Paper Towns John Green Novel March 2019

This book is a fiction story involving a boy called Quentin Jacobsen whos childhood crush Margo Roth Spiegelman miraculously appears at his window one night nine years later. now eighteen, Margo comes to Quentin’s window in the middle of the night needing a favor and persuades him to part take on a midnight adventure of vengeance. She needs Quentin to drive her around on a spree of revenge against Jase Worthington, her cheating boyfriend, and anyone else who annoys her. They vandalize houses and cars with spray paint and fish. this leaves Quentin feeling a connection between him and Margo which he hopes to pursue only to be informed by the police that she disappeared the next morning leaving him a series of clues in order to find her. as time goes on and the search for Margo continues Quentin gets progressively more and more obsessed with Margo resulting in his life being consumed by this search. on this journey to find Margo, Quentin is joined by his 2 best friends Radar and Ben and one of Margo’s friends Lacey. in this text, we as the reader learn the values of friendships and relationships and the importance of them.

while reading this book I thought that Quentin was actually quite an interesting character not because of anything he did that was interesting but the way he started to form such a complex relationship and obsession with Margo at such a rapid rate even when he only knew her during his childhood and had spent one night hanging out with her. Quentin has always had a bit of a crush on Margo ever since they were children and used to always hang out but now that they are in high school things have changed, Margo is now part of the “cool group” whereas Q is known as a nerd and part of the “band group” this means that they don’t really mingle. when Margo and Q embark on the mission of vengeance Q’s feelings develop largely over the course of the night. he is constantly noticing that he has a growing level of attraction towards her. everything she does, he worships and praises. I find this interesting because of how easily Q falls for what he thinks is “Margo” but throughout the search he slowly starts to realize who she is based on certain clues and behaviors he discovers which is not full of life, adventurous and content Margo he knows. Q doesn’t actually really know who she is deep down, which means Q is on somewhat of a wild goose chase for someone who he doesn’t truly know. the book shows the reader Q’s feelings towards Margo which gives an interesting aspect to the book because the as the reader we can see that the person Q is falling for is not actually what she seems on the outside.

after reading the novel Paper Towns I have taken a few messages from the text. through a brief analysis of Q and his friend’s relationships, I noticed that when Q starts to get fully immersed in the search for Margo his life starts to become consumed by the idea of finally finding Margo which has a major effect on his relationships to both of his best friends. while Q’s life is consumed by the everlasting search both of his best friends are gradually becoming more and more disconnected from Q. this disconnection is a result of Q becoming somewhat selfish in a way that he believes that his friends should only be invested in finding Margo as much as he is himself. this creates frustration for Ben and Radar because they have other things in their own life that they are focused on that for them are just as important to them as finding Margo is to Q. this forces them to slowly become more uninterested in the search with Margo and feel Q is being somewhat self-absorbed pushing their friendship apart. this causes them to start to become more segregated and Q is now more often than not, searching for Margo on his own. I believe that the writer is sending the reader a message about relationships with friends in that they should be treated with fair and equal respect and one person’s need is not worth more or more valuable than the other. in order for the relationship to thrive there must be an even balance of respect and consideration for one another whether it be about interests, religions or opinions.

“standing before this building, I learn something about fear… this fear is the basest of all possible emotions, the feeling that was with us before the earth existed. This is the fear that made fish crawl out onto dry land and evolve lungs, the fear that teaches us to run, the fear that makes us bury our dead”. this is a quote from the section of the text when Q thinks he has finally come to an end on searching for Margo when the trail has gone cold and there is little evidence for him to track down Margo where she might be. Q and his friends travel to this location of last resort only to be greeted by a foul smell of dead and rotting flesh. For Q this creates a huge mental challenge caused by the rawest and deeps feeling of fear he has ever experienced. this scent of rotting flesh strikes Q with such fear because his mind instantly assesses the possible causes of this foul smell. the first thought that comes to his mind is that Margo has been pushed past her mental capacity to withstand life itself and has come to this location to take her own life and has left Q this sequence of clues in order to find her remains. this is a major challenge that Q must overcome, he must overcome the deepest feeling of fear possible and push past his mental barrier otherwise this fear and thought of Margo being dead will get the better of him and prevent him from solving the mysterious disappearance of Margo. i can relate to Q’s feeling of raw fear because of my own life experiences

I believe that the title that John Green gave this book “Paper Towns” is appropriate and suitable to the text because a paper town is a fake town created by map makers created to protect their copyright and the books moral of the story outlines fake people living in fake towns working fake jobs etc. In the beginning of the story during Margo and Q’s midnight adventure when they are on top of a large building overlooking the city Margo quotes “Here’s what’s not beautiful about it: from here, you can’t see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It’s not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It’s a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I’ve lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.” this quote has a relationship to Q’s mission to find Margo when he figures out that she must be hiding out at one of these so called paper towns within his area. Q eventually figures out where she is, Agloe, a town that was fake but then made real by virtue of having been put on a map, and in doing so finds Margo.

After reading this text I would not recommend it to other male teenagers in year 12 like myself since I do not think that they would enjoy it and probably wouldn’t benefit them because it was quite slow paced and took too long to get to the point at times. for someone who enjoys outdoor sports and activities, it may be difficult for them to stay focused, engaged and motivated to read this book because of its slow pace. although it can be relatable and appealing to some teenagers because of the fact that the characters are of similar age of a year 12 student and is based upon a girl running away from her parents and living her own life which a lot of teenagers fantasise about, it also has a lot of feelings based concepts which may be difficult for some male teenagers to relate to or understand since men do not really enjoy being in touch with their feelings and emotions. but I would recommend this book to female teenagers since they will be able to understand and relate to the different concepts and emotions presented within this book.