By Haley aka @thewriterwithacause
A playlist to listen to while you read
Intro
I’m trying to become a better writer so I’m reading like one. Here’s what I’m learning from Looking for Alaska by John Green.
Quick Info
- Published March 3, 2005 by Dutton Juvenile
- Author John Green was 27 years old
- The 2006 Michael L. Printz Award “an award for a book that exemplifies literary excellence in young adult literature”
- SPOILERS AHEAD
ONE: Go to the library to find ancient etchings
You never know when you’ll find ancient etchings in your library book.
Exhibit A:
“Dear Kathryn,
It’s sad, but I think you’ll enjoy it because it’s funny too. It’s one of those books that you never forget about. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. Happy Birthday to one of the most amazing people <3
Maeve”
I wonder if Kathryn enjoyed this book? I wonder how it ended up part of the library system? Perhaps she’ll remember it forever. Perhaps she donated it to the library, or loaned it to a friend who never returned it.
If you decide to check this book out from your library (or any book for that matter) perhaps you’ll cross paths with whisperings of someone else’s past. You won’t know if you don’t look.
TWO: The before and after of it all
Balance. Life and death. New friendships and new loss. The physical structure of this novel is more than interesting—it’s revealing—because we the readers get to count down, to anticipate the tragedy, alongside Miles’ (Pudge to his friends) narrative.
“I thought: It’s all my fault./ I thought: I don’t feel very good. / I thought: I’m going to throw up” (Green 139).
“She’s not dead. She’s alive. She’s alive somewhere. She’s in the woods. Alaska is hiding in the woods and she’s not dead, she’s just hiding. She’s just playing a trick on us.This is just an Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire. It’s Alaska being Alaska, funny and playful and not knowing when or how to put on the brakes. And then I felt much better, because she had not died at all” (Green 140).
The book seesaws around the epicenter of Alaska’s life and death. We count down and we count up and away to and from her. We’re guided by Pudge’s narrative, even if he’s unaware he’s guiding us through this paradigm.
I even wonder if Pudge is aware that his narrative is shrouded in these days counting down to tragedy and then counting away from it:
“One hundred twenty-seven days before/ Early the next
afternoon, I blinked sweat from my eyes as I taped a Van Gogh poster to the back of the door” (Green 21).
“Eighty-four days before/ Three days later, the rain began” (Green 66).
“Nine days after / ‘I’ve got a theory,’ the Colonel said as I walked in the door after a miserable day of classes” (Green 159).
“Eighty-four days after/ Every spring, Culver Creek took one Friday afternoon off from classes, and all the students, faculty, and staff were required to go to the gym for Speaker Day” (Green 201).
This doesn’t seem like a narrator aware of the calendar he lives in. I think the argument could be made that there is a secondary narrator to Pudge’s primary narration. In this 2019 edition of Looking for Alaska John Green addresses us, “Dear Reader.” And he generously shares:
“It occurred to me that we almost always measure time in relation to what matters most to us: In the Christian calendar, we measure distance from the birth of Jesus. In the Islamic calendar, time is measured from the hijrah, the Muslim community’s journey from Mecca to Medina.
“The story I wanted to tell was about young people whose lives are so transformed by an experience that they can only respond by reimagining time itself” (Green, Readers Guide).
How we respond is part of the balancing act. We all have “before and after” moments in our lives, perhaps the longer we live the more we gather. This structure immediately captures the reader’s curiosity to find out, “before what?” “after what?” This mystery unravels itself slowly, and then all at once. All the while keeping the reader spellbound by structure.
Let’s quickly flash back to the first few pages of this novel, shortly after Pudge arrives on campus for the first time. The mixture of the Alabaman heat and the departure of his parents is swimming through his mind:
“I should have felt a gooey, sentimental sadness, perhaps. But mostly I just wanted to cool off, so I grabbed one of the desk chairs and sat down outside my door in the shade of the overhanging eaves, waiting for a breeze that never arrived. The air outside sat as still and oppressive as the air inside” (Green 7).
I want to draw special attention to the line, “waiting for a breeze that never arrived.” I think it links to this idea of balance. Journeying to a new place doesn’t guarantee the change we’re looking for, we too have to make the moves that move us toward our Great Perhaps’s.
