Breaking Bubble

John Green’s novels have slowly been breaking down the bubble of happily ever after I have hidden inside of.  The third book of my John Green campaign, Looking for Alaska lasted for about one week.  The first part of the book was spread out evenly over the course of several days.  The second section was started on Monday during our in-class reading.  Once I reached the turning point of the novel there was no turning back.  I went home and read for two straight hours and finished the book.  Oops.

With each John Green novel I burn through, I  have come to accept the fact that once John Green does what he has set out to do since the beginning, there is no fighting it, turning back or stopping.  Letting go of control has always been something I struggle with when I read.  For example, any time a character is killed off in any book or film, I go into denial.  There is no way that character is gone.  Then I begin to mourn the character, cherishing their best scenes and trying to burn them into my memory.  I also hate the author or creator in the back of my mind just the tiniest bit for the hole in my heart the character used to fill.  But after finishing this book, I seem to have learned to accept anything John Green throws my way.  I just have to sit down, shut up and take it.  I can’t put down a book because it doesn’t agree with me, I must finish it to see if John Green is able to tie up the ends into a nice little bow.  Or some sort of knot that makes me understand where he’s coming from.  Whether or not this novel of his did that for me is debatable, but I definitely thought it was better than the end of Paper Towns.  However, I would need to reread The Fault in Our Stars to compare those two endings.

One minor layer of my protective bubble that John Green has broken down is looking past the actions of characters that I don’t agree with.  Certain aspects of characters that don’t sit well with me or my morals can distract me from the entire point of a passage or section or the meaning hidden behind it.  For example, on the 18th page the narrator says “I became a smoker because 1. I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and 2. I had cigarettes, and 3. I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well, too.  In short I didn’t have a good reason.  So yeah, let’s just say that 4. it was the bugs.”  First off, I’ve been raised to believe that smoking cigarettes is never, ever, acceptable.  My father has threatened disowning me if I ever pick up the habit (and being a lawyer he is very familiar with the process) and even if that weren’t a concern, I would never want to be on the receiving end of his judgements of those that do smoke.  No offense to those that do, but in my world that is  a big no no.  So when the main character began this habit 18 pages into the book, I sucked it up and looked past it.  Something I have never been able to do before.  And lucky me, because I was able to see how much I like that way of presenting a list, and have adopted it in my own writing.  Once I made this connection, I realized a series of John Green habits that I liked, and have begun to pick those up as well.

So, all in all, John Green has helped me get over myself to actually pay attention to what the writer is saying.  Whether I want to or not, I might as well be respectful and pay attention to what they’re saying.  I’m sure scrutinizing smoking so much makes me sound like a horrible person, but my upbringing gave me little choice. Anyways, thank you John Green for helping to pull my nose out of the air and back into the book I’m reading.

The Old Man

I have now moved on to my third John Green novel, having finished Paper Towns rather quickly. In order to avoid Saw the Movie Before I Read the Book Syndrome, I have selected Looking for Alaska to continue my John Green streak.  Since we have been talking about character sketches in class lately, I chose to focus on a passage introducing the narrator's favorite teacher at his boarding school: Dr. Hyde.

"Just then, the Old Man shuffled in.

He breathed slowly and with great labor through his wide-open mouth.  He took tiny steps toward the lectern, his heels not moving much past his toes.  The Colonel nudged me and pointed casually to his notebook, which read, The Old Man only has one lung, and I did not doubt it.  His audible, almost desperate breaths reminded me of my grandfather when he was dying of lung cancer.  Barrel-chested and ancient, the Old Man, it seemed to me, might die before he ever reached the podium." (31).

Immediately after reading this, I wondered to myself why in the world John Green would put me through this painful image of a teacher struggling to breathe and walk at the same time, let alone teach a class full of the mischievous students the previous 30 pages had introduced.  The class was World Religions, and the narrator didn't show any sign of being religious whatsoever.  And all of the previous teachers had only been glossed or skipped altogether up until this point.  In fact, the narrator spent more time talking about his disappointment that the girls all chose to wear pajamas to class than most of his teachers.  It wasn’t until I continued reading that I figured out why the Old Man was so important to the narrator…

“I’m in class, so teach me.  And teach me he did: In those fifty minutes, the Old Man made me take religion seriously.  I’d never been religious, but he told us that religion is important whether or not we believed in one, the same way that historical events are important whether or not we personally lived through them.” (33).

