My Pants - The Official Forum of Nerdfighteria

I had just finished reading "An Abundance of Katherines" (really, just a couple minutes before) when I started Looking for Alaska - and for some reason I started feeling a bit melancolic still during the prologue.

I knew something was going to happen. And then Alaska showed up and I was like "omg, she looks just like me! Creepy!". I felt... Very weird, very broken when she died. Specially since she reminded me so much of myself - at least physically - and the image of her body in a coffin was really... disturbing.

So, yeah, I felt the loss and everything... But I didn't cry. Not literally -- although I felt like it. After Deathly Hallows (I had a hard time reading DH33-35 because I was crying so hard and I couldn't see the screen, and all the terrible caps from the carpet book and everything) everytime I felt I was going to cry during a book I would lit up a cigarette - and I can't smoke and cry at the same time, or I wouldn't breath -- and keep on reading.

Still, I was devasted.

i ust read looking for alaska.  i read it in about 5 hours, nonstop.  right at the point where i was getting sleepy alaska died and thus, i had to stay awake until 4 30 in the morning to get to the very end. 

great great great book and so sad

I read that book in one mighty swing I stayed up from I forget what time till 2am, I cried after Alaska died and kept on reading when I finished I couldn't sleep so I just cried for a short while...

hikaricloud wrote:

I think what really hit me was the funeral. Especially the part where Miles knelt at the casket...

I felt the Colonel's small hands on my shoulders, and a tear dripped onto my head, and for a few moments, it was just the three of us--the buses of students hadn't arrived, and Takumi and Lara had faded away, and it was just the three of us--three bodies and two people...

That whole paragraph and scene really got me, but that part especially. :[ I don't normally cry over books. D:

"Three bodies and two people."
That's exactly where I lost it, too.

I read Looking for Alaska after I read Katherines and i was blown away by how serious it was. Katherines was so easy flowing and happy and i think thats why Alaska has had such a profound effect on my life now. I value the time with my friends and appreciate them even more.

When my ex's friends killed herself last year, i rembered the end of Looking for Alaska and composed a poem out of lines from it. This is how it went:

(SPOILER: The next couple of paragraphs contain parts of the ending of the book. look away if you haven't read this awesome book yet)

Sum of Our Parts:

I thought at first she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten. I thought about her a lot like that. What was her would soon be nothing.
   Sometimes I think “the afterlife” is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss. To make our time bearable. Maybe she was just matter and matter gets recycled.
   Ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. I believe we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take her genetic code, add her life experiences, the relationships she had and the size and shape of her, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it can’t be destroyed.
   One thing I learned from science class is that energy is never created and never destroyed. we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, the don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible cause 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 that’s greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

I've read many books where main characters have died and I've cried in all of them. Saying this, Looking For Alaska was much, much different. I still think of her death all the time and just start crying. What is amazing that John had developed all the characters, including Alaska, throughout the book, that it was still so so sad when she died in the middle of the book. Not many authors could write a book were someone dies and right so much more after that without it being repetative or unoriginal. Does that make sense at all?

The only two fictional characters I have ever felt remorse upon their death was
1- Alaska and 2 - My dog from Fable 2 when he gets shot (and when I accidently didnt get him and my sister back in the end) 

I agree with whoever it was that said that Alaska was a little annoying. But after reading paper towns the whole implication that john is saying is that we can never truly be anyone and we are all imagining a person that isnt who they really are.. ok john says it better, but its the same way with Pudge and Alaska. Pudge loved the IDEA of Alaska- as we all did. and Truly, her strings broke.. more so then Margo. I felt for pudge when he lost alaska. I know every single one of us who had a high school crush, that true first love, and felt that devastating blow when they moved to a different high school or a different province, or you did, you lost that first love before you even had it. I think Pudge Loosing Alaska brought back that feeling without us even knowing it. and I say frickin frack you John Green for being so Fricking Fracking Awesome

Oh hell yeah. What happened for me was, I was reading it all in one night.

Then the eagle came to their door and the colonel thought that their teacher died.

And before they even said it, I knew, but I had to keep reading and when it said it. I literally dropped the book and started crying. It took me a while before I could read again.

And all I could think was "No...it wasn't supposed to be like this! They were supposed to live happily ever after!"

But I finished it, and it was amazing.

I love Alaska. I cried a lot, and my dad cried when he read it too, but, it gets better!! I mean, this is probably a REALLY old post that I'm not commenting on and I apologize, but really, it gets better. I promise.

inksmear wrote:

The book ripped me apart, but it also put me back together - stronger than I had been before.

Me too.  And I couldn't have said it better.

Hey man,

Married professional here, 48.  Ill be in Phx next summer long time away I know but Ill be looking for a bud for some jo while Im there.  Ill host at my hotel....interested?