BEFORE AND AFTER:
SPIRIT IN THE ACT OF READING
AN EXPLORATION OF JOHN GREEN’S LOOKING FOR ALASKA

by

Barb A. Dean
B.A., Carleton University, 1968
B.L.S., University o f British Columbia, 1970

THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS
IN
ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN BRITISH COLUMBIA
September 2012

© Barb Dean, 2012

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Abstract
In my thesis I argue that the intangible mystery o f the spirit is a vital dynamic in reading.
When I use the word “spirit,” I mean the vital animating essence within us. I develop my
argument using the metaphorical lens o f a labyrinth and show how this symbol replicates the
spiritual component o f reading. The labyrinth is a metaphor that has room for the mystery of
spirit and for the rational thinking required in academic research circles. The text I have
chosen to support my argument is John Green’s Looking fo r Alaska. My analysis o f reading
builds on the work o f reader-response theorists and educators who view literature as a
transitional object. I argue that the process o f loosening the boundaries which exclude the
visceral from the public realm will strengthen scholarship directed to the education of our
youth.

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract

ii

Table o f Contents

iii

List o f Figures

iv

Acknowledgement

v

Dedication

vi

Introduction

Spirit and Young Adult Fiction

1

Chapter One

Spirit in Alaska

20

Chapter Two

Labyrinth and/or Maze: Two Central Characters in Alaska

37

Chapter Three

The Labyrinth and Reading

59

Conclusion

Before and After

93

Works Cited

101

iii

List of Figures

Figure 1

A Chartres Labyrinth

Figure 2

A Cretan Labyrinth

Acknowledgement
I would like to express deep gratitude to the people who have supported me in my study. Dr.
Kristen Guest, my supervisor has given me constant support, encouragement, and insightful
suggestions to keep me on track. Most importantly Dr. Guest has allowed me to proceed at
my own pace and in my own way. I could not have completed this study without her. Dr.
Robert Budde offered me guidance and flexibility to help me navigate the theory course that
launched my academic study and generously agreed to be on my thesis committee. Dr.
Willow Brown not only agreed to serve on my committee but also offered me enthusiasm for
my project and challenging questions to stimulate my thinking. Dr. William Owen agreed to
act as my external examiner at the busiest time o f his academic year and asked me thoughtprovoking questions. I have deep appreciation for my fellow graduate students who have
shared the frustrations and rewards of this kind o f study. I would also like to acknowledge all
the colleagues and friends who have supported m y study, especially Maureen Mercer and
Elizabeth Woods. I am deeply grateful to all the young people I have encountered in my
career who have helped me keep my passion for reading alive. I would also like to
acknowledge my parents who introduced me to the wonderful world of books and reading.
Without them I would not have uncovered the sacredness o f the reading act. Lastly, but most
importantly I want to thank my husband Gary for his steady dependable support throughout
the ups and downs o f this project and our forty-two years o f relationship.

v

Dedication
I dedicate my thesis to that librarian at the Dartmouth Nova Scotia Public Library who
introduced me to the book that changed my life. I will never forget the gift she, probably
unknowingly, gave to me.

vi

Introduction : Spirit and Young Adult Fiction
In my forty years as a children’s librarian introducing fiction to young readers, I have
witnessed the powerful impact a story can have on their inner being. This comes as no
surprise to me, because I experienced the transformational power of a book in my own
formative years. When I was ten years old, I read a book about a children’s librarian sharing
stories with young children. I no longer remember the title, author, or many o f the details o f
the story, but I will never forget how reading that book made me feel. I felt something come
alive deep within my physical being. That book awakened me to the energy that poets and
athletes credit as the source o f their inspiration. I consider this enervating force to be spirit.
My professional experience has affirmed the central role o f the spirit in reading literature
written for youth. Yet when I talk to other professionals about how reading connects to this
aspect o f our being, I detect resistance. Because this response is usually expressed non­
verbally, and I am referring to something that is intangible and difficult to articulate, I
assume that I have entered questionable, perhaps taboo territory. Curious about that response,
and buoyed by my personal and professional experience with the visceral aspect o f reading
young adult fiction, I applied to the University o f Northern British Columbia to study this
feature o f the reading experience.
Much has been written about young adult fiction and the representation o f coming of
age in this century. Issues addressed include gender, power, and diversity. Yet I have found
no evidence that anyone has written about the spirit as I use the term. The expected thing for
me to do at this point in my study is to provide a clear definition of what I mean when I use
the word spirit. Reaching an understanding o f spirit, however, is a process that slowly reveals
the true nature o f this terrain. I encourage the reader o f this study to keep turning pages and

1

experience the discomfort o f not knowing with certainty that is a central feature o f the
spiritual terrain, a discomfort that invites continued dialogue and exploration. Critics who do
consider the territory o f the spiritual limit themselves to the institution o f religion - primarily
fundamentalist Christianity. These critics also constrict the representation o f spirit by limiting
their analysis to the objective, rational evidence o f it in the world. I argue that it is time to
acknowledge the inner, mysterious, and intangible dimension o f reading. In this study I
intend to broaden the conversation about religion and spirituality in the young adult literary
field and to introduce the work o f John Green to the academe.
As I began a close examination of twenty-first-century young adult fiction and its
criticism, I began to suspect that the spirit has been marginalized because o f its association
with religion, “the last taboo” in the field o f children’s literature (Schmidt 25). In the spring
of 2011, while addressing teachers attending the Northern Zone annual conference, I asked if
the spirit was considered a taboo topic in the twenty-first-century classroom. Attendees told
me that they avoided the inclusion of anything that might be connected with religion. Ever
since prayer in schools was prohibited, there has been a perceived need to be inclusive, and
the easiest way is to move anything that might engender difference into the private domain.
This experience is bome out more generally by historical trends in the field: since the 1963
decision by the United States Supreme Court to ban the practice of religion in schools,
educators, critics, and authors in the field o f young adult literature have been cautious about
addressing spiritual matters (Hilbun 2008, Lott 1991, Nixon & Small 1999).
In the realm o f publishing there has been a similar response. Publishers envisage a
significant loss in sales if they print books with protagonists whose religious beliefs may
offend readers (Nilsen 2009). Jack Zipes argues that books have become marketable products

