Literary Devices in Looking for Alaska
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Setting
Everything important in Looking for Alaska takes place on campus at the Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama. What? No way, you say—Alaska died off campus, Thanksgiving was off campus, Miles b...
Narrator Point of View
Green narrates from Miles "Pudge" Halter's perspective, and this is both awesome (we get to hear his thoughts on everything from girls to friends, no holds barred) and not so awesome (he's kind of...
Genre
Young Adult LiteratureJohn Green wrote Looking for Alaska for young adults. The characters are teenagers, the setting is a boarding school, there is explicit language and tomfoolery and pretty real...
Tone
Even in a novel that is heavy with death and grief and suffering, our characters find humor—not the slapstick sort, but the slightly inappropriate, wry variety of humor. It's not that the charact...
Writing Style
Green wrote this book for teenagers, and boy does he know teenage-ese. We can't write most of the quotes, because there's a lot of explicit language and illicit references, but here's a sampling of...
What's Up With the Title?
Green went through a bunch of working titles (click here and scroll way down for a few of them), but he eventually settled on Looking for Alaska. Why?Well, looking implies a search for something, b...
What's Up With the Ending?
But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison's last words were: "It's ver...
Tough-o-Meter
John Green doesn't pull any punches with his material. Yes it's about a junior boy in boarding school, but the book is also full of philosophical musings (hello, last words of famous dead people, r...
Plot Analysis
Leaving Here Miles Halter, an introverted nerdtastic junior in high school, goes looking for a Great Perhaps (a great, uncertain future) away from home at Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama....
Trivia
Looking for Alaska is very loosely based on real life. That is, John Green went to a boarding school, a classmate of his died, and the death devastated the school. (Source)There really was a p...
Steaminess Rating
There is sexual content in Looking for Alaska, but like many teenagers's experiences, the encounters are pretty awkward. There's a lot of talk, but not a lot of action going on. Alaska mentions sex...
Allusions
Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" (128before.28-30)Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (127before.15)Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome(99before.1)Herman Melville, Moby Dick(...