Looking for Alaska

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      Going into reading Looking for Alaska, I'll admit that I was hesitant.  I've never been partial to John Green himself, and the young adult genre has always been something I'm somewhat uncomfortable with because I never felt like it's done very well.  I was pleasantly surprised by this novel, especially how it portrays friendship as a loner teenager.  The main character, Pudge, has never felt a calling in life, except for memorizing famous last words.  He's almost thrust into his group of friends, and even though he has a good relationship with his friends, it never seems like he knows them super well.  He starts drinking and smoking just to fit in with his friends, but it's never clear whether or not he does this just to fit in, or because he actually wants to.  I think this portrayal of that type of "outsider" teenager is a lot more accurate than other books.  Pudge isn't an outsider because people don't like him, he just never related to others much.
     I also thought a very mature point the book made was the idea of having an idea of somebody that isn't exactly accurate.  Later in the novel, Pudge is accused by one of the other characters of not being in love with Alaska, but the idea of Alaska.  Their point is that he's built a personal Alaska in his mind that is everything he wants her to be, but is ultimately not true to her because it's only one person's interpretation.  I've found this to be very true of actual adolescents.  Because it's impossible to know everything about somebody's thoughts and feelings, they find themselves with only images of people.  Some of these are somewhat accurate, but just as many are false because they are what they want the subject to be to them.  I haven't really seen this concept discussed in many books at all, and I didn't expect to find it in a John Green book.
     One last thing that this book reminded me of was the state most high school relationships are in.  The Colonel's relationship was accurate to most high schoolers in that he didn't actually like Sara.  He tells Pudge "I really care about her.  I mean, we were hopeless.  Badly matched.  But still.  I mean, I said I loved her...I don't know.  Even though we fought, like ninety-four percent of the time, I'm really sad (Green 66)."  Adolescent relationships are mostly ones of necessity, made because both people just happen to know and spend a fair amount of time with each other.  Even if they're doomed from the start, they will still try to keep the relationship together because they have it in their heads that relationships should work.  Pudge himself experiences this, talking with his maybe-girlfriend Lara:  "I didn't know how to talk to her.  And I was frustrated with trying, so after a little while, I got up to go (Green 129)."  Because Pudge has almost nothing in common with Lara, he feels that he's hit a wall and would rather not try. 

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