2

that can respond to current social issues (Zipes 2009), including gender identity (Cart 2006,
Silver 2010, Trites 1997), identity conflict (Kaplan 1999) and cultural diversity (Rice 2006).
What is overlooked in the treatment o f these topics is any connection to the human spirit or
religion. Such is the case with critics who focus on teenagers’ troubling behaviour (Carroll
1999), abuse (Kaywell 2004), and bullying (Bott 2004, 2009). With this focus on conduct,
adolescent literature becomes primarily a utilitarian product. Implicitly, utility and inspiration
are viewed as mutually exclusive. Although the adolescent search for meaning and values or
character education have received some critical attention, they are not in any significant way
aligned with the spirit (Warner 2006, Jweid & Rizzo 2001, Lickona 1992). In fact, their
primary focus is teenagers’ expected behaviour and actions in the external environment. All
of the novels that address the aforementioned issues have been interpreted in light o f poststructural theories that emphasize intellectual analysis. What critics miss, however, is how
adolescent fiction gives us “not only an external view [of these issues], but an internal one as
well” (Cart “Why We Read” 269). As Aidan Chambers argues, young adult fiction affirms
the significance o f the spirit:
The experience o f finding out who you are is not simply to
do with the emotions or with the intellect or with the social
and political constraints and frustrations of the society you
happen to live in. Rather it is spiritual in nature,
encompassing all those other aspects o f life and
transcending (italics mine) them. (Chambers 82)
By ignoring this fact, educators, publishers, authors and academics leave a crucial aspect of
the human being out o f the reading act.
My first class at the University o f Northern British Columbia, Contemporary Theory,
introduced me to the academic emphasis on theoretical modes o f interpretation in the study
o f English literature. Literary theory, some critics argue, stimulates thoughtful questions that

3

can be useful in the interpretation of young adult literature. It offers multiple poststructural
theoretical lenses: psychological, feminist, new historicist, cultural, rhetorical, postcolonial,
deconstructive and psychoanalytic. Some argue that these critical approaches support the
claim that literature for young adults is complex and deserving o f academic attention
(Capella 2010). Still others have described these theories as “postmodern paralysis, a
reluctance to take any position” (Ammons 6). I agree with Nelson that these theories offer
scholars a way to analyse texts and produce a variety o f interpretations to satisfy the current
predisposition to an analytical, left-brained perspective (Nelson 309). Yet, as currently
practised, literary theory does not provide room for an understanding o f reading that is not
exclusively rational and objective. During my study of literary theory I did encounter two
exceptions to this assertion. Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure o f the Text (1973) affirms the
visceral, numinous, and sensual reality o f the reading encounter, while Rosenblatt’s
Literature as Exploration (1938) argues for the importance of reader response. Though both
Barthes and Rosenblatt emphasize reading as a dynamic process, neither connects it to the
spiritual. Despite the resistance of theorists, there is evidence that educators are moving to
broaden the study o f reading. In the fall of 2011, while attending the annual NCTE1
Conference, I was introduced to three educators who are creating space for the evocative
aspects o f literary reading in the classroom. Jeffrey Wilhelm and Bruce Novak2 build on, and
join, the reader-response work of Louise Rosenblatt and the philosophical perspective o f
John Dewey. Cristina Vischer Bruns3 argues that because a book can be a transitional object,
English education needs to move in the direction of closing the gap between the academic
1NCTE stands for National Council of Teachers o f English.
2 Jeffrey Wilhelm and Bruce Novak are the co-authors o f Teaching Literacy fo r Love and Wisdom: Being the
Book and Being the Change.
3 Cristina Vischer Bruns is the author of Why Literature? The Value ofLiterary Reading and What It M eans fo r
Teaching.

4

and personal aspects o f reading. Though they focus on teaching methodologies, the work o f
these academics supports my argument that the inner being of the reader contributes
significantly to the reading experience. My close examination o f young adult fiction and its
criticism suggests that both academe and education are currently shifting in their willingness
to consider the spiritual aspect o f young adult literature.
The attention given to the spiritual is often characterized by an “either/or” polarity.
Spirit and religion are represented as being at opposite ends o f a continuum. In School
Library Journal, for example, Donna Freitas has documented her use of children’s literature
to introduce college students to the religious imagination. According to Freitas, these stories
are a tremendous source for “soul-searching” (Freitas “The Big Questions” 35). Similarly,
Patty Campbell, an editor and librarian, questions the scarcity o f the spiritual dimension in
young adult literature (Campbell 2010, 2011). In framing her analysis, however, Campbell
limits her consideration o f the spiritual to religion, as does Pam Cole in Young Adult
Literature in the 21st Century (2009). It is the work of the Search Institute4 that pushed me to
see that I, too, may have been supporting this same dichotomy by considering the spirit
without considering religion. This 2008 study o f more than 6,500 youth in eight countries
breaks new ground, arguing that spiritual development cannot be separated from other
aspects o f one’s being.5 This research report also acknowledges that spiritual development
can be conceptually distinguished from religious development, though the two are “integrally
linked in the lived experience o f some people” (Roehlkepartain 4). By limiting our frame o f

4 Since 1958 the Search Institute has generated and disseminated applied social science research to strengthen
how communities and citizens raise children and adolescents. In 1985 researchers from the Institute introduced
the concept o f developmental assets that are intended to enhance the physical, intellectual, emotional and social
growth o f young people. In 2008 it expanded the assets to acknowledge and support the spiritual development
o f youth.

5

reference to only one side o f this dichotomy, religion, we are excluding a vital aspect o f the
human being. Over the course o f my research I have come to appreciate the many ways that
spirit and religion overlap and impact each other. The Search Institute’s claim that “the time
is right to be investigating this complex territory o f the spirit” provides added support to my
decision to examine the treatment of the spirit in American young adult fiction (4).
In what follows I direct my study to the trends and issues being addressed in
American fiction written for and about adolescents, paying particular attention to how the
spiritual dimension o f human life is portrayed. Since the mid-twentieth century, the territory
o f the spiritual has experienced broad popular appeal and the result is an array o f perplexing
meanings. Ben Nelms, an educator, captures an important characteristic o f the spirit when he
claims that spiritualizing education “calls us back from surfaces to essences, to whatever
may be at the bottom o f things or beyond our kin and ken”6 (Nelms 48 italics mine). Gary
Schmidt makes a similar argument when he insists: “the spiritual experience is one of
mystery rather than certainty” (Schmidt 25 italics mine). The Concise Oxford English
Dictionary (OED) defines spirit as “the vital animating essence o f a person,” a definition that
comes closest to my own (“Spirit”). When I use the word “spirit,” I mean the vital animating
essence within living beings. I do not mean “religion,” but, like the Search Institute, I
acknowledge that religion can be an integral part o f the lived experience o f the spirit. It is the
spirit that engages in the search for meaning and purpose in life, wrestles with the pain and
suffering life includes, and longs for connection to self and others. I argue that the literature
designated “young adult” is particularly suited to explore and represent this elusive, yet vital,
animating essence within human beings.

