Warning: if you loved/love this book and you don't want to hear anything negative being said about it, then I suggest you don't read on (unless you have to because you're in my group).
It was no surprise to me that Alaska Young died. The book is titled Looking for Alaska and is split into before and after sections, the before ending just as Alaska leaves to drink and drive. This book centers itself around this one event, what life was before and what it was after for Pudge and the Colonel and the other students and faculty. Yet at the end of the book I found myself asking what the purpose was. Was it just to pull at the readers heart strings? To go with the assumption that if it makes you cry then it must be good? What does a reader take away from this?
I'm going to take a moment and talk about my personal experience and how it effected my reading of the book, since that is discussed in the article we had to read. I can relate to this book maybe more so than most of my classmates (though I don't know what they've been through so I can't say for sure). About three years ago, I lost one of my best friends. He was in a car accident and died shortly after. I had spoken to him just hours earlier. We were close, but hadn't been that close for that long. We had only been friends for a couple years and only became good friends within the last year before the accident. I even had feelings for him, which I tried to repress because I was in a relationship at the time and I knew my feelings for him weren't genuine. When he died, I went through everything Pudge went through. All the stages of grief. One difference was there was no question of suicide. He just died. These things happen. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but it's just the kind of person I am. So you'd think that because I can relate so much to the book that I'd really love it, but I don't. Let me try to explain why...
I said in class that this book is full of cliches and that's a big part of why I couldn't take it seriously. Although a cliche now and again is excusable or can go unnoticed, for me this was like every boarding school drama ever. I didn't feel invested in Alaska at all when she died, so it didn't shock me or break my heart. I barely even felt bad for Pudge because so much of his feelings were selfish. We don't get much of an idea of who Alaska really is and much of what she shows is clearly an act. Pudge falls for the girl who is acting, not for who she really is. When she dies he mourns for the girl who was acting because he didn't know who she really was. I don't think he ever REALLY wanted to know. Alaska was just a dream for him. It would have been different if we had Alaska's perspective, then maybe I could sympathize with her and understand her, but I just didn't care. She's quirky and hot and crazy and random and it's so overdone.
On a side note - some students were suggesting that she is bipolar or suffers from depression and I disagree. I definitely don't think she's bipolar. I can see how she might suffer from depression, but there's no serious clues. What's really her problem is she's still coping with a trauma or rather not coping with it. We should not be so quick to call a female character crazy or suffering from bipolar disorder simply because she cries a couple times in the book and makes dark jokes. There just isn't enough evidence to say that she is bipolar.
Any way, I've come to the conclusion that what this really does is help young adults cope with the concept of death and loss because more than likely when you're a young adult is when you'll have your first experience with the death of a loved one. It does explore some important ideas about letting go and moving on. It also gives a pretty decent depiction of the thought process and cycle a person goes through once they've lost someone. Ultimately, I was not impressed. The fact that it ended with a cheesy essay really put me off. But I've been through all of that so I didn't need this book.
I have two questions:
If you HAVE lost a best friend, did you have a different experience from me?
If you HAVEN'T lost a loved one in your life, was it perhaps more impactful?
I'm really impressed with the honesty of this entry. If you didn't enjoy something, there's no need to pretend that you did; and if something just didn't do it for you, you shouldn't feel like you have to force yourself to like the characters, the story, or the writing style.
ReplyDeleteI don't exactly agree with your statement that we suggested bipolar disorder "simply because she cries a couple times in the book and makes dark jokes". I think most of us suggested it because Alaska does seem to go through manic-depressive cycles; she is very happy and upbeat with Pudge one day, and the next becomes sullen, angry, and withdrawn. People with depression usually don't have manic episodes the way Alaska does, which was why we suggested bipolar disorder. This isn't to say it's a completely accurate diagnosis--it wasn't written anywhere into the book. It could be that she, as you pointed out, is simply going through stages of grief, as well. The only person who knows is John Green.
I think you hit the nail on the head with Pudge's feelings towards Alaska; he didn't love her, he loved the idea of her. And I think that's where a lot of his problems stemmed from. He didn't know Alaska at all. And so that doubles his guilt... He spent all this time with a girl he barely actually knew; and when she died, he had no way of getting to know her anymore--only the memory of the girl he thought she was.
Pudge is a selfish person--but I think lots of people are around that age, whether they realize it or not. It's okay to find that off-putting in the story itself, but I don't think that makes him necessarily an inaccurate portrayal of a teenager.
I've experienced losing a loved one before; but I think something that's more pertinent to Pudge's experience with Alaska's death was the suicide of a boy at my high school. We'd been in a few classes together, and talked occasionally. But, just like Pudge and Alaska, I didn't really know him. Despite that, I was devastated when I found out that he had committed suicide. Even if you asked me now why I felt that way, I'm not sure I could give you an answer--it wasn't like he was a great friend or anything. I knew him casually. But it made me face the reality of how fragile human life was--which is something that I think Pudge was forced to face in conjunction with his inability to decipher if she had done it intentionally or not (and coping with the fact that he would never be ABLE to know the answer to that question).
I really appreciate your honesty Sam(This is meredith btw :]) I found it tropey similarly to the way you did. I think I may be a little more forgiving than you though :)
ReplyDeleteBut I totally understand where you're coming from. I think Pudge and everyone else's treating Alaska's obvious problems as a brush off was really problematic for me. I remember actually not liking Pudge or caring about him at some points. But I do think Sara's right, teenagers are selfish and do dumb stuff. That's not an excuse though.
I actually just recently lost a HS classmate to cancer( I had one former classmate commit suicide upon graduation from college, one shot and killed in a home invasion, and one former military man die two days before Osama Bin Laden was captured). I wasn't close personal friends with any of them. But in my mind it's still a loss of life. And it's sad. But each time I got the news it did kind of send me a message like " Hey... life's short... enjoy yourself now". I think it was a plot device to get that message across to Pudge, and readers like him. I'm not defending Pudge's actions because I think his thoughts and attitudes were pretty frustrating to read. Pudge wasn't in love with Alaska. He didn't know her that well really. He thought he did.
I think it's important when you read a book to hear both sides of the argument. If you like something tell me what you like, if you don't like something tell me what you think can be improved on.
-hope that made like... any logical sense at all