John Green's authorial debut and Printz-winning novel tells the story of Miles "Pudge" Halter, a high school student who leaves his home in Florida to attend Culver Creek Preparatory School, fifteen miles south of Birmingham, Alabama. Pudge goes in search of what he calls 'a Great Perhaps' - a place where he can begin to explore the deep, meaningful questions of life, and where he hopes to discover adventures of his own. Once he arrives at Culver Creek, he finds friends in two comparably intelligent and somewhat troubled fellow students: Alaska and Chip "The Colonel" Martin.
The story follows Alaska, the Colonel and Pudge as they fall in and out of love and lust, challenge authority (sometimes with wild pranks), enjoy the freedom of the outdoors in rural Alabama, discuss literature, and struggle to find healing from past hurts through their friendships with each other. Alaska cannot forgive herself for her own sense of responsibilty for her mother's death, and she engages in self-destructive behavior that eventually costs her life. Alaska's death forces Pudge and the Colonel to ask questions of why, relentlessly searching for answers to life's pain until Pudge arrives at one: the only right way out of the labyrinth of suffering is through the path of forgiveness.
Themes: friendship, suffering, forgiveness, coming of age
Concerns: underage drinking, sexual themes, questionable language, suicide
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3 comments:
don't think i'm a nerd, but I have to share this before I forget. When the protagonist says "I believe that we are greater than the sum of our parts," he echoes the opening line of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel: "Each of us is all the sums he has not yet counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas." My favorite first line of all time!
that's a beautiful line, Katie. And you are kind of a book nerd, but you're not alone. : )
oh! i am too tired to read this blog properly and probably not at a good space in life to think about books (with three and a half weeks till fly day) but my lit brain feels a little jolt of pleasure to think that i could maybe think about books again and read this some time. i have recently been given some nice books and music and have no minutes to enjoy them. poop! some day (over the rainbow?) babbling on here.... could you tell??
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