Looking for Alaska Blog Post

***SPOLER ALERT!!!***

I just finished reading Looking for Alaska, by John Green. It’s an amazing book about Miles (Pudge) and his friends Chip (the Colonel), Takumi, and Alaska as they go on different adventures at Culver Creek, their boarding school in Alabama. They prank students they don’t like, and go against many of the school’s rules and often don’t get caught. One night, their friend Alaska gets a call and hangs up in tears, screaming at Pudge and the Colonel to distract the school’s headmaster so she can sneak out. She takes her car after being very drunk (.24) and after having smoked cigarettes to go put flowers on her mom’s grave for the 8-year anniversary of her death, and drives straight into a cop car without even swerving, being killed instantly. Pudge is fascinated with people’s last words, and I think it’s very fitting (and also really sad) that Alaska died, and Pudge doesn’t know her last words.

            Pudge and Alaska only met at the beginning of the year, and already Pudge believes he’s in love with Alaska. They have a lot in common, and get along really well with each other most of the time. After Alaska’s death, Pudge is pretty scarred by it all, and misses her as much as Alaska’s friends who’ve known her for a longer time do. Sometimes, Pudge seems to feel guilty when he says he barely even knew her, and the Colonel and him also talk about how the forget her, and forget what she looks like. Pudge wrote in his final religion essay that soon, he would forget her, but that it’s okay because Alaska will forgive him just as her mom forgave her, and just as he forgives her for not thinking of anyone but her and her mom when she left. Pudge and the Colonel go on a mission to try and find out where Alaska was going and why she left, and Pudge tries to find out what Alaska’s last words might possibly have been.

            I think it’s fitting that Pudge doesn’t know Alaska’s last words, because he knows the last words of so many people he’s never met, and that’s often the only thing he knows about them. He doesn’t really love them, or know them just by knowing their last words. Pudge has never talked about anyone’s last words that he knows who has died; he only knows the last words of people he never knew. I think it’s nice that Pudge doesn’t know Alaska’s last words, because he’ll get to remember her by the experiences and good times they shared, rather than last words, which will never be able to sum up anyone’s life- especially Alaska’s.