By Erin Ross

In middle school and high school, quotes from Looking for Alaska were strewn all over Tumblr and Instagram. The story, or a few circulated quotes at the least, served as a sort of aesthetic for young kids who felt a sense of loneliness they believed could only be understood through literature and art. I avoided the book for a while, but eventually gave in, allowing my adolescent emotions and desire for a sense of self to take over. So, my mom bought me a used copy from the half-priced book store and I dove into the fictional world of Miles Halter and Alaska Young. 

Before I started to read, I had no idea about the true contents of the novel or the way in which it would impact my life. Looking for Alaska inspired a search for purpose and, in turn, led to a new definition of my identity. As the book tackled real hurt and loss, and instigated questions surrounding the meaning of life and individual purpose, I began to identify as a main character in my own life. Similar to Miles, my identity became rooted in a search for something greater, a “great perhaps,” in a seemingly never-ending series of monotonous events. Little did I know that this book would not only serve as an instigation of my purpose searching, but also a way for me to recognize the impact the evolution of my identity has had on my search for answers. 

Looking for Alaska tells the story of Miles Halter, later nicknamed “Pudge” by his friends, and his experiences at an Alabama boarding school. Before leaving for school, Miles narrates his love for famous last words, the most important being François Rabelais’ last words: “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” Such words become the foundation and motivation for Miles’ adventures at boarding school as he searches for his purpose in life. 

While at school, Miles meets Chip, Takumi, and Alaska, whom he follows on rule-breaking adventures, including smoking cigarettes and hiding bottles of wine in the woods. Much of the first half of the book centers on the students’ religion class, in which they are prompted to ponder life’s biggest questions, and Miles’ falling for Alaska, despite the fact that she has a boyfriend. One night, Alaska tragically dies in a car accident after leaving campus drunk. Her death serves as the turning point and central problem of the whole story. The latter half of the novel consists of Miles trying to solve the mystery of whether Alaska’s death was a suicide, all the while searching for an answer to life’s hardest questions about hurt and loss. The mystery of Alaska becomes Miles’ “great perhaps,” and the starting point in his search for self. 

Although the students’ religion class, led by the old and weathered, yet insightfully wise Dr. Hyde, is set in the background of the beginning half of the novel, it is the questions posed in the class, paired with Alaska’s death, that illuminates the story’s themes of a search for self and the meaning of life. Prior to Alaska’s death, Dr. Hyde provides students with the term paper prompt  “What is the most important question human beings must answer?” to which Miles answers “What happens to us when we die?” Miles’ essay question foreshadows Alaska’s death while simultaneously addressing the theme of life’s purpose or end goal. Although such passages introduce the theme for the novel, I feel that Dr. Hyde’s response to Alaska’s death serves as the launching pad into deeper thematic structure. 

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?—A. Y. ‘I’m going to leave that up for the rest of the semester,’ he said. ‘Because everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question. At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze, and I don’t want us to forget Alaska, and I don’t want to forget that even when the material we study seems boring, we’re trying to understand how people have answered that question and the questions each of you posed in your papers — how different traditions have come to terms with what Chip, in his final, called ‘people’s rotten lots in life.’ (Green 158)

Although readers can analyze Looking for Alaska through a variety of thematic lenses, the most obvious being the theme of death and mortality, I believe that the story focuses on death, not as an end in itself, but as a device for exploring the search for self-identity and the meaning of life. By posing the class with Alaska’s term paper question: “How will we ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?” Dr Hyde plagues the characters and readers with the task of using suffering as a tool to find purpose in life and all of its hurt. Such a task then leads toward a better sense of self as both readers and characters are prompted to analyze their own path in the maze of life. The central problem, Alaska’s death, becomes a framework for maneuvering readers toward exploring the theme as they are forced to face the pain of losing a friend. 

The story’s narrator also plays a key role in illuminating the work’s central problem and theme. Although the above passage presents dialogue, the entirety of the novel is told from Miles’ point of view. Miles serves as both a dramatized and an agent narrator as Green tells the story through the lens of Miles’ mind. Throughout the work, Miles explicitly displays his own emotions and personality as he recounts each moment of the story. This narrative choice allows the book to become Miles’ personal coming of age story as readers experience his internal thoughts in falling in love with Alaska and coping with her death. Therefore, by utilizing such a narrative technique, the author presents the themes of a search for self and the meaning of life through Miles’ own internal struggle. Such narration is shown in the excerpt following Dr. Hyde’s dialogue: 

The Colonel and I said nothing, while a bunch of people who didn’t know Alaska extolled her virtues and professed to be devastated, and at first, it bothered me. I didn’t want the people she didn’t know—and the people she didn’t like—to be sad. They’d never cared about her, and now they were carrying on as if she were a sister. But I guess I didn’t know her completely, either. If I had, I’d have known what she’d meant by ‘To be continued?’ And if I had cared about her as I should have, as I thought I did, how could I have let her go? (Green 159).

Miles’ internal struggle with Alaska’s death, especially when presented in the context of a response to Dr. Hyde’s prompts, can be applied to a larger discussion surrounding religion. Being a Christian myself, I try to view most life events through a biblical lens and, after re-reading Looking for Alaska later in life, I have found the meaning of life to be much simpler than it was prior to having an identity rooted in Christ. However, I understand that not everyone’s sense of purpose rests in the Great Commission, and that the search for purpose is dependent on an established personal identity. That being said, I think the theme presented in Looking for Alaska, when connected to religion, poses the question: If there is a God (which I believe there is), why do bad things happen to good people? And what has He purposed for us in our short time on earth? Of course I don’t have all the answers, nor will I ever pretend to fully understand the complexities of God, but I do believe that the search for the meaning of life that is presented in Looking for Alaska has a direct connection to the hope that is shared by Christ in Matthew 28: 18-20. For a Christian, Christ’s words provide direction, proposing us to spread the gospel and “make disciples of all nations,” while his promise to never leave us lessens the pain of suffering we may experience along the way: 

Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age,’ (NIV, Matt. 28.18-20)

Such an emotional resonance between my religious identity and the theme presented in Looking for Alaska is undoubtedly dependent on my faith, yet I also believe narration plays an important role in helping me make this connection. Since the story is told in a first-person point of view by a dramatized narrator, readers are able to form a sort of vicarious connection with Miles in which they become the storyteller. Therefore, readers such as myself begin to identify with Miles and, in turn, question the same things as he does. Such a relationship allowed for my personal identity to mesh with Miles’, leading to a connection between Christianity and the theme of searching for life’s meaning.

Such reasoning suggests that all individuals, in reading Looking for Alaska, may have the opportunity to connect their own identity with Miles too. Whether religious or not, most people find themselves wondering what their role is here on earth, and whether the monotony of their day to day life has greater significance. So, reading Looking for Alaska may prompt a personal search for purpose or, at the least, provide insight into how others cope with loss and hurt. How will you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?