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.