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Looking for Alaska
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Looking for Alaska (2005) (edit title/settings)

by John Green (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Miles "Pudge" Halter is abandoning his safe, boring life. Fascinated by the last words of famous people, Pudge leaves for boarding school to seek what a dying Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Pudge becomes encircled by friends whose lives are everything but safe and boring. Their nucleus... read more

Summary edit see section history

Miles "Pudge" Halter, is tired of his uneventful life in his home town of Florida. To much dissent of his parents, he leaves and seeks the great perhaps. Arriving at his boarding school he meets his roommate Chip "The Colonel" Marten. After acquainting with The Colonel, he goes down the hall... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Miles "Pudge" Halter, is tired of his uneventful life in his home town of Florida. To much dissent of his parents, he leaves and seeks the great perhaps. Arriving at his boarding school he meets his roommate Chip "The Colonel" Marten. After acquainting with The Colonel, he goes down the hall to buy cigarettes from Alaska Young; a dangerous, sexy, self destructive, fascinating girl who takes Pudge's normal life and throws it out the window.

Pudge's first night at his new boarding school, a couple of "weekday warriors" sneak into his dorm and take him to a nearby lake on campus and mummify him in duck-tape and throw him into the lake. Afterwards, he learns that ratting in this school is almost as bad as murder, and you will be treated as if you have murdered someone. So after a while at his new boarding school, he learns the there is a prank contest between the weekday warriors and them. Kevin and his gang believe that, Colonel was the one who ratted on two weekday warriors to get his own butt out of trouble. This they say is why they tried to kill Pudge.

One day, The Colonel and Alaska get in a friendly "southern" drinking contest. While drunk, Alaska tells Pudge to hook up with her. Later that night Alaska gets a call from someone, afterward she comes back extremely angry and on a mission. Pudge agrees to help her get off of campus, and they go to bed. The next morning, Pudge gets news that will change his life forever.

