Blog #2

Toward the beginning of Looking For Alaska, Miles Halter is hoping to find his "Great Perhaps" while attending Culver Creek. A brand new year for Miles Halter at a new school is a new chance to experience what he did not before. A chance to fit in or be noticed, perhaps. John Green puts a common situation of "following the crowd to fit in", during the beginning of this book. In this scene, Miles Halter purchases cigarettes for his roommate, whom he hopes to be his lifeline into the social net. Also, Miles Halter smokes to try to fit in with his roommate, and try to impress Alaska, if she came along. I believe that this scene can connect to our society amongst teenagers because they want to fit in with the crowd. They are willing to do anything they are uncomfortable to avoid being "alone". People want to avoid feeling left out, so they do anything in their power to feel apart of something. John Green picked the most common "peer-pressure" our society deals with, which is drugs. Green chose this topic to connect with his fellow young adult audience because it is a common occurrence that most teenagers are familiar with. They have either experienced it themselves or seen someone go through that experience. John Green puts this common motif of peer pressure among adolescents, to establish a connection with his young audience.

Blog #1

In Looking For Alaska, by John Green, the story begins with an insight of who Miles Halter was before he left to Culver Creek, which is a boarding school. Miles Halter was not "Mr.Popular", but his parents insisted on throwing him a going away party because his mother had hope that she would see that he had friends. However, like Miles predicted, nobody showed up, besides Marie Lawson and her boyfriend who did not seem interested and left early. Toward the beginning, it seemed that Miles Halter did not have any self-confidence in himself because he wasn't noticed at his last school, which the reader can infer was the reason to attend a boarding school. In the beginning, the reader can see John Green's use of similes to paint the image of the scene happening. For example, John Green writes, "Florida was plenty hot, certainly, and humid,too. Hot enough that your clothes stuck to you like Scotch tape, and sweat dripped like tears from your forehead into your eyes,". Through the use of similes, the reader can picture the heat of Florida's weather. Green compares Mile Halter's clothes to Scotch tape, because tape is sticky, and when it is humid, our clothes can stick to our skin due to the humidity and sweat. Also, Green compares the motion of sweat to tears, to portray how the sweat just falls down from your forehead to your eyes. Similar to how tears fall down from your eyes to your cheeks. John Green's use of a simile is to help the reader picture how hot the weather is during Miles Halter's move. He wants us to feel the setting around him. Living in California, I can connect with Miles Halter because there is days where it is over 100 degrees. Also, John Green uses imagery to show us how Miles Halter's dorm looks like. For example, he writes, "Aside from one luxury- a private bathroom- I got a box. With cinder-block walls coated thick with layers of white paint and a green-and-white-checkered linoleum floor, the place looked more like a hospital than the dorm room of my fantasies,".  John Green uses detailed explanations to describe Miles Halter's room, so we can see through the eyes of Miles Halter. This room is pictured to be plain, and not of the expectations of Miles. Instead of saying the room had white walls and checkered floors, he uses phrases, such as, "cinder-block walls coated thick with layers of white paint", to emphasize how the room is put together and how it looks. Also, he compares his room to a hospital, because he was disappointed he did not get the dream dorm room like in the movies.  John Green uses imagery and similes to refer to the senses of seeing and feeling, so we can picture the setting in our head.