Foil

Character Role Analysis

Miles and the Colonel, Alaska and Lara

Miles and the Colonel

The Colonel's a mover and a shaker, whereas Miles is a thinker. The Colonel leads his friends, and Miles is happy just to be accepted as one of the followers of the group. Miles comes from a really stable family, but the Colonel's dad beat him and left him and his mom to fend for themselves. Miles (we think) has financial stability in his life, and we know for certain that the Colonel grew up poor.

These two are not all that much alike, but for some reason their friendship works rather well—perhaps because they're so different. And these differences are especially useful for us as readers when the boys deal with Alaska's death in two different ways, because we realize that even though they were her best friends, her death means different things to each of them.

Alaska and Lara

This one's pretty easy: Alaska's vivacious, Lara is so quiet she almost disappears; Alaska loves sex more than anything, Lara is sexually innocent; Alaska is volatile and unpredictable, Lara immediately forgives Miles for ignoring her for two months after Alaska's death. Two more different girls could not exist. Yet they're friends, and Lara grieves for Alaska as much as any of Alaska's friends do… Miles just doesn't notice because, honestly, he's too selfishly wrapped up in his own little world.

Miles is drawn to each of these girls for different reasons, but they both boil down to intimacy. With Alaska, he has this incredible emotional intimacy, or at least, he thinks he does—we never really know whether Alaska feels the same way. And with Lara, Miles experiments sexually but he never really talks or becomes emotionally close to her until after Alaska is gone. In this way Alaska and Lara are not only foils to each other, but they're also kind of mini-foils for Miles in that they help us understand him in different ways.