Characters edit see section history

  • Miles "Pudge" Halter: The protagonist of the story. Enjoys reading biographies and memorizing last words. Becomes friends with Alaska, The Colonel, and Takumi. Feeling unfulfilled in his regular life, Pudge decides to attend Culver Creek Boarding School in order to find "the Great Perhaps".
  • Alaska Young: Beautiful, confusing, intelligent, sarcastic, flirtatious, wild, and reckless girl who loves reading and can be very impulsive at times. She has an enormous collection of books she plans on reading throughout her life. Alaska is in a committed relationship with Jake. When she has a goal, she sees it through to the end.
  • Chip "The Colonel" Martin: Pudge's roommate and best friend. He is also a good friend of Alaska (strictly platonic). Very genius at math and was in a committed (albeit on again off again) relationship with a Weekday Warrior named Sara. He plans all of the pranks done by the group of friends and has a mother living in a trailer park. He attends Culver Creek Boarding School, paid for by a scholarship.
  • Takumi Hikohito: Friend of Pudge, The Colonel and Alaska. Has a fox hat and raps a lot. Attends Culver Creek Boarding School as a full-time boarding student.
  • Lara Buterskaya: She is an immigrant from Romania who is considered very rich in America. She is mild-mannered and sweet, described as pretty and shares an enthusiasm for mischief with Pudge, Alaska, the Colonel, and Takumi. Her roommate is Katie, who is a loyal friend.
  • Mr. Starnes (The Eagle): The Head Master of Culver Creek Boarding School. He loves the students but hides this most of the time due to the fact that he loves his job more. He is shown to be very strict and tries very hard to keep order at the campus. He is especially concerned with the offenses of underage smoking and drinking.
  • Jake: Jake is Alaska's very attractive boyfriend who lives in Nashville, TN. He and Alaska are quite in love with one another, and have a great relationship.
  • Sara: The Colonel's girlfriend for the majority of the book. Described to have movie-star looks, she is a Weekday Warrior and very stuck-up. Sara is very wrongly suspicious and jealous for her boyfriend's friendship with Alaska. Sara and the Colonel have a strained relationship, and are always fighting.
  • Kevin Richman: He is a Weekday Warrior. He, along with others, was involved with a nasty initiation scheme against Pudge.
  • Dr. Hyde: Referred to as "the Old Man". The World Religion teacher at the Culver Creek Boarding School. He is very old and has difficulty in breathing, leading students to speculate that he only has one lung. He is a genius who promotes independent thought and can surprise students at times.
  • Marya: Kicked out of Culver Creek for committing "The Trifecta" of expellable offenses. Alaska's roommate previously being expelled, allowing Alaska to have a room all to herself. Marya was caught because someone told the principal - the person who told remains a mystery, but there is much speculation.
  • Paul: Marya's boyfriend, and a Weekday Warrior. He was kicked out of Culver Creek with Marya for what the Colonel refers to as "The Trifecta" of offenses.
  • Katie: Lara's roommate.
  • Kevin: One of the Weekday Warriors.
  • Longwell Chase: One of the Weekday Warriors.
  • Joe and Marcus: Two students from Mississippi. They have hidden pornography in their room.
  • Holly Moser: Student at Culver Creek Boarding School who draws pictures of herself nude.
  • Dr. William Morse: Invented professor for the use of a prank
  • Takumi: Token Asian in a predominantly white community, laying low in the sidelines and has the uncanny talent for rapping freestyle
  • Alaska Young: A young troubled girl who is always trying to figure out why things are happening
  • Pudge: The protagonist. Has to grapple with the meaning of life throughout the book.
  • Beast: Add a description of this character.
  • Madame O'Malley: French teacher at Culver Creek
  • Marie Law-son
  • Maxx: A good humoured stripper who plays a key role in one of the gang's major pranks.
  • Jeff
  • Justin
  • Dolores: The Colonel's mom
  • Dad
  • Hank Walsten
  • Clay Wurtzel
  • Pudge
  • Katherine
  • Maureen
  • Colin Singleton
Show all 35 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.”
    Alaska Young
  • “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
    Alaska Young
  • “People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of that phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Hold on... I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of s**t.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “Not the brightest gem in the jewelry shop, but you've got to admire his single-minded dedication to drug abuse.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “I am concussed.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”
    Francois Rabelais
  • “And I will always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Sometimes you lose battle. But mischief always win the war.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Great is a judgment on a woman’s body. Perky is merely an observation.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “And maybe it was only because Alaska couldn’t hit the brakes, and I couldn’t hit the accelerator. Maybe she had an odd kind of courage that I lacked, but no.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I'd never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, in the same way that historical events are important whether or not you personally lived through them.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “It’s stupid to miss someone you didn’t even get along with. But it was nice, you know, having someone you could always fight with.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “Things never happened like I imagined them.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read. But there is so much to do: cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on. I’ll have more time when I’m old and boring.”
    Alaska Young
  • “It reminds me of when the Germans demanded that the U.S. surrender at the Battle of the Bulge. I guess I’d say to this truce offer what General McAuliffe said to that one: Nuts.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “He loves weed like Alaska loves sex.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “I wanted to be one of those people who have streaks to maintain, who scorch the ground with their intensity. But for now, at least I knew such people, and they needed me, just like comets need tails.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I may die young. But at least I’ll die smart. Now, back to tangents.”
    Alaska Young
  • “Well, later, I found out what it means. It’s from an Aleut word, Alyeska. It means ‘that which the sea breaks against,’ and I love that. But at the time, I just saw Alaska up there. And it was big, just like I wanted to be. And it was damn far away from Vine Station, Alabama, just like I wanted to be.”
    Alaska Young
  • “Best day of my life was January 9, 1997. I was eight and my mom and I went to the zoo on a class trip. I liked the bears. She liked the monkeys. Best day ever. End of story.”
    Alaska Young
  • “I hope you didn’t bring the Asian kid along thinking he’s a computer genius. Because I am not.”
    Takumi Hikohito
  • “Pudge, my friend, we are indefuckingstructible.”
    Takumi Hikohito
  • “I lose. Because the best day of my life was the day I lost my virginity. And if you think I’m going to tell you that story, you’re gonna have to get me drunker than this.”
    Takumi Hikohito
  • “That was the day I stopped caring what people did. I just never cared anymore, about being a loser or not having friends or any of that.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “You never know. It’s just. It’s like. POOF. And you’re gone.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “I was caught in a triangle with one dead side.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.”
    Chip "The Colonel" Martin
  • “I’d finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be discovered.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Because no one can catch the motherfucking fox.”
    Takumi Hikohito
  • “She said that it was sexist to leave the cooking to the women, but better to have good sexist food than crappy boy-prepared food.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “At some point, you just pull off the Band-Aid and it hurts, but then it’s over and you’re relieved.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow—-that, in short, we are all going.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • ““I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.””
    Alaska Young
  • “How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten?”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Because memories fall apart too.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “I finally found something that can stop the fox. The fox cannot summit Strawberry Hill.”
    Takumi Hikohito
  • “But we can't know better until knowing better is useless.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “...we had to forgive to survive in the labryinth.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.”
    Alaska Young
  • “That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.”
    Miles "Pudge" Halter
  • ““I may die young,” she said. “But at least I’ll die smart. Now, back to tangents.””
    Alaska
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you’ll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.”
    Highlighted by 925 Kindle customers
  • We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
    Highlighted by 763 Kindle customers
  • When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.
    Highlighted by 727 Kindle customers
  • Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.
    Highlighted by 641 Kindle customers
  • “Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.”
    Highlighted by 634 Kindle customers
  • There comes a time when we realize that our parents cannot save themselves or save us, that everyone who wades through time eventually gets dragged out to sea by the undertow—that, in short, we are all going.
    Highlighted by 629 Kindle customers
  • What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.
    Highlighted by 569 Kindle customers
  • For she had embodied the Great Perhaps—she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps.
    Highlighted by 462 Kindle customers
  • ‘Everything that comes together falls apart,’” the Old Man said. “Everything. The chair I’m sitting on. It was built, and so it will fall apart. I’m gonna fall apart, probably before this chair. And you’re gonna fall apart. The cells and organs and systems that make you you—they came together, grew together, and so must fall apart. The Buddha knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia after his death: Entropy increases. Things fall apart.”
    Highlighted by 437 Kindle customers
  • “François Rabelais. He was this poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.”
    Highlighted by 371 Kindle customers
Show all 58 quotes from this book

