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Review and Study Guide for John Green's Looking for Alaska
Green covers religious themes amid high school tragedy.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.
Looking for Alaska
John Green
Dutton Deluxe Edition, 2015 (originally published 2005)
Reading Notes
I recommend that people read this book and do so without any spoilers, with which my review is replete. I just can't talk substantively about the book without talking about its major events. I'm glad I read it without knowing anything about it. I will note that the first line is, "one hundred thirty-six days before." Great way to build tension! But try not to find the answer to the question ("before what") prior to reading the book until it answers. So go away, read the book, then come back after you've read it.
The 2015 Deluxe Edition contains substantial material that helps explains the book's background and themes. The author writes an introduction, offers "some last words on last words" (pp. 275–277), and answers questions in the back (pp. 319–342). Michael Cart discusses the book at the very end (pp. 345–350). Also, a large chunk of the book is devoted to deleted scenes (pp. 283–317, the only section of the book I didn't read). In these notes I lean heavily on the author's own discussions of the themes in his book.
The first thing to notice about this book, in the context of its suppression by Colorado's Elizabeth School District, is its overt religious themes. How strange that conservatives suppress a pro-Christian book!
The story mainly is about three students at a boarding school, Miles Halter, his roommate Chip Martin, and their friend Alaska Young, plus their two friends Lara and Takumi, plus the surrounding characters.
The students take a class on theology with Mr. Hyde, who discusses Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, among other religious traditions. This class makes an impression on Miles, and the book ends with an essay he writes for the class on the topic of coping with the "labyrinth of suffering" in which we as humans find ourselves (or so says the book). This topic has especial poignancy for Miles given the death of Alaska, the central event of the novel.
Miles writes, "Ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. . . . There is part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed."
The book ends, then, with Miles's affirmation of a nonmaterial soul that survives death. We should not be surprised, then, that the deluxe edition includes the following question for Green (pp. 338–339): "You've previously described Looking for Alaska as 'Christian fiction' but more recently you seem to describe it as exploring multiple theistic (and nontheistic) responses to grief."
Green replies, "Good Christian fiction can explore (and celebrate) multitheistic and nontheistic responses to grief, I would argue. . . Pudge's [Miles's] personal response is quite a Christian one, insofar as the theological idea of radical hope (that hope and forgiveness are available to all, maybe even including the dead) is central to Pudge's final conclusions." The idea of "mutual forgiveness," he adds, "is certainly an idea that I got from Christianity."
So, although Green's book does not hard-sell Christianity as the only or final answer, it certainly is friendly to Christian theology and self-consciously written from a Christian perspective. So the fact that a group of (mostly or entirely) Christian conservatives suppressed this book is ironic and, in a way, hilarious.
Ah, but the book also describes, in "clinical" terms (see p. 340), a blowjob. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that's why the book was suppressed. Because, you know, high school students definitely won't learn about such things if they don't have access to school library books that discuss them. And we can't possibly read scenes of a book in context. The novel also involves substance abuse leading to Alaska's death.
Interestingly, Green writes in his introduction, his first draft of the novel did not mention two of the novel's most important ideas, the "labyrinth of suffering" and the "Great Perhaps." Aspiring writers can learn something about the drafting and revision process by reading all of the deluxe edition.
I started off not liking this book at all. Its main character is an entitled, pretentious idiot preoccupied with pranks and alcohol and infatuated with the Bad Girl. Mainly I didn't like this character because he reminds me too much of myself in my younger years. But I came to appreciate the book as I saw where it was headed. Although in the end I disagree with Miles's answer to the problem of suffering (see my book on religion), I appreciate books that take big ideas seriously.
A personal note about drunk driving: I knew two people who, in their youth, got in a car with someone they knew to be drunk, and both died from the resulting crash (one instantly, one later due to complications). In both cases the driver had to deal with enormous guilt.
Questions for Discussion and Review
1. Before Miles goes to boarding school, he (silently) mocks his only two peers to attend his going-away party as "vastly, deeply uninteresting people." Is the real problem that Miles is being an asshole and not trying hard enough to make friends with the people around him? If he can't find his "Great Perhaps" where he is, can he reasonably expect to find it elsewhere? Is it just luck that Miles immediately hits it off with his new roommate Chip and with Chip's friends? (Green describes Miles as "weak-willed" and "self-destructive," although "he starts to affect the action in the second half of the novel" (pp. 330–331)). In general, how do you know if "the grass is greener" elsewhere or if you just need stay put and change yourself? When can longing for a "Great Perhaps" elsewhere be a form of self-destructive escapism?
2. Right after Miles arrives at boarding school, some others at the school, angry at Chip, abduct Miles, duct-tape him like a mummy, and throw him into the lake. Realistically, this easily could have killed him. I regard that incident as a violent kidnapping and assault of a sort that, in the real world, should result in arrest and criminal prosecution. Yet in Green's world, this is characterized as a prank (although an extreme one), and Chip emphasizes to Miles that students at the school do not rat on each other. In the real world, school bullying is a serious problem (recently a 12-year-old Chicago girl was killed in a case of bullying). Do students have a moral responsibility to report bullying? Do students ever not have such a responsibility? Is there a context in which the "no-ratting" mindset is reasonable?
3. Alcohol is involved in the deaths of around 178,000 Americans every year, including some 12,000 deaths by car crash. Drug and alcohol use by teens is "relatively low" these days, although still a huge problem. Why do some teens still find alcohol and other drugs alluring? To what extent is drug abuse driven by a search for excitement? What are healthier ways to seek excitement in life? To what extent is drug abuse driven (as in the case of Alaska) by depression or other psychological issues?
4. Why did Alaska think she was responsible for her mother's death, why was she not, and to what extent did Alaska accept guilt over her mother as a way to punish herself for broader feelings of self-unworthiness? (Green says, "Alaska had some pretty serious emotional problems that weren't about her mother but instead were probably about the way her brain was wired" (p. 328)). (Note: Parents certainly can teach their kids some basics about household safety, such as how to call 911, but Alaska at her age was not responsible for that.)
5. In my view, Miles treated both Lara and Alaska shabbily, Lara by cheating on her, Alaska by taking advantage of her emotionally wounded condition. Discuss or challenge.
6. In my view, Miles is infatuated with Alaska but not really in love with her. Discuss or challenge. To what degree is Miles in love with a fantasy of Alaska, as Chip suggests, rather than the real person?
7. Miles and Chip really did have a moral responsibility to stop Alaska from driving drunk, so they earned at least some of the guilt they experience over her death. At one point, Chip, angry, says to Miles, "Why'd you help her go? I was drunk. What's your excuse?" (p. 210) Was Chip drunkenness really a good excuse? To what extent are the boys guilty for Alaska's death, and how should they confront that culpability? In all seriousness, you might want to role-play or at least contemplate how you might intervene in such cases. It's much easier to take the right action in the moment if you've prepared yourself for it.
8. Miles seems to make mutual forgiveness with Alaska contingent on souls being immortal (p. 272). Can you interpret forgiveness in ways that doesn't require immortality? Obviously someone "truly dead" cannot forgive anyone, but can Miles find the sort of redemption or resolution he's looking for without postulating an immortal soul?
9. One answer to the problem of the "labyrinth of suffering" is that we should emphasize gratitude rather than suffering. What do you think of that answer, Chip's answer ("I choose the labyrinth"—p. 266), and Miles's answer (in his closing essay)?
10. What is your Great Perhaps, and how do you intend to find it?