Paper Towns Themes - www.BookRags.comPaper Towns is a book by John Green.
In the middle of the book, he loses touch with reality.He likes the image of a flawless, beautiful object to be sought after.He clings to the memories they shared as children, despite the fact that Margo has abandoned her innocence and Quentin's friendship.
Most aspects of Margo's personality are romanticized by Quentin.After discovering her location, Margo doesn't pay much attention to what her friends and family have gone through.Although he will always love her, he can no longer put his life on hold for her.He overcame his false perception and saw his love in a truer light.
The characters of Paper Towns have a mature understanding of their identity, which is rare for teenagers.
There are strings that hold a person together.Emotional stability and inner peace are represented by these strings.In the beginning of the novel, Quentin remembers a time when he and Margo found a dead man's body in a park.While Margo's fascination is piqued, Quentin is disgusted.Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
The idea of strings follows this memory.The search for one's strings is a symptom of the identity crisis that both Quentin and Margo go through.As he comes to terms with the false representation he has created of his childhood crush, Quentin's occurs.As the realization comes too late, Margo loses Quentin as she learns to stop fleeing responsibility.
Quentin eventually comes to realize that his platonic friends are more fulfilling than his relationship with a mirage.
Quentin begins to prioritize the people in his life who have shown genuine care for him as he discovers himself and Margo in a realistic light.The person who used to be a casual friend of Margo's criticizes her for not paying enough attention to her feelings.Lacy is more comfortable expressing her opinions to people who care to listen.
While his love for Margo overshadowed his friendship with Ben and Radar, he eventually learns to appreciate them and recognize their loyalty to him.
There is no question that Quentin's relationship with Margo is on the verge of obsession.He skips school, fights with his friends, and spends the night in an abandoned building with a blanket that smells faintly of her.Green has Quentin's teacher lecture on "Moby Dick".You don't see Ahab wanting anything else in the novel, do you?He has a singular preoccupation.Ahab is a fool for being obsessed.He is doomed to lose this battle and there is something heroic about fighting it.After this, Green, back in the narrating voice of Quentin, wrote, "I wrote down as much as I could of what she said, realizing that I can probably pull off my final reaction paper without actually reading the book."Dr. Holden is posing insightful questions that are important to understand Quentin's struggle, such as whether he is a hero or a fool, something Margo will bring up himself, but Quentin will not listen, even demonstrating uncharacteristic disregard for school, one of the effects of his obsession with trackingThe fact that their reunion is different from what he expected shows that he was more obsessed with the chase than with Margo.
Paper Towns begins when Robert Joyner dies at 9 years old.Death follows the plot throughout the book.The first time Ben and Radar visited the abandoned mini-mall, they were terrified by Quentin's suspicions that Margo was dead.They are not sure if she committed suicide inside or not, but they do know that it was a dead, bloated animal.While exploring a pseudovision, Quentin thought that he had seen a dead person behind a tree, but when he got to it, there was nothing there, causing him to cry and pound the ground with his fists."There was nothing built atop it, just the hole cut into the earth like a dead mouth agape" is a scene that depicts pseudovisions as dead.There is a similarity between finding someone who has committed suicide and seeing a location that was never finished.
Margo is described as someone who looks less beautiful to another person as they get closer to her.This may be the truth with regard to outer and inner beauty, even though Quentin protests against it.It's easier to see a blurry image of someone from far away and think they're beautiful, but by the end of the book he approaches her both physically and mentally.As he begins to understand her flaws, he sees her as a real human being.He shows that there is more to beauty than a perfect exterior by seeing her as beautiful inside and out.Lacey, Jase and Chuck are also humanized when Quentin gets closer to them, as both vapid and simply human.
Green's books often have a major theme of "coming of age" or transitioning from childhood to adulthood.Green begins his novel with a Prologue set in the childhood of Quentin and Margo.The juxtaposition of this traumatic childhood mystery with the rest of the novel, beginning with a normal day for Quentin, demonstrates Margo's curious and restless nature and shows the presence of Margo in the later narrative.The novel ends with Margo and Quentin thinking back to their childhood together and even symbolically burying it through the physical journal in which Margo has been writing stories and scheming childish adventures, bringing their journey full-circle as they attempt to accept their adult selves.
Green wants to know what young adulthood and adulthood should comprise of.Margo does not want to tread a path that is straight and narrow, while Quentin and Ben have plans to attend college in the fall.She would like to move to New York to pursue a path of self-discovery.Both of them want to transition into adulthood in a way that is right for them.Margo's legal adulthood allows her parents to let her go off on this adventure, but it is the emotional maturity of her decision that allows Quentin to walk away and live his own life, not worried about her safety or soundness of choice.
Paper Towns' Question and Answer section is a great place to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.
If we don't find her, we'll drive around the Catskills and find a place to sit and talk.