Setting & Locations edit see section history

Culver Creek Preparatory School

Organizations edit see section history

  • Weekday Warriors: A group of generally wealthy kids only stay at Culver Creek on the weekdays. Their clique is very seperate from the rest of the population of Culver Creek, and rather disliked.
  • Basketball Team: Never win a game except the one they play against an impaired team. Everyone still seems to attend the games. The Colonel brings out his weird cheers for these games, such as "Cornbread,chicken, rice, peas! We got higher SAT's!". He is currently on a record streak for getting kicked out of the games.

First Sentence edit see section history

The week before I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Before
136 days before - the last day
After
the day after - 136 days after

Glossary edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • Some things in life are inevitable: No matter what you say or do, you cannot change fate. Life happens, death happens.
  • Love lasts forever: No matter what happens, Pudge will always love Alaska.
  • Everyone's life has a meaning: No matter what happens in your life, it still has a purpose.
  • The Accpetance of Death and Knowledge of an Afterlife: Many religious ideas are questioned while Pudge tries to understand what life follows after death. By whatever beliefs, there is established some realm of peace and beauty once you are released form the world. “Thomas Edison's last words were 'It's beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.” Pudge's underlying issue with some kind of afterlife is also recognized by his fascination with final words. These last words serve as some kind of measure of how well a life was. Perhaps even the ultimate truth or lesson they learned as death came for them. Pudge accepts death as a factor of living and a reason to hope.
  • The Labryinth: A confusing road map of life and death. The abandonment and estrangement of our lives. Many roads traverse the one we are on. Death seems to be the end but perhaps life is also a long and fufilling journey there. Pudge's relationship with Alaska begins this journey headstrong. Alaska seems to understand a route out of this labryinth by having a free-spirited approach to her life. There is maybe no sure way to travel through it or anything to find. The mystery of life is to discover and realize things we didn't know before we started.
  • The Burnt Out Candle: The flame that was once there provided heat and attraction. Alaska is the flame to Pudge as well as the guiding light that carries him along to a great perhaps.The fire could mean life and the smoke mean the abstract nothingness of our spirits once they are gone from our human forms. The smoke lingers at the top to suggest that we maintain a presence on earth even after death. In other's hearts or minds we stay like a lingering aroma that is familar to all. Death obviously leaves an effect on many people and creates feelings about life and death. How do we pass on? Where are we going before we are going? What am I living for?
  • Last Words: What are you last words? How will you be remembered once you are dead? The last words some up everything about your life. What you learned and how you grew as a human being. How has your experiences defined you surroundings and yourself? How will you impact others that hear what you have to say? And actually there may actually only be a few words or a simple metaphor but it says a lot.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. John Green (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Aleid van Eekelen-Benders (Translator) - Translated from English to Dutch

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Dutton
Country: USA
Publication Date: 3 March 2005
ISBN: 0525475060
Page Count: 221

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PZ7.G8233
  • Dewey: Fiction

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Young Adults

This book should be read by teenagers, I think it holds many valuable lessons and should be read by high schoolers. I'm a teenager and it has impacted my life in so many ways. However, it should be noted that this books contains profanity (plenty of f-words), sex, drugs, and drinking in high school. There is a question as to whether a student's death was an accident or suicide. Parents should let their teenagers read this book if they feel comfortable with the content.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Paper Towns
  • Let It Snow
  • The Burn Journals
  • Dreamland
  • Invisible
  • Speak
  • Getting the Girl
  • So Yesterday
  • D. Gray-Man, Volume 1
  • The House of Sixty Fathers
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Connecting Young Adults And Libraries

Books Cited by This Book edit see section history

   
  • The General in His Labyrinth
  • The Final Days
  • Ethan Frome

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