (Looking for Alaska, 5). For Miles, the great perhaps provides him an opportunity to reinvent himself. He leaves home with a past as a nerd who hangs out with his parents, transformed to a guy who …show more content…
In Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars, there is a focus on the limited number of days you have with the people that mean the most to you. In Looking for Alaska, Pudge looks back on the short number of days he got with Alaska and feels he should have taken greater advantage of their time. In The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel and Augustus are thankful for the few days that they have together because they know from the beginning that those days are limited. In many ways, Pudge’s love was unrequited, “You can’t just make me different and then leave…you can’t just make me different and then die” (Looking for Alaska, 172). Ultimately, Augustus and Hazel know that their love story is real and while their infinity is small, it is their infinity (The Fault in Our Stars, 260). In contrast, Pudge’s feelings are ripped out from under him, not giving him the opportunity to tell Alaska how he feels or understand her feelings for him or even know if she