6 Nelms credits James Moffett, author of The Universal Schoolhouse: Spiritual Awakening Through Education
with this definition

6

What, exactly, is young adult literature? Those working in the field o f adolescent
literature, like academic specialists in spirituality, continue to struggle to capture the
fundamental boundary o f their discipline. At the core of current debates are issues such as the
age o f the reader, the nature o f the content o f the stories, discussions about whether this
literature is actually a genre, or just a classification, or whether it is merely whatever
adolescents choose to read. In my study I use the term ‘young adult literature’ to describe a
body o f literature that includes many genres. Adolescent novels feature teenage characters
and their primary focus is the teenage experience. I argue that this literature provides a path
for adolescent and adult readers both to seek, and to make meaning in their lives.
As I began to gather data to support or counter my arguments about the power of
adolescent fiction to connect readers to the vitality within that is spirit, I encountered some
challenges. I employed a variety o f search terms but found they produced limited results. The
reason for this difficulty became apparent when I inadvertently discovered a significant text
relating to my topic. Adolescents in the Search fo r Meaning: Tapping the Powerful Resource
o f Story (2006) omits any subject headings or keywords in library databases to indicate its
engagement with the power o f story as part o f the search for meaning or spirit.7 As a result, I
broadened my search terms, but this effort proved overwhelming. The twenty-first century
has seen a dramatic increase in the amount o f literature written for the teenage audience and a
pronounced interest in this format by adult readers (Beckett 2009, Falconer 2009). This
phenomenon is identified by Rudd as “crossover,” while Falconer also uses the term “
‘kiddult’” to describe it (Falconer 2009, Rudd 2010). There has also been an increase in the
attention given to adolescent fiction by researchers in universities and, according to Jeffrey
7 The Library o f Congress subject headings included: 1. Teenagers —Books and Reading —United States. 2.
Young Adult Literature - Bibliography. 3. Young Adult Fiction - Bibliography. 4. Social Problems - Juvenile
Fiction - Bibliography. 5. Teenagers in Literature. 6. Adolescence - Bibliography.

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Kaplan, the result is the publication of a plethora o f critical texts that support educators and
librarians (Kaplan 2011). Capella claims it is “a hot time” to introduce new thinking to the
study o f Young Adult Literature (Cappella 2).
Following my survey o f critical texts, I reviewed selected journals.8 This search
included literature written for both children and teenagers.9 In addition, I scanned the on-line
catalogues o f some academic presses to determine what they were contributing to this field.10
I then requested a selected number o f these texts using the University of Northern British
Columbia’s interlibrary loan service. Further, I considered speeches, articles, blogs, and web
sites by authors o f young adult fiction, as well as conference proceedings and email
conversations with other professionals working in this field. Yet another method o f gathering
information, a fruitful one, involved consulting the bibliographies of a variety o f books and
articles obtained during my research. My search included perusing my own bookshelves
because, with my professional and personal interest in this field, I have acquired many books
that analyse this literature. Finally, having realized that I was ignoring the vast field of
religion, I discovered some very important research that contributed to the development of
my thoughts.11
The fictional representation of life in novels written for and about teenagers has a
long history. In 1980 Kenneth Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen, two professors o f English at
Arizona State University, published the first edition of Literature fo r Today’s Young Adults,
8 These journals included The ALAN Review, The English Journal, Journal o f Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
The Journal o f Research on Libraries and Young Adults, Signal, and Voice o f Youth Advocates ( VOYA).
9 Journals included were Children's Literature, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Children’s
Literature in Education, The Horn Book, International Journal o f Children’s Spirituality, Journal o f Children's
Literature, Lion and the Unicom, and The Looking Glass: New Perspectives on Children’s Literature, School
Library Journal.
10 Presses included were American Library Association, Heinemaim, Johns Hopkins, Neal-Schuman, Routledge,
Scarecrow.
II The journals I found useful in this area included the Christian Spirituality Bulletin, Journal o f Religious &
Theological Information, Literature and Belief, and Spiritus.

a work that has gained status as a classic reference textbook for the study o f young adult
literature. Before 1800, they argue, books written for, and read by, adolescents “consisted of
a few religious novels” (Donelson 56). Hilbun goes even further back, stating that the United
States has, “from its inception,” been a country where religion, politics and literature are
closely linked” (Hilbun 181). In the twentieth century, Donelson and Nilsen note, religion
begins to lose its hold. The influence o f the Protestant work ethic continues, but there is a
shift in young adult books from moralizing to excitement and adventure (Donelson 188). The
concept o f the human spirit, however, begins to appear. In his 1917 publication, The
Reorganization o f English in Secondary Schools, J.F. Hosic claimed that the study of
literature offered students a portrait of the human spirit and its growth through history.
Although some critics, including Hilbun, note that the years following World War II
witnessed an almost complete disappearance of morality and religion from youth literature,
others, such as Donelson, suggest a rise in the 1950s of concern about the morals o f the
young who were reading comic books (Donelson 1980, Hilbun 2008). I suggest that both
views indicate that the primary expectation o f literature in the first half o f the twentieth
century was directed to its presentation o f living as it “should be,” as opposed to how it is. A
significant change occurred in the 1960s. Realism, portrayed in what became known as
“problem” novels, was introduced by teenage S.E. Hinton, with the publication o f The
Outsiders (1967). This book introduced the reality that life is tough for youth across the
economic continuum, a significant change in the portrayal of life in novels directed to youth.
It did not, however, abandon the religious or moral standards found in earlier times. These
standards remained within the code of behaviour embraced by the story’s teenage characters.

9

The last half o f the twentieth century produced several changes to the approach to the
spirit. In the 1970s representations of the spiritual life took a new direction with the
publication o f Robert Cormier’s novel The Chocolate War (1974). This book is important not
only because it introduces readers to a rarely stated truth that darkness resides within all
human beings, but also because it introduces the concept o f “meaning making” as a core
component of the human condition. Most importantly, the search for meaning that Cormier
proposes is isolated from religion. By the 1980s, the decade when ‘political correctness’
became a major social focus, religion, and Christianity in particular, disappears from young
adult literature. In her 1991 bibliography o f young adult fiction that portrays religion and
religious experience, for example, Kristen Lott notes the scarcity o f such titles. Between
1986 and 1990 she found few titles and attributes this scarcity to the 1963 United States
Supreme Court decision to ban prayer in schools (Lott 1). Another contributing factor was
the rise o f multiculturalism during the 1980s, which brought with it religious pluralism and
increased fear of offending non-Christians. By the 1990s, religion had become the last taboo,
but another phenomenon began to emerge towards the end of this decade (Cart 2009,
Schmidt 2000). Cross-over reading, the practice o f adults reading adolescent fiction, was
identified by Rachel Falconer (2009) and Sandra Beckett (2009). According to Falconer, this
shift was due to the power of teen fiction to access “a latent spirituality and/or hope o f
redemption within post modem, secular culture”(Falconer 131). The increase in the
popularity of fantasy, launched by the Harry Potter series, can also be interpreted as lying
within the domain o f the spiritual. Certainly this novel, along with the fantasy genre, has
provoked a fair amount o f criticism from some Christians who question the contradictory
relationship between children’s literature and the Bible (Gish 2000).

