Blog #3

  
Throughout the novel, the setting mostly takes place at Culver Creek. However, this boarding school has many areas inside and around the school, which the characters like to hang out at. With this in mind, John Green uses sensory detail to help differentiate between each event's setting. His excessive use of sensory details helps create a mental image of how the setting appears to be and the appearances of the characters. During this scene, Miles Halter is admiring the appearance of Alaska Young while they are smoking cigarettes at the lake near Culver Creek. Green writes, "In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla, and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette except for when she smoked, when the burning cherry of the cigarette washed her face in pale red light. But even in the dark, I could see her eyes- fierce emeralds,". In this excerpt, we can see how John Green helps paint this mental image of how Miles saw Alaska. He uses the sense of smell when Green explains how she smelled of sweat and vanilla, which most people have smelt at least once during their lifetime. John Green sets the time of the day when he uses the term, "thin-mooned night", he uses the detail of how the moon look instead of stating that it was night. John Green also accentuates how the "burning cherry" of the cigarette, which is the light that shone onto her face from the silhouette caused by the darkness. Green also uses a metaphor to show Alaska's eyes as "fierce emeralds", this creates an image of how her eyes are a striking green. John Green uses devices such as sensory details and metaphors to describe the features of the setting or characters in the book rather than stating the plain,old obvious.