For some time now I have noticed that many people no longer like John Green when there was a time when people adored him and he was considered one of the best authors and that made me wonder.... What was it that happened?
Looking for Alaska is about Miles, a boy obsessed with the last words of important people who goes in search of his big maybe. Entering a new boarding school, meeting new friends and a very interesting girl named Alaska, Miles begins to live new experiences he never thought to live.
One of the biggest challenges for authors is to have the ability for their stories to remain in time, Looking for Alaska received very good reviews at the time. however lately I think it has been one of Green's most criticized books pointing out that Alaska is a bad character and that her only function is to be the ¨unattainable girl¨ for our protagonist.
I love it, it's my favorite John Green book (and the one I've read the most) and that's why I come to defend it. Yes it is very true that this author has a tendency to use female characters as those ¨Unattainable Girls¨ in his stories, yet I think this book goes way beyond that. Next I will tell a little about my opinion about the book, so I warn you about SPOILERS.
Although for many people Alaska is just the pretty girl for me she is more than that, besides I think that some people are not entirely clear about the intention of the female characters in Green's books, Alaska is a girl with many problems, quite knowledgeable about many issues and very involved in her world, I know she is an unpredictable woman and she was until the last minute of her life. On many occasions she made it clear to Miles that her intention with him was not to make him fall in love, she just wanted to spend time with someone and distract herself.
On the other hand, Miles adored Alaska from the first moment, he wanted to know about her, to know her and to be around her. Green is this book (and in paper cities) presents us with the same idea ¨A person is just that, a person¨ It is we ourselves who look for labels for others, for Miles, Alaska was a mystery, a beautiful girl, someone he wanted by his side and that is why he tries so hard to investigate about her death. We only see Alaska as unbelievable because we read the story from Miles' perspective and we know how desperate he was to discover this great Maybe. Many times we get blinded by our feelings for someone and don't see who they really are, but that's only our responsibility, not the person's, Alaska never tried to be someone else and always made her intentions clear, it was Miles who took the whole situation beyond what it should have been, the same thing happens with Quentin and Margo PAPER TOWN SPOILER Quentin goes on a whole journey to find Margo, and when he finally gets her, she tells him that she just wanted to let him know that she was okay and that she had gone off to find her own freedom, but she didn't want him to go after her. These books teach us that we must ground ourselves, sometimes we see signs where there are none and because of that our judgment is affected and we can act badly or incorrectly even when we have good intentions.
If you don't want to read Looking for Alaska the whole book I recommend you to read the last chapter, for me it is the best of all, especially the essay with which it ends.
This story I'm sure you must know, it's about a girl named Hazel who meets a Boy named Gus and they begin to have a pretty special relationship as they both fight for their lives in a war against cancer.
It depends on who you ask, I'm sure many people will say yes, but personally I prefer Looking for Alaska or A Thousand Times Till Forever. I think what struck people about this book was the impact it made by being so different from the others, it was the first time John had written one of his books with a female perspective, and we all adored Hazel. Unlike other protagonists, Hazel does not see Gus as a mystery, and Gus never gives false signals to Hazel, but their relationship is quite clear and reciprocal from the beginning, what Hazel sees in Gus is hope (One of the main messages in ALL John Green's books) Hope in being able to live a happy life, an everyday life, a life like any other teenage girl. Thanks to this new stage in Hazel's life, she travels, meets, has new experiences and gets a new meaning to life. It is a touching story with very good characters.
The characters, especially the main ones. It's quite common to like another character more than the main character, especially if we're not inside the main character's mind, but I think it's just a matter of understanding certain things.
ARE TEENAGERS. Many in general do not like teenagers, full of problems and confusions and think that everything is to make a big fuss. Well... That's life, that's how teenagers are, some are quiet and nice like Hazel and Gus, others have problems that we should pay attention to like Aza's anxiety and other disorders in A Thousand Times Forever and others just don't know themselves and need to find themselves like Quentin and Miles. Sometimes we don't understand people or get frustrated by what they do, but it's just by making those mistakes that we learn. Maybe that's what happened to many of us, at the time we read the book we were teenagers and we were more attuned to the emotions of these characters, but as we got older we realized certain things and changed our minds.
The only book by John Green that I can say with certainty that I didn't like was Katherine's Theorem but otherwise, I think they are books with a lot of feelings and that more than being about loving others, they are about how our experiences affect us and help us grow.
I still have unread John Green books Are there any books you recommend?