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Concern about the absence and representation o f the spirit has intensified in the
twenty-first century. In the first decade o f this century, terrorism launched a culture o f fear
that has produced “helicopter parents,” 12 heightened religious (Putnam & Campbell 2010)
and racial (Aronson 2003) polarities, and a consumer driven culture that is founded on the
illusion that material comfort provides safety and security (Salvner 2001). According to
Muslim reformer Irshad Manji, the elevated status o f multiculturalism has led to the
perpetuation o f “deadly silences” on topics that might produce conflict (Manji 2011). Yet
when it comes to the presentation o f the spirit in young adult twenty-first-century fiction,
authors, educators, and publishers have found a way around these silences. A close
examination of the literature published between 2000 and 2011 for youth reveals the spirit
hidden in plain sight. The spirit is present in novels that include the search for meaning; that
depict characters wrestling with emotional pain; that address the losses and confusion within
daily living; and that portray the human longing for connection. Even the prohibition against
religion is losing force.
Mary Warner has written a book about the power o f young adult stories to address the
broader human search for meaning. Like me, she connects the search for meaning to the
spirit but she has a very particular, and, I suggest, narrow focus. She argues that a lack of
meaning is responsible for the troubling issues in the modem teenage world: violence,
suicide, obesity, and drug and alcohol use. She believes adolescent literature can address this
lack o f meaning, and she is not alone in her stance (Carroll 1999, Kaywell 2004, Warner
2006). Warner implies, as do other critics, that the search for meaning is not part o f every
12 According to the online Oxford English Dictionary a helicopter parent [with allusion to the notion o f such
parents ‘hovering’over their children] A parent who takes an excessive and overprotective interest in the life of
his, or her, child (“Helicopter Parent”).

11

human being’s life. I disagree. I argue that both the quest for meaning and the presence o f
trouble are realities in everyone’s lives. Trouble is not prejudiced and it visits even wellbehaved teens, as does the search for meaning. Life is confusing and complex, and suffering
is inevitable. Ever since the time of the first hominids, as the anthropological history of
humanity reveals, people have told stories and carved pictures on cave walls in an attempt to
understand life (Matthews 1998). In fact, story, in all cultures, is considered to be the way to
connect to other human beings - those in our past and in our present. I argue that story helps
us open to meaning and discover that it is not located outside the self: story stimulates the
process o f meaning-making within. Young adult fiction is a rich resource to awaken and
nurture the spirit. This is because young adults are at a vital stage of development. They are
moving from a purely concrete way o f interpreting life to one that is able to see that there is
something more beyond the reach of fact. Their physical bodies are also changing drastically,
producing a chemistry that is unfamiliar. Questions begin to arise that have no easy answers.
Authors of young adult literature are sensitive to, and anxious to offer paths through, this
transformational time o f life. They recognize that this awakening can produce feelings o f
isolation and a longing to connect with others. In addition, because they have moved beyond
this stage o f life, these authors can see that the questions that begin to arise in adolescence
continue into adulthood. When twenty-first-century literature is viewed through this lens, it
offers many novels that engage the spirit as I am using the term, and these are titles that
appeal to youth and adults alike.
Young adult fiction published during the first decade o f this century provides a path
to the spirit through characters who, like their readers, are contending with questions about
human worth in the midst o f situations that make no sense. Death - from abuse, accident,

12

illness, suicide, or war - is a reality in the lives o f these characters, as it is in the lives o f their
readers. Authors provide stories that help readers process the pain, suffering and guilt that
such situations elicit (Asher 2007, Crutcher 2007, Pearson 2009, Schmidt 2008, Shusterman
2010, Zarr 2007). Others portray characters confronting issues that lead to conflict, related to
religion, gender identity, race and bullying (Brande 2007, Green & Levithan 2010, Meehl
2011, Myracle 2011, Naylor 2010). Sometimes these books confront readers with the
ambiguous, dichotomous nature o f life in our postmodern world. Others respond to the
evidence that teenagers in the twenty-first century are longing for connection, a longing
suggested by the current fascination with cell phones and computer networks such as
Facebook and Twitter.13 I argue that adolescent fiction offers a rich resource for what they
are seeking, that this literature can connect the inner private self o f the reader to the inner
private self o f others in a way that Twitter, Google and Facebook cannot.
My survey o f this field has led me to conclude that, to date, those working within the
field o f critical analysis operate primarily within a model that is objective and rational. As
English professor Elizabeth Ammons observes, the most highly valued academic approach in
the humanities in the postmodern era has been questioning. But what the academy does not
do well is bring to the surface and consider seriously hope and idealism. I agree with her
conclusion that it is these elements that determine our own actions and frame most o f the
texts academics analyse (Ammons 2010). Yet in my own attempt to report what I have
learned about the spirit, I have found m yself seeking a way to describe and understand it
intellectually. Such an approach denies the reality of my own experience with the spirit.
Spiritual response does not occur exclusively in the rational domain. Ultimately, researchers
in the area o f spiritual development helped me see why analysing spirit is so difficult: our
13 This view was first introduced to me by Claire Woodbury

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modem world studies only what can be measured and theorized using left-brain analytical
thinking. The Search Institute’s 2008 research report14 argues that the spiritual development
of youth needs to take a more visible place in youth development, research, policy, and
practice. This report affirms that the spirit is an intrinsic part o f being human but
acknowledges that there are several challenges to addressing this reality in the public domain.
Included in their list o f obstacles is the resistance to considering this subject, which has been
aligned with religion, in academic research fields. They conclude that we are unable to let go
o f our trust in measurement, or the need for a solid theoretical foundation that can be
empirically tested, and, as a result, we will not give spiritual development the attention it
deserves (Benson 2008). In my thesis I argue that we need to make room for the intangible
mystery o f the spiritual dynamic, to consider how it operates within readers, texts and
authors, without excluding the rational.
John Green’s Printz Award winning novel, Looking fo r Alaska,15 provides an
excellent model for examining the potential of young adult fiction to portray and engage the
spirit within a postmodern context. Green is a relatively new voice in the field o f young
adult literature and, to date, the academic community has given little attention to his work.
Kathy Latrobe devotes a small section of Critical Approaches to Young Adult Literature
(2009) to the analysis o f Alaska, as does Kathryn James, who refers to Alaska briefly to show
that death and sexuality are often treated together in adolescent fiction (James 4). To my
knowledge, however, no one has considered the spiritual or religious dimensions o f this
novel. In an interview Green admits he is ‘religious’ and that he worked as a chaplain at a

14 The full title o f this report is With Their Own Voices: A Global Exploration o f How Today’s Young People
Experience and Think About Spiritual Development.
15 For the remainder o f this thesis I will refer to this novel as Alaska.

