Themes In Looking For Alaska

“Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth? (García)” This is a question that was riddled throughout a book I read two weeks ago titled Looking for Alaska. This quote from the biography of Simon Bolivar is quintessential to the plot of the novel and truly impacted the way I feel and view the world we live in. The narrator seeks a “Great perhaps” and soon faces the question of how we can escape the labyrinth of sorrow. This forces you as the reader to subconsciously ask and answer the same question, which is why I believe that everyone should read this novel.

Looking for Alaska (Green) is a novel through the first-person view of teenager Miles Halter, who moves from Florida to an elite boarding school in Birmingham, Alabama. The book

He is extremely intelligent and has a strange niche for last words of famous people, which interests his new friends including a girl he meets named Alaska Young. He becomes infatuated with her as the two spend a lot of time with each other and she starts presenting him with her strange philosophy, including the last words of from her favorite biography. Unfortunately to the narrator’s sorrow, she has a serious boyfriend, so he restrains himself from ever telling her how he truly feels. However, the story takes a dark turn when one night after drinking she goes to her room, but soon returns frantic and demands the help from Miles and his roommate to help her sneak off campus without the head professor spotting her car driving off. The two reluctantly agree, despite her being very intoxicated. They are awakened and immediately regret their decision when they learn she was killed in a car accident, after crashing full speed into the rear of a police cruiser while on the interstate. This petrifies the narrator, and he is searching for answers about what could have made her so upset and if it was truly an accident or if she could have made the decision to end her life that night. Miles finds the quote circled in her water-damaged copy of the biography where in the margin she had

The subject of the novel, Alaska, stated multiple times in the first half of the book that she was “a deeply unhappy person” however prior to her death this did not raise any red flags to her friends. This leads the narrator to begin the search to find answers that may satisfy his inquiry about her death. I like many other people have at some point suffered from depression, either related to family trouble or just typical teenage melancholy. Regardless life is not perfect and there will be struggles that everyone will have to overcome at some point. This book has really opened my eyes to a few possible answers that one may choose. For me personally, this revelation made me make a connection to the world we are all currently living in, where suicide is a very big issue with all demographics and people of every societal class. After reading the novel I had a very clear illustration in my mind about how sometimes struggles in life become too much for one to persevere through and it honestly has made me much more sympathetic to suicide victims and their