This fascinated me.  The way Green chose to introduce Pudge’s teacher not only developed the teacher, but Pudge himself.  Through the incredibly detailed observations of the narrator, we have a clearly painted picture of a character that has already begun to affect our narrator within the first 50 minutes of their relationship.  This old and frail man gained the respect of the narrator within seconds in order to convince him that religion is in fact important.

This idea in particular resonated with me, because I myself have never identified myself with a certain religion.  In fact, I really haven’t given much attention to any one religion at all.  While I have been exposed to many religions throughout my public school education, their importance has never really made any real connections with me.  Nothing in any curriculum so far has been able to convince me of why religions are necessary or important.  So for someone in a similar state of mind as me, like Pudge, to have such a breakthrough about the importance of religion in a 50 minute period, baffles me.  Am I missing something?  Is there something that my exposure to these religions has been lacking if I don’t truly see the importance of having or believing in a religion?  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t believe in religion.  I respect everyone’s decisions and all that, but I don’t quite understand the importance of religion to society.  I also don’t understand why having the narrator becoming fascinated by religion early on was so important to the author.  What importance will this teacher or this class have on the narrator?  Other than the obvious Open-Mindedness that the narrator is already experiencing from Day One.

On an entirely separate note, I realized that in that last sentence that I’m starting to adopt John Green’s stylized capitalizations

A John Green Habit...

SPOILER ALERT.  Sort of.

After finishing Paper Towns, I immediately made a connection between another book written by John Green, the one and only The Fault in Our Stars.  Both were beautifully written and very enjoyable books that starred romantic teens.  What else did they both have?  Heart breaking endings that did not satisfy the need for fairy tale endings that Disney movies have been spoon feeding me since I watched my first VHS tapes.  I won't go too far into what the ending of The Fault in the Stars in case you haven't read it, but it made me cry on the plane ride I was on.  I had to stop reading and finish it when I got home I was so upset.  When I did finish it I threw it on the floor in frustration and went to find comfort in sugary foods.  Little did I know I would have the exact same reaction when I finished my second John Green novel.  I chucked the paperback across my bedroom, and then stormed out and slammed the door behind me.  There were no tears this time, but I was furious with John Green.  I also drew a correlation between John Green and unsatisfactory endings.
John Green writes incredible love stories that make readers believe that love will always find away.  Usually in the form of some sort of great adventure that makes the reader wish they had a life that was nearly that cool.  Then, at the very last moment, he snatches it away.  His beautiful tales of young adults is just too good to be true, and has the reader floating along, hanging on every word.  When the reader is in love with the love he has depicted, he cuts the cord and the reader falls onto the cement.  Even though I am incredibly upset with him, I want to read another one of his books to see if he will do something similar.  Ugh.

Narrator of Paper Towns

For his novel Paper Towns, John Green has made the narrator the main character: Quentin Jacobson. Quentin seems to be like many fictional high school students: not very involved, has a group of friends but still doesn't really fit in, and still can't seem to win over the girl of his dreams.  All of his reactions so far seem very believable: afraid when he and his friend discovered a dead body at a young age, distaste for prom and the boyfriend of his love interest, and surprise when his love interest reaches out to him again through a window after years of silence between them.  Quentin only has a limited perspective, so I have yet to discover that actual reasoning behind Margo Roth Spiegelman's decision to reconnect with Quentin and this will add a great deal of suspense as the adventures between them promised on the jacket of the book occur.  So far, Quentin's perspective has made me hate his high school as much as he does.  I have no interest in being around the bullies or the cool kids or watching Margo talk to her boyfriend who is obviously not as good for her as Quentin.  Also, I can't wait to find out what Margo has to say to him after all this time because I don't understand why the close bond between them Quentin described has just fallen between the cracks.  Even though the narrator has insisted that prom is the last thing we want (he wants), I'm not going to lie...I really want him to end up going to prom with her.  With that, Quentin's being the narrator has established that high school is bad, but Margo Roth Spiegelman is the bright spot in that hell hole and now I'm left to wonder what effect she is going to have on him in the end.