14

hospital for sick and dying children. Alaska is his response to the questions he encountered in
his time as a chaplain (Green “Realities”).
In this novel Green takes religion, with which I argue the spirit has traditionally been
conflated, and integrates it with matters that our modem culture understands as broadly
spiritual. The search for meaning and the suffering that life inevitably engenders via death,
loss, suicide, and self-destructive choices and actions are features of this book. Green
chooses a World Religions class as the logical setting for his representation o f this taboo
topic. Such a setting brings with it certain negative associations, including rigid doctrine and
strict rules governing conduct. Yet within this narrow structure Green takes up life’s
existential questions: What does it mean to be a person? How shall I live my life? Why do
bad things happen to good people? What happens when we die? Inviting readers to consider
how all the religions of the world respond to these questions without advocating or preaching
the validity of one over another, Green offers a meaning-centred, rather than a rule-centred,
depiction o f these systems o f belief. In doing so, he also connects the spiritual aspect o f being
human, which has been the exclusive territory for “meaning making,” to religion. More
importantly, in taking up the search for meaning, Green thematizes the ways in which we
seek the significance or purpose o f life.
I have chosen a metaphorical lens to show how Alaska provides a way to access the
vital essence of the spirit that is part of the reading act. According to Lakoff and Johnson, our
conceptual system is largely metaphorical, allowing us to understand and experience one
thing in terms o f another. They also argue that abstract concepts are not complete without
metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson 2003). Spirit is most certainly an abstract concept, and
metaphor allows room for its heuristic dynamic. Most significantly, metaphor operates by

15

providing room for the reader to participate in the making of meaning, demanding that we
use both the reasoning capabilities o f the left-brain and the imaginative, intuitive capacities
o f the right. Metaphor provides the ideal support for my contention that reading and the spirit
are essentially “grey,” or o f a “both/and” nature. A “both/and” frame of reference is broad
and deep, allowing room for the many contradictory and uncertain facets of being human.
With metaphor there is room for both logic and mystery, both simplicity and complexity,
both certainty and uncertainty.
Metaphor plays a crucial role in Alaska, perhaps most notably in the labyrinth which
functions as a key metaphor for this story. The labyrinth is a unicursal path with only one
winding route into its centre. It is often referred to as a maze but this term is incorrect. The
maze, unlike the labyrinth, is multicursal, having many paths, some of which do not lead to
its centre. The topology o f the labyrinth consists of a square that has been transformed into a
circle (see Figure 2). Kern suggests that these two shapes represent two world views - earth
and heaven respectively. I suggest that earth can be aligned with the rational dimension o f
reading, while heaven captures the spiritual dynamic. The labyrinth has a very long history in
which religion, spirituality, and secularism co-exist. This symbol is connected with the
secular pastimes o f games and dancing but also has spiritual and church-related roots (Kern
2000, Saward 2002). Artress and Curry have argued that walking a labyrinth is a
transformative experience, and I suggest John Green chose it as a central metaphor for
Alaska because it captures the essence o f transformation. He began writing this novel shortly
after completing a summer job as a chaplain at a hospital for sick and dying children. This
experience was a transformative event in his life, one he describes as a “before-and-after
moment” - a structure Green incorporates in the narrative of Alaska (Green “Speaking”). As

16

a means o f negotiating the spiritual dynamic within the reading act the labyrinth is a
metaphor that offers room for both mystery and abstract knowledge.
A labyrinth requires the walker to travel into, and out of, a patterned path. In making
the journey, however, the experience o f walking into, and out of, the centre changes how the
path is viewed. In essence, both the walker and the world into which she is walking have
changed. This same principle pertains to the reading act. A book, like the path o f a labyrinth,
offers twists and turns in plot, character and setting. As a reader turns each page, she
becomes more engaged by the story and, in the process, experiences transformation. At one
moment the story is about the characters and then, mysteriously, it is about the reader and her
life. When she reaches the end o f the story, she leaves the characters behind and comes back
to her own life, but she sees herself and the world in which she lives differently. Reading,
like the labyrinthine path walk, is relational in nature. By connecting to a fictional character,
one discovers an intangible path to other human beings, as well as to oneself. The labyrinth
also captures the dynamic of non-duality that is central to my view of the reading act. I link
the square pattern o f this symbol to rational left-brain thinking and the circle to the rightbrain work that allows room for hope and idealism. Like the labyrinth, with its fluidity and
boundaries, reading demands the reader’s imaginative, intuitive, and intellectual capacities.
Finally, I choose the labyrinth for my metaphorical interpretation of Alaska because it models
the interweaving o f spiritual, religious, and secular influences.
The first chapter of my thesis reports how the various components o f spiritual life
make their way into Alaska. Specifically, I examine how Green presents religion both
overtly, in its traditional institutional form, and indeterminately, as a quest for meaning,
connection, and insight into suffering. I also examine how Green brings spirit and religion

17

into productive tension.16 In Alaska both religion and spirit are sites for exploring meaning,
wrestling with suffering and loss, and uncovering the relational dynamic within and between
them. This chapter establishes both the grey nature o f the spiritual in Alaska and the space it
provides for the reader to make meaning. In chapter two, I consider how Green uses
characters to address the tensions inherent in twenty-first-century notions o f the spiritual.
Alaska, the central character, and Dr. Hyde, the World Religions teacher, emplot the binary
divide separating youth and age, spirit and world, and life and education. Despite the reality
o f their differences, however, Green’s representation o f these two characters highlights
ambiguity, not fixed binaries. I engage the labyrinth and maze symbols to explore how these
two characters are both alike and different. My rationale for approaching these two characters
this way is that it allows me to address the missing, or buried, component o f the reading act the reader’s inner being or spirit. This latter is the subject of chapter three, in which I use the
metaphor of the labyrinth to take us through Alaska. Following the meandering path o f its
narrator, Pudge, I examine the way Green uses indeterminacy to create space in which the
reader can discover the evocative dynamic o f story, connect through it with self and other,
and reflect on the meaning it holds for living life in the world. M y analysis o f reading builds
on the foundation o f reader-response theorists and educators who view literature as a
transitional object but do not directly address the crucial role o f the spirit.

