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Looking For Alaska Analysis Essay

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Death ends all suffering is the predominate theme in Looking for Alaska by John Green. Alaska Young embodies the idea of death. Fatality and the moments it seizes can be shown through Alaska’s endless smoke breaks to Pudge’s obsession with last words to reckless drinking by Colonel. Alaska sees no reason to live as said as “’Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die’” (Green 44). Each individual in this friend group is fascinated by death but this declaration sets her apart from her peers. In Lana Del Rey’s song “Born to Die”, the same meaning is said as, “Feet don’t fail me now / Take me to the finish line / Oh my heart it breaks every step that I take” (Del Rey). The ‘finish line’ represents the end of life. At the age of eight, Alaska’s mother …show more content…

Alaska feels pain day after day; she wishes that her life and misery could all be over. While Alaska is open to death, Pudge has a fixation on the last words said by an individual before they die. He uses this as closure and a logical understanding to grasp the end of human life. Pudge does not know how to view religion or death and his obsessive hobby distracts him from his thoughts. Last words are also especially valuable in “Born to Die” as said as, “Choose your last words / This is the last time / ‘Cause you and I, we were born to die” (Del Rey). Pudge perceives final words as what people only remember of that individual; He connects their whole life to their last moments alive. As the song verbalizes ‘the last time’, it shows the importance and impact words will have. People will remember a death and what was said. Seeing Alaska’s reactions makes him think of President William McKinley’s concluding moments, “He lived for several days after he was shot, and toward the end, his wife started crying and screaming, ‘I want to go, too! I want to go, too!’…McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: ‘We are all going’” (Green

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Instead she left him with a kiss, and lost her own life to death. It tears him up that he will never know her last words, if she had left him on purpose, and if she truly loved him as he loved her. Pudge ends off with this quote because he comes to a realization that life goes on, and in order to find yourself and be happy, you have to carry on with “seeking for a Great Perhaps”. Although Alaska’s way out of the Labyrinth was straight and fast, Pudge’s way is to bear the labyrinth and take whatever comes his way. He chooses the Labyrinth and hopes for the best, and even though he will forget Alaska, she made him

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