Theme Of Labyrinth In Looking For Alaska

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Miles Halter from John Green's Looking for Alaska is an shy nerd fifteen years old junior in high school, who goes looking for a Great Perhaps away from home at Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. Miles wants his Great Perhaps, but never really know what he envisions as his Great Perhaps and whether the boarding school of Culver Creek lives up to his expectations. He is obsessed with the last words of dead people and has enough self-awareness to know that he won't find his Great Perhaps at home in Florida, which leads to him to realize that he is stuck in his own labyrinth. Miles arrives at school and tries to learn the social order, make some good friends, and pass his difficult classes. His acquaintances with his roommate, Chip “The Colonel” gives Miles the …show more content…

When Alaska quotes Simon Bolívar’s last words as, 'Damn it. How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?’ Pudge becomes obsessed with the famous leader’s last words. Over the time of his year at Culver Creek, Pudge comes to realize that not everyone is in the same labyrinth and for some, the labyrinth represents the suffering of life, and for others, it symbolizes an escape from death. Each character has many ‘labyrinths’ in which they find themselves. Pudge struggles with making friends and figuring out Alaska while Alaska copes with her mother’s death and romantic tangles. The labyrinth does not have a singular meaning but rather, it represents personal struggle. Pudge thinks that the only way to cope with the labyrinth of suffering was by pretending: “that it did not exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in a back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home” (219). Pudge’s moment of development occurs when he realizes that the labyrinth is ultimately in each other's pocket part of