16 Productive tension draws people together to explore and discover new possibilities.

18

What I hope my thesis opens is further exploration of the propensity to elevate
scientific, measurable data above human beings’ inherent draw to the intangible, ambiguous
realities o f spirit. The spirit, that mysterious vital energy within each of us, cannot be isolated
from other aspects o f one’s being in the process o f reading. Alaska offers us a path to bridge
the essential contribution o f mind and spirit in reading.

19

Chapter One: Spirit in Alaska
In Alaska, Green includes many details that can be interpreted as having a
spiritual/religious connection. Thematically, Green includes religion and explores how three
world religions address suffering. His novel also addresses questions about the meaning or
purpose o f life and its contradictions and ambiguities. These questions are shown to be
intrinsic to religion, spirituality and humanism. Structurally, Green divides his story into two
parts, a critical element in his involvement o f the reader to make meaning. In the first half o f
the book, entitled “before” (Green Alaska 1), the narrator, Miles “Pudge” Halter,17 sets off to
a private boarding school located in the heart o f evangelical Christianity - Birmingham,
Alabama. Pudge is in search o f something he describes as a “Great Perhaps,” and shortly
after arriving, he meets the beautiful and troubled Alaska, who is central to the novel’s
representation o f spirit (Green Alaska 4). In an early scene Alaska introduces one o f the
novel’s key themes when she poses the philosophical question that recurs throughout: “How
will I ever get out o f this labyrinth [of suffering]?” (19). More questions that are intrinsic to
both religion and the spiritual realms are raised in the World Religions class. Throughout the
first half of this novel, Green builds tension and indeterminately foreshadows the crisis that
takes place at the narrative’s midpoint - the death of Alaska. In the second half o f the novel,
entitled “after,” the search for meaning and questions o f suffering are no longer merely
theoretical (135). Pudge and his roommate agonize over both her death and their sense o f
guilt for failing to prevent it. They, and other characters in the story, walk the labyrinthine
path o f grief and loss until they reach an acceptance of, and insight into, its effect on their
lives.

17 For the remainder of this thesis I will use the nickname Pudge for this character.

20

Green describes what he is doing in this novel as “preaching” (Green “Realities”). I
disagree. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to preach means: “To utter a serious
or earnest exhortation, esp. a moral or religious one. Now usu. derogatory, to give moral or
religious advice in a self-righteous, condescending, or obtrusive way” (“Preach”). Far from
“preaching,” which has a strong traditional religious connection, Green broadens the
representation o f religion and the spirit using indeterminacy, a concept first introduced by
Wolfgang Iser.18 Green’s indeterminacy involves the placing o f open-ended details within
Alaska that invite the reader’s participation in making meaning. In order to focus on matters
of religious and spiritual life, Green begins by placing his story in a setting that epitomizes
fundamentalist religion. Such religion has three areas o f concern - belief, conduct and
membership. This Christian model asks: What do I believe? How should I believe? Who am
I? The first question is answered with doctrine and dogma, the second one with rules and
techniques, and the third with membership requirements that emphasize a personal
commitment (Butler-Bass 2012). Green’s way o f conveying this particular religious view is
not explicit, but rather, indeterminate.
Setting is one o f Green’s indeterminate details. The geographical location o f the
school Green chooses for this story allows him to build connections to religion without
referencing it directly. Early in the story, the reader is introduced to the stifling heat that one
encounters fifteen miles south o f Birmingham, where Culver Creek Preparatory School is
situated. The heat o f the sun “burned through [Pudge’s] clothes” and made him “fear
hellfire” (Green Alaska 6). Pudge imagines a conversation with a fellow student in which he
jokingly makes reference to the extreme heat: “I wouldn’t be used to this heat if I were from
18 Wolfgang Iser’s research is documented in The Act o f Reading: A Theory ofAesthetic Response (1978).
Indeterminacy as I use the term is subtle, ambiguous, or uncertain and leaves room for the reader to enter and
make meaning.

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Hades” (8). When Pudge’s roommate takes him on a tour o f the school grounds, he describes
the swan in the near-by lake as “the spawn o f Satan” (16). Green’s language around setting
also offers a connection to the conservative Christianity o f the southern United States. Ever
since the Puritans landed in North America, believing that God had singled them out, an
attitude o f being separate and apart has prevailed in the history o f Christianity in the United
States. Fundamentalist, conservative Christians are particularly inclined to set themselves
apart, and this exclusivity has led to divisiveness (Hilbun 2008). This separatist view also
contributes to the religious polarity that dominates modem American politics and everyday
life and has engendered binary thinking that focuses polarities between good and evil, right
and wrong (Putnam & Campbell 2010). In Alaska, Green’s description o f the living quarters
and grounds connects us to this aspect o f religion. Pudge’s room is compared to a hospital
room, “the place looked more like a hospital than the dorm room of [Pudge’s] fantasies,” and
the fact that the furniture is attached to the walls, makes “creative floor planning” impossible
and implies a dogmatic, unimaginative learning institution (Green Alaska 6). In addition to
the setting, language, and polarities that subtly project an image o f traditional religion,
Culver Creek Academy also includes rigid rules restricting student behaviour.
Rules play a significant role in Green’s novel and help him to project a picture o f both
religious and personal guidelines in our modem world. The living quarters o f the school, like
many in the twenty-first century, are gender neutral; yet, a boy is required to keep the door to
a girl’s room open when he visits after seven o ’clock in the evening. Mr. Starnes, the dean of
students, is dubbed “the Eagle” because “he sees all” (16). The irony o f this situation is that
smoking, one o f the forbidden activities, takes place constantly and the Eagle frequently
turns a blind eye to it. The smoking hole provides a contrast to the rigidity in this

22

conservative region because it is “an oasis” (42). This space offers relief from the heat with
its shade and coolness, and Pudge feels “unhot for the first time in weeks” (42). This locale
also serves as a way for Green to critique the hypocrisy o f the rigid rules that religion
provides to control behaviour, without condemning them overtly.
The unwritten rule students have created to govern their code of behaviour: “never
never never never rat” has the same ambiguous effect (17). This rule, which Pudge learns
shortly after his arrival at Culver Creek school, creates an expectation o f loyalty and
commitment to the group; yet, before the first part o f the novel is over, we learn Alaska has
“ratted” on her roommate Marya (72). When Mr. Starnes catches Alaska sneaking off
campus after curfew with a bottle o f wine in her car, he threatens her: “Either tell me
everything you know or go to your room and pack up your stu ff’ (73). Alaska chooses to
save herself from expulsion rather than protect her delinquent roommate, Marya, who is
drunk in their room with her boyfriend. Rules that emphasize conduct are also included in the
World Religions class, and most overt references to religion take place within this classroom.
The World Religions class itself is a “vestige from when Culver Creek was a Christian boys’
school” (31). There are few sensate details used to describe the space o f this class. It has a
lectern from which Doctor Hyde issues commands, and it is this teacher who determines the
character o f the classroom (italics are mine). He begins his first class by announcing the code
o f behaviour he expects students to follow: They will read what they are told to read when
they are told to read it, and they will attend class religiously and listen attentively to Hyde’s
every word. Pudge’s response - “this teacher rocked” - is surprising given the strict nature of
this traditional teacher (31, 32). One might well wonder if Pudge is being sarcastic. As the
novel unfolds, however, this class comes to offer a stark contrast to the stifling heat and

