Summer Reading Post 2

Pudge's parents support his desire to attend boarding school. They are all for it, they want him to make more friends, and Pudge wants to make more friends it's just not as simple for him because he is an anti-social person.

Chip better known as "Colonel" wants to help out Pudge because he is knew at the school, he introduces him to a lot of things that are not all improving who Pudge is, but he just wants to be a loyal friend to him.

Alaska desire is to get Pudge a girlfriend, she sees how he wishes he could be with someone so she is willing to help him out. Alaska also wants to stop feeling guilt for her mothers death so she starts drinking, she cant take control of what she is doing to her body, and she just wants closure.

A theme that I think is beginning to appear in the book is Friendship. The novel opens with Miles’s going away party where only two friends of Miles attend. With no true friends from his old school, Miles moves to Culver Creek. At first Miles is weird with friendships - awkwardly unable to engage with people, but he slowly learns to be himself around his new friends. Miles values his new friendships by the way that he strictly follows everything the Colonel says to do and shares both his time and money in order to do everything that they do. As the novel progresses, Miles transforms from a loner to a typical teenager trying to understand what friends really are.
The book is structured perfectly because it gives the readers a conflict to look forward to being solved eventually and gives rising and falling actions, it has everything that makes you want to read more.

Summer Reading Post 1

The main characters in Looking for Alaska are Miles Halter who gets nicknamed “Pudge” by his friend, Chip, and Alaska. The setting during the entire novel shifts many times in very specific ways. The weather at the beginning of the novel is hot and humid, and the good weather creates an atmosphere of happiness, but only at the beginning. In chapter 15, a rain storm begins in Alabama and there is intense rain happening for about a week. During this time, Alaska becomes increasingly moody and Miles takes it personally. The conflict is Person vs. Self because Pudge is trying to discover himself. Pudge is who he became when he moved to Culver Creek, a fun loving, adventurous person, but Miles still resides within him, his unsocial personality. Throughout the story he’s searching for his true identity of who he really is. When I started the book I had predicted that Chip and Pudge were going to get in a fight at some point about Alaska because Chip has feelings for her. I also had questions pop through my head as I was reading this book, like what is the big story behind Alaska’s name, is there a specific reason why she was named that?