Quote 1
"Is this why you want to leave, Miles?" Mom asked. I mulled it over for a while, careful not to look at her.
"Uh, no," I said.
"Well, why then?" she asked. This was not the first time she had posed the question. Mom was not particularly keen on letting me go to boarding school and had made no secret of it. (136before.13-15)
Not many parents would understand why Miles wants to leave home, but he has a pretty good explanation when he drags out Rabelais's quote about the Great Perhaps. He's looking for something more. And we have to ask if it's always necessary to leave home—a place of comfort and security for many people—to find it and to mature.
Quote 2
Hank hugged me and said, "At least it was instant. At least there wasn't any pain."
I knew he was only trying to help, but he didn't get it. There was pain. A dull endless pain in my gut that wouldn't go away even when I knelt on the stingingly frozen tile of the bathroom, dry-heaving. (2after.35-36)
Miles continues to try to rid himself of the pain, but he can't. We have to wonder what exactly is causing the pain: the death of Alaska, the sorrow of her death, the responsibility Miles feels about her death, or some strange combination of all three and more?
Quote 3
"This was Alaska's question."
With a sigh, he grabbed hold of his chair and lifted himself out of it, then wrote on the blackboard: How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering? (8after.8-9)
Alaska's pain and suffering throughout the novel is clear, and to exit her pain she writes in a book margin that she will get out "Straight & fast." What might she have written in her paper for the Old Man about pain and suffering, in a different context and for a different audience?