23

religious views held in Alabama and in the rest o f the school. Indeed, rather than present the
rules and doctrine o f Buddhism, Islam and Christianity, Dr. Hyde constructs a comparative
framework for them that emphasizes a shared primary focus - the search for meaning (32).
This view o f religion projects an honest picture o f twenty-first-century American spiritual
life that includes religious pluralism. This presentation also opens a path into the relational
dynamic within religion. Hyde’s focus on the similarities within these religions, rather than
their differences, sets up critical issues in Alaska.
Most centrally, the World Religions class introduces challenging questions about the
meaning and purpose o f life. That the class is not just about religious practice is highlighted
by Hyde when he tells the students: “We are engaged here in the most important pursuit in
history: the meaning o f life” (32). This teacher goes on to use stories from the religions being
taught to engage the participation of his students in discovering whatever meaning for their
own lives might be found there. Hyde’s approach shifts the focus of religion away from its
stereotypical association with doctrine, rules, and membership requirements, offering instead
a view that invites reflective engagement with meaning. This invitation to personal reflection
is further developed when Hyde articulates the questions this class intends to explore: “What
is the nature o f being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we
come to be, and what will become of us when we are no longer?” (32). The root word o f
question is ‘quest,’ and, by choosing to present religion within such a framework, Green
links it to the search for meaning.
In “before,” the first half o f this novel, religion is confined to a theoretical frame. In
“after,” however, the World Religions class becomes a focal point for wrestling with the
suffering following Alaska’s death. During the first class after this horrific event, Hyde tells

24

the students that “questions o f religious thought have become, I suspect, personal” (158). By
so doing, he subtly introduces the productive tension between the private and public
boundaries o f the spirit. The language used to describe situations and emotions continues to
derive from evangelical Christianity: [Alaska] “was up and down - from fire and brimstone
to smoke and ashes” (167). Before Alaska’s funeral, her father comforts Pudge using the
traditional religious explanation for her death: “Anyway, son, she’s with the Lord now”
(151). At the same time, however, Green opens the boundaries o f religion using the same
indeterminate style brought into play in “before.” Whenever he mentions Buddhism,
Christianity and Islam, or its relation Sufism, directly, Green uses stories that connect to
dying or suffering, or both. Often these stories are presented without any direct reference to
how they might apply to the reality o f loss. As Hyde begins his lecture about Sufism, Pudge
indicates that one of the stories in the required reading for that class had drawn his attention
because it contained some great last words:
This poor Sufi dressed in rags walked into a jewelry store
owned by a rich merchant and asked him, “Do you know
how you’re going to die?” The merchant answered, “No. No
one knows how they’re going to die.” And the Sufi said, “I
do.”
“How?” asked the merchant.
And the Sufi lay down, crossed his arms, said, “Like this,”
and died, whereupon the merchant promptly gave up his
store to live a life of poverty in pursuit o f the kind of
spiritual wealth the dead Sufi had acquired. (173)
This story raises an important question about death and dying that Pudge fails to take note of
because of his fascination with dying words. Nonetheless, this story is indirectly addressing
his loss.
After hearing Dr. Hyde relate the Sufi story o f Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a saint who
attempts to bum heaven and drown hell, Pudge reflects:

25

I couldn’t honestly imagine [Alaska] as anything but dead,
her body rotting in Vine Station, the rest o f her just a ghost
alive only in our remembering. Like Rabe’a, I didn’t think
people should believe in God because o f heaven and hell.
But I didn’t feel a need to run around with a torch. You
can’t bum down a made-up place. (174)
His response enters the gap between the private and public dynamic of religion. This story
offers Pudge a connection to his dead friend, but it also leads him to consider his own
interpretation o f heaven and hell and the doctrine o f religion.
The World Religions class is the impetus that leads Pudge to move beyond, or bridge
his insistence on finding answers and move slowly towards an acceptance o f what seems
senseless. Near the end o f the novel, Dr. Hyde asks his students to share an example of a
Buddhist koan, a riddle that is intended to help one achieve enlightenment. Pudge chooses
the following one:
I wrote about this guy Banzan. He was walking through the
market one day when he overheard someone ask a butcher
for his best piece o f meat. The butcher answered,
“Everything in my shop is the best. You cannot find a piece
o f meat that is not the best.” Upon hearing this, Banzan
realized that there is no best and no worst, that those
judgments have no real meaning because there is only what
is, and poof, he reached enlightenment. (195, italics in
original)
Pudge notes that he is not convinced “enlightenment struck like lightning,” yet he still longs
for enlightenment in regards to his own tragic loss (195). He has not abandoned his search
for answers. When Dr. Hyde takes the World Religions class outside, he metaphorically links
religion to life and weaves them together. Indeed, Green uses this natural setting to overtly
connect hope to both religion and the personal search for an explanation o f suffering. Hyde
begins by suggesting Muhammad, Jesus and the Buddha each taught a message of radical
hope. He then brings his students into this territory of religion with the question he chooses

26

for their final exam: “ ‘What is your cause for hope’?” (216). By doing so, this teacher
traverses the divide between the private and public aspects of religion and enters the territory
o f the spirit.
In Alaska, spirit is developed in a similar way to religion, indeterminately, with a
focus on exploring life’s meaning, wrestling with suffering and loss, and seeking connection.
Green’s representation o f spirit expands the modem view that separates it from religion.
Early in the novel Pudge announces he is going to boarding school to seek a “Great Perhaps”
(5). For him this means leaving his “minor life” in Florida for the great possibilities he
imagines can be found at school in Alabama (3). Pudge’s inclusion of the names o f famous
people, like John F. Kennedy, James Joyce, and Humphrey Bogart, who have also attended
boarding school, implies that his future holds grandiosity. The realities Pudge encounters at
this school, however, contradict his expectation. The room he had envisioned had plush
carpet, wood-paneled walls, and Victorian furniture. What Pudge finds is more like a box
containing a bunk bed o f unfinished wood with vinyl mattresses, two plain wooden dressers
and a set o f bookshelves, “and no air conditioning (6 italics in original). In addition, he
discovers he must squat and spread his legs in order to shower: “Surely John F. Kennedy did
not have to squat at his boarding school” (9 italics in original). Even the weather reinforces
the contradictions between the imagined and the real. When it rains, “the whole goddamned
world has better water pressure than the showers” (67). In pursuit of the “Great Perhaps,”
Pudge involves himself in a prank meant to outdo the one inflicted by the Week Day warriors
on his friend Alaska: “The Great Perhaps was upon us and we were invincible” (103). In his
effort to distract Mr. Stames, the watch dog o f student behaviour, however, Pudge is bitten
on the bottom by the crazy swan in the nearby lake. Meeting the beautiful and sexy Alaska

