Looking For Alaska has me looking for another John Green book. Precocious teens, complex metaphors, and relatable themes are just some of the characteristics of a Green teen novel. Although he is most well-known for The Fault in Our Stars, his debut novel was Looking For Alaska.

Looking for Alaska follows Miles Halter as he navigates the difficult social, academic, and complicated life terrain of his new boarding school in 2005 Alabama. There, he makes friends, learns about life, smokes his first cigarette, and gets thrown into a lake. The book tackles heavy topics such as death, grief, guilt, forgiveness, and loyalty with grace, humor, and empathy, proving to us that everyone is broken in their own way, whether we understand it or not.

The book is narrated by Miles or ‘Pudge’ as his friends call him, (first person – limited[1]) which makes for unique descriptions, intriguing observations, and lengthy streams of consciousness[2]. With an interesting perspective amid a cast of fascinating characters, Pudge’s filtering of the story adds to the enigma and confusion of the story’s greatest mystery and allows us to have a deeper connection with him.

Miles becomes entranced with Alaska Young, the unique, intelligent, and broken girl who has a past as interesting as her present. She is the sort of ‘manic pixie dream girl[3] that is both simultaneously berated and glorified. When observed on a deeper level, it is obvious that Alaska performs an intriguing role in her own right, her story not solely revolving around the male protagonist. Alaska is snarky, intelligent, clever, and sometimes downright mean. She may not always be the most likable character, but that does not make her any less compelling.

At Culver Creek, Pudge becomes more enlightened on the social class differences between him and his friends. Alaska and Chip are both on scholarships which seems to put them on unequal footing as far as getting in trouble goes. There is also a lot of tension between the scholarship kids and the “weekday warriors,” the school’s rich kids who go home on weekends.

Most of the time the two groups keep to themselves, but like many teenagers, have a penchant for pranks. Pranking is a way of life at the school and the biggest rule is to never rat. Ratting, as Alaska knows all too well, leads to shame, ostracization, and social shunning.

movie adaptation

Published in 2005, Looking For Alaska was only recently brought to the screen in late 2019 where Hulu picked it up and turned it into a miniseries. Charlie Plummer (Miles), Kristine Forseth (Alaska), Denny Love (Chip aka ‘The Colonel’)  , and Jay Lee (Takumi) star in the miniseries of the same name.

As far as movie adaptations go, they’re not known for their accuracy or general ability to stick to the material. Looking for Alaska is the outlier. Complex relationships, diverse cast, killer wardrobe, and blast-from-the-past soundtrack all add to the show. Every detail contributes in a  meaningful, albeit subtle way. The writers and producers, along with John Green[4] added to the material in a profound way, fleshing out hinted-at storylines hidden throughout the book, in a way that doesn’t seem like a tacked-on afterthought.

Some characters, in particular, play a more prominent role in the story, such as The Eagle, Mrs. Martin, Lara, and Sara. As humans (even fictional ones) we have the tendency to make even the most diverse stories solely about us. When we have even a slightly more objective view of life, we understand that other people have stories and lives just as important and meaningful as we think ours are. It’s especially important to view female characters, not through the lens of a teenage boy.

That is part of the reason the show hit it off so well. Novelists and screenwriters know that when adapting a book for the big screen, first-person narration is tricky, if not downright impossible, to use[5]. Shedding the unreliable perspective of Miles grants us a more objective view as well as the opportunity to observe scenes in which he isn’t present. This contributes to our knowledge of the story and creates a more well-rounded view. However, the fact that the book stuck to a first-person POV[6] is fine because what may work for a book may not work for a movie.

Finally, allow me to impart these last words of wisdom, found in the final pages of the novel, Looking for Alaska:

“When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible’ … they don’t know how right they are… We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations…But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.” – Looking for Alaska, p220

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[1] First-person – uses pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘me’ ‘myself’. Limited refers to the idea that the character is only aware of situations and scenes in which he or she is apart of or present

[2] Stream of Consciousness – A character’s interrupted stream of thoughts. Virginia Woolf is considered to be the forerunner of this technique as demonstrated in her famous novel, Mrs. Dalloway.

[3] Often used in a derogatory way, ‘manic pixie dream girl’ refers to the typecasting of a character who is reserved only to serve as the main character’s love interest, opening them up to a ‘whole new world’ and to ‘shake things up’. The girl who shows the nerdy boy how to enjoy Rom-com, roller-coasters, and haunted mazes, etc.

[4] As a writer, being apart of the creative process of the screen adaptation is a rarity. It explains why the series turned out so well!

[5] Another famous example of a first-person-turned-third-person movie is The Hunger Games trilogy. The book goes from Katniss’ perspective in the novels to a relatively third-person point of view (POV) in the movies. With that said, some visual effects were used to enhance the feeling of us being in her mind, such as shaky camera movement and sound effects.

[6] Point of View – the narrating perspective of a story i.e. first, second, third