Literary Analysis On Looking For Alaska

The before and after approach in Looking for Alaska is vital to the story in multiple ways. Throughout the story, Miles undergoes a journey of self-discovery, during which he gains his independence; establishing confidence in his social skills and personal relationships. As John Green says in his interview, “Humans tend to measure time within the framework of important events.” Though Miles’s confidence has begun to blossom prior to Alaska’s accident, her death strikes a dramatic change in his view on life as well as his overall personality. Her death, as John Green says, is “the defining moment of these people’s lives (at least so far) and it reshapes their relationship to the world so completely that it also reshapes their understanding of time.” Miles now views his life in two separate chapters: before and after Alaska. Tragic events in our lifetime almost always change our entire view of the world, causing us to view situations and relationships in a completely different way. I think that Miles’s story of how he deals with the tragic loss of
his close friend and how it changes him as a person is highly relatable to young readers such as myself dealing with similar situations. Another way that the before and after structure contributes to the story, unrelated to Miles and other secondary characters, is the foreshadowing of Alaska’s tragic fate.
Alaska makes multiple comments throughout the story, such as “I may die young, but at least I’ll die smart” and “I smoke to die”. I believe that her character signifies the constant struggle we as humans go through to try to understand and cope with the unfair suffering that we constantly witness every day. After Alaska’s death, Miles and his friends all must learn to cope with this tragic event, and each person must do so in their own way. In the end each character grows significantly, especially Miles, by learning to accept things we cannot change or understand, and using those experiences to grow from, which is the major turning point of the story, impacts the characters in an extremely significant way; their view on life will never be the
same. Time is one of the most important factors in our lives. We as humans generally live a repetitive lifestyle, having the same daily routine of work, school, family, or hobbies; until one day a random event occurs that completely shifts our perception of reality and turns our world upside down. I myself have lost someone close to me, so reading of Alaska’s death, and Miles’s reaction to it, evoked strong emotions for me. I remember the feeling of utter disbelief; the inability to accept the overwhelming realty of death. In that moment my mindset was still stuck in the past; the past in which my friend was still alive. The moment that a person accepts the reality of a dramatic life change is the moment that their lives switch from “before” to “after”. The world around us moves on and we continue on our daily routine, but things will never be the same. The before and after structure in this book is in tune with how we view the past, which is a sequence of memorable events that play factors in the life decisions that we make.

Works Cited
Green, John. Questions About Looking for Alaska. Web. 30 Jan 2014. .