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