I am currently reading Looking for Alaska by John Green. It's the first book I've read by John Green, and I'm hooked. Now I see what all the buzz is about. One of the most interesting concepts that emerges in the novel is the always perplexing idea of death. In the book so far, the characters are forced to come to terms with death in a number of ways, both in their class work and in their lives. I've realized that something that underlies this confrontation with death is the desire for connection with others. Death is scary because it means that we cease to have connections with the people around us and with our surroundings. Something that humans have in common pretty much universally, is the desire to form close connections with one another. This is true for Pudge, the novel's protagonist, who has lived a sheltered, dull life; through his school years, his peers have ignored him, leaving him with low self esteem. When he arrives at Culver Creek boarding school, his life gets interesting. He finds friends who understand him, and he begins to understand his desire for interpersonal connections and longs to build and strengthen his relationships. A detail that threads throughout the book is the idea of being close to someone, yet still not being fully connected. When Pudge is lying next to Alaska, his classmate and crush, he depicts his “chest touching the bottle and her chest touching the bottle but not us touching each other” (81). This moment reinforces the idea that it is difficult for people to ever fully connect.
This intense desire for connection impacts how people cope with death. Alaska’s mom died when she was a young girl from a brain aneurysm. She saw her mom lying on the floor jerking around. Being a young, timid, confused little girl, she didn’t call 9-1-1, and her mom died. Alaska holds immense guilt inside her surrounding her mom's death. Sometimes Alaska says that she “failed everyone” or that she “fucked everything up” (120). These statements show her guilt, but they also show her desire to make connections and please the people around her. Alaska wanted a relationship with her mom, was so close to having one, but lost it in a fleeting moment. Later in the book, when Pudge and his friends face Alaska’s death, they too undergo a host of emotions: guilt, pain, and numbness included. Pudge, like Alaska in response to her mother’s death, feels responsible for Alaska’s death. He also feels intense pain and inability to come to terms with her death. At the root of it is his desire to finish forging a connection that he started. I’ve started doing research on grief in a book called Transcending Loss by Ashley Prend, and I’ve found that at the root of anger, guilt, and all those other complicated emotions lies pain, “primal pain… dull and aching one minute and searing and stabbing the next” (Prend 28). One of the most challenging parts of working through this pain is realizing that a dream is lost. As Prend describes it, “you must detach yourself from the lost dream as well as from the lost person” (28). For Pudge, his dream was a deep connection with Alaska. Amid his grief, pain envelopes him and he cannot stop thinking about that “dream.” This highlights the complexity of the roots of grief. I’m looking forward to continuing my research about grief and drawing connections with Looking for Alaska.
This intense desire for connection impacts how people cope with death. Alaska’s mom died when she was a young girl from a brain aneurysm. She saw her mom lying on the floor jerking around. Being a young, timid, confused little girl, she didn’t call 9-1-1, and her mom died. Alaska holds immense guilt inside her surrounding her mom's death. Sometimes Alaska says that she “failed everyone” or that she “fucked everything up” (120). These statements show her guilt, but they also show her desire to make connections and please the people around her. Alaska wanted a relationship with her mom, was so close to having one, but lost it in a fleeting moment. Later in the book, when Pudge and his friends face Alaska’s death, they too undergo a host of emotions: guilt, pain, and numbness included. Pudge, like Alaska in response to her mother’s death, feels responsible for Alaska’s death. He also feels intense pain and inability to come to terms with her death. At the root of it is his desire to finish forging a connection that he started. I’ve started doing research on grief in a book called Transcending Loss by Ashley Prend, and I’ve found that at the root of anger, guilt, and all those other complicated emotions lies pain, “primal pain… dull and aching one minute and searing and stabbing the next” (Prend 28). One of the most challenging parts of working through this pain is realizing that a dream is lost. As Prend describes it, “you must detach yourself from the lost dream as well as from the lost person” (28). For Pudge, his dream was a deep connection with Alaska. Amid his grief, pain envelopes him and he cannot stop thinking about that “dream.” This highlights the complexity of the roots of grief. I’m looking forward to continuing my research about grief and drawing connections with Looking for Alaska.
Grief is a complicated concept, and I am heartened that you are on this journey to understand it. I think I have told you before that I can look back on my childhood and see how my parents' grief of each losing their fathers (my mom 17, my dad 15) shaped their personalities and my upbringing -- heck, how it is mirrored in me as well because these two people raised me. Will you read anything else beyond Prend's book?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a very interesting book and the idea of having connections with others also appears in the book I read, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. The main character, Milkman, struggles with finding connections not only to other people, but to his past and with nature. I think connections and contact with other people is a very complex topic and maybe something you could also look into for your research. However, I love this idea of grief as Ms. Romano said above. Are there any other deaths in the novel that affect Pudge in any way besides Alaska's? Or if not, maybe the fact that he only experiences this grief during Alaska's has a significant weight to it. It could be a good layer to add into your project. It sounds like you really enjoyed this book and I can't wait to see what you come up with for your final project.
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