Grief In Looking For Alaska And Turtles All The Way Down

Everyone will eventually have to go through some form of grief, and everyone handles it differently. Whether it is a pet, a parent, or a friend, death is inevitable. John Green explores this idea in several of his novels, with the best examples found in Looking for Alaska and Turtles All The Way Down. Looking for Alaska is about a high school junior named Miles who goes to boarding school; one of his new friends dies halfway through the year and he has to deal with that loss. In Turtles All The Way Down, the protagonist Aza seeks to unravel the mystery behind her friend's father's disappearance, only to discover that he took his own life. Both books showcase how different people grieve and how time doesn’t always heal the wounds. Green's interest

When everyone found out, the whole school was silent. Miles’s first thought was that it was all his fault for helping her get off campus that late and that drunk; his second thought was that it was just another one of Alaska’s pranks, that she couldn’t have been dead. When Miles reentered the room, deciding that this wasn’t real, he found Chip screaming. Chip was just screaming “I’m sorry”, over, and over, and over again (Green, Alaska 139-141). Neither of them could sleep for days. Chip starts asking why they let her leave, and why they needed to stop her in the first place; Miles asked if it was instantaneous, “How long is an instant? Is it a one-second thing? Ten?.................................................................. Nothing is an instant”, (Green, Alaska 146). Chip hyperventilated, went on a walk for eighty-four miles, and memorized every country’s capital and population to try to get his mind off of the crushing reality that Alaska was gone. He believed she should have had a reason, and she might have. Alaska might have killed herself because she thought of herself as useless, or because she just kept making

Alaska felt it was her fault her mother was dead, and “Guilt is a very common response to the loss of a parent or loved one. One always feels that something should’ve been done, and the worst of it is when something actually should’ve been done, but didn’t get done because you are just a regular human being and screw up a million times a day in a million little ways,” (Green “Looking for Alaska FAQ”). This later leads to Alaska’s impulsive nature, as she doesn’t want to be frozen like that again. The day Alaska died was the day after her mom’s death. Alaska realized she had forgotten and tried to drive to her grave and ended up crashing, though it is not clear if it was by mistake or that she hated herself to that extent (Green, Alaska 211). Unfortunately, death occurs every second of every minute of every