That brings me to point three…
Three: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps” – François Rabelais
Pudge is perched like a bird ready to leap into the unknown rather than stagnate in the certainty life has promised him thus far. Afterall, “His whole existence has been one big nonevent” according to the backcover of the 2007 edition the library supplied. Pudge (still Miles at this point in the story) explains for the first time the concept of the great perhaps that is the catalyst of his boarding school adventure:
“So this guy,” I said, standing in the doorway of the living room. “Francois Rabelias. He was this poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps” (Green 5).
In the context of dying a Great Perhaps feels like a nod to the afterlife and all its different imaginings found in earthly religions. But in the context of living—young life—a Great Perhaps seems to ask, “what is out there for me to discover?” or more poignantly, “who out there will discover me, and inch me closer to my own great perhaps?”
Interestingly, on the very next page Miles/Pudge (our protagonist/narrator) is moving into his dorm in Alabama—he’s made the leap, now floating midair he tells us,
“…the sun burned through my clothes and into my skin with a vicious ferocity that made me genuinely fear hellfire” (Green 6).
This links these two diverging interpretations/meanings of the “Great Perhaps,” juxtaposing them for the reader. Miles experiences “hellfire” on earth, perhaps heaven and hell are part of the great perhaps Rabelais was heading toward, perhaps not. We can’t know but we can spend some of our time here on earth perhapsing about it. Or better yet, as Miles determines, we can find our great perhaps here on earth. Perhaps there’s more than one. We certainly won’t know if we don’t step outside and look around a little.
Four: Agents of Change
“I thought of the Great Perhaps and the things that might happen and the people I might meet and who my roommate might be (I’d gotten a letter a few weeks before that gave me his name, Chip Martin, but no other information). Whoever Chip Martin was, I hoped to God he would bring an arsenal of high-powered fans, because I hadn’t packed even one, and I could already feel my sweat pooling on the vinyl mattress, which disgusted me so much that I stopped thinking and got off my ass to find a towel to wipe up the sweat with. And then I thought, Well, before the adventure comes the unpacking” (Green 8).
Rereading this early passage knowing what we know after reading our way to the back cover, I think it’s fair to postulate that Green could be alluding to other people being agents of change in Miles’ life. Miles is counting on Chip to supply the fan to change the current of air in their room, yet in the meantime he himself must ultimately be the change he wishes to see in the current of his own life. Sparks of this action come in the form of:
“a magnificently cold shower” (Green 9).
“…as the dribbling shower slowly soaked my body, I wondered whether I could find a great perhaps at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation” (Green 9).
Chip Martin and Miles Halter first meet after Miles took action against the extreme heat.
“I laughed and nodded my head at him (that’s cool, right? the nod?) and said, ‘I’m Miles Halter. Nice to meet you’” (Green 10).
Miles relinquishes his insecurities to us through first person narration. We function as a sounding board as he stretches and grows into this new role of “Great Perhaps Seeker.” This type of change involves some experimentation.
“He likes ‘the Creek,’ as he called it, but ‘You have to be careful here, with students and with teachers, And I do hate being careful.’ He smirked. I hated being careful, too——or wanted to, at least” (Green 11).
Further evidence toward the idea that it’s the people Miles surrounds himself with that will change his life and inch him closer to his Great Perhaps.
Conclusion:
Miles does not tell us what to think of the other characters, he tells us what he sees. We are an observer in his mind—a silent collective consciousness that he does his thinking with. We need not respond because our presence is enough. Miles is not claiming to be an omniscient narrator. He’s not claiming his view on the world is the analysis to live and die by. He tells us what the other characters say and do and shares his own responses. It’s up to us to piece all together.
If you enjoyed this analysis head over to my YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@writerwithacause for the visual version of this analysis, quotes and all!
Until the next one, peace ☮️.
References
- Green, John. Looking for Alaska. Speak, an Imprint of Penguin Group (USA), 2007.
- 2006 Printz Award | Young Adult Library Services Association, www.ala.org/yalsa/2006-printz-award. Accessed 20 July 2026.
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