27

supports the possibility o f finding the “Great Perhaps” he longs for, but her moodiness and
unpredictability counter his hopes. Pudge’s search for an understanding o f Alaska’s
confusing actions and reactions can be interpreted as evidence to circumvent our postmodern
world’s expectation that everything can be explained logically. Green, however, does not
leave it here. Rather, he connects Pudge’s growing confusion to the theme o f suffering
introduced in “before.”
The question o f suffering is introduced early when we learn the narrator’s idea o f a
“Great Perhaps” is taken from the dying words o f poet Francois Rabelais (5). Dying
implicitly raises questions about life’s meaning and the suffering it sets in motion. Last
words provide room for a meaningful resolution to a life, yet realistically, they can never be
conclusively determined. Green builds this idea using the names o f famous people, the last
words of some, and titles o f books, poems, and screenplays. I would argue that Green’s use
of such names and words is what Alleen and Don Nilsen describe as a “manipulation of
names” by a skilled author to produce a certain effect (Nilsen & Nilsen x). In Alaska, the
names allow us to consider the contradictory nature o f dying and loss. The act o f losing
someone may be final and dramatic, or it may be the doorway to something more, or it may
even be meaningless. Loss cannot be simply categorized or explained. According to Pudge,
playwright Henrik Ibsen’s last words were “on the contrary,” in response to his nurse’s
observation that he must be feeling better (11). Those o f assassinated president JFK were
“that’s obvious” to the person who noted there was no doubt that Dallas loved him (18).
Famous civil war general Ulysses S. Grant shouted, “Water,” while Robert E. Lee
announced, “Strike the tent!” (71). The symbolic effect achieved by these dying words
underscores the ambiguities surrounding death. Some o f the titles, such as “Jesus Christ

28

Superstar " and “Final Days”, convey finality, but also imply impending loss and suffering
(4,24).
Early in the novel, Alaska introduces the central question around which the story
develops: “How will I ever get out o f this labyrinth?” (19). The source for these last words is
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s The General in His Labyrinth (1989), which recounts the story of
the fall of South American hero Simon Bolivar. In his attempt to fulfil a dream and rescue
South America from the hands of Spanish conquerors, Bolivar gained hero status.
Nonetheless, Bolivar died a disillusioned, suicidal, depressed old warrior. Indirectly, the
combination o f courage and disillusionment projects an ambivalent portrait o f suffering
pertinent to other details in “before.” Such particulars include smoking and drinking that are
aligned with a “badass” reputation that appeals to the narrator, offering an aura o f romantic
mischief that offsets his boring existence (49). Green also conveys the mixed messages adults
send young people about drugs, drinking, and cigarettes. On the one hand, adults tell their
children, as Pudge’s parents tell him, that these behaviours are unacceptable. On the other
hand, adults indulge in these behaviours themselves, thereby conveying the hypocrisy of such
rules. Pudge notes that his dad, an alumnus o f Culver Creek, “had done the things I had only
heard about: the secret parties, streaking through hay fields, drugs, drinking, and cigarettes”
(7). Indeed, Green pushes this point further when he has Alaska and Pudge drive to the local
liquor outlet, where the entire business model is built around selling cigarettes and alcohol to
minors. With the sign posted outside this establishment, “WE CATER TO YOUR
SPIRITUAL NEEDS,” Green adds a play on words thereby opening the topic o f alcohol use
by teenagers to the possibility that it is a panacea for personal pain (94, capitals in original).
The word “needs” suggests there is more to drinking than rebellion, a perspective that echoes

29

what Green, in an interview, laments: that adults often condemn the inclusion o f alcohol in a
story for adolescents without considering what underlies its use. Green suggests that such
behaviour is a self-destructive coping mechanism for managing the uncertainty, confusion,
and suffering life engenders (Barkdoll & Scherff 2008).
“Suffering” is a word that is used to describe many different experiences, and over
time, the root meaning o f the word has been lost. As Helen Luke points out, “suffer” comes
from the Latin verb “ferre” which means “to bear” or “to carry.” The first part o f the word
derives from the Latin prefix “sub” and means “under.” Thus, suffering may seem to support
whatever is brought to bear on it, a very different interpretation than the one encountered in
our world view, which emphasizes weight bearing down on rather than offering a strong
foundation for us (Luke 1987). Green gradually develops a picture of suffering that captures
this root essence. He builds this image gradually. In “before,” suffering is primarily directed
to the outward conduct o f characters. That changes in “after” as Green indirectly reveals how
suffering becomes a support from which a strong spirit can emerge.
That suffering is uncomfortable territory is implied in the phrase “the not restful
sleep,” included in the first sentence o f “after” (Green Alaska 137). Mr. Starnes raps on
students’ doors and tells them “to go to the gym” for an announcement about a terrible
accident. When Pudge insists, “We can’t start without Alaska,” this teacher drops his
policeman persona momentarily and cries:
He was crying noiselessly. Tears just rolled from his eyes to
his chin and then fell onto his corduroy pants. He stared at
[Pudge], but it was not the Look o f Doom. His eyes blinking
tears down his face, the Eagle looked, for all the world,
sorry. (139)

30

Pudge now realizes what has happened without hearing what Mr. Starnes has to say, but he is
unwilling to believe it. Alaska has been killed in a terrible car accident. Shock is the first
response o f the student body and in the silence Pudge thinks, “Zf’s all my fa u lt” (139 italics in
original). Pudge realizes he feels unwell and runs outside to vomit. When he returns, he sees
his roommate, who is screaming, “I’m so sorry” over and over. Chip,“The Colonel,”19 is
being comforted by Madame O’Malley, who reassures him that he has nothing about which
to be sorry. But Pudge thinks, “If only she knew” (140-141). Madame O ’Malley, like many
adults, is quick to respond to the outer behaviour yet fails to understand the complex nature
of the agony within this student.
Subsequently, Pudge and his roommate are tormented by guilt because they allowed
their friend Alaska to get into a car drunk. They are unable, initially, to bear the weight of
the pain their contribution to this accident has inflicted. Neither do they understand that
suffering is a process, the essence o f which Elisabeth Kubler-Ross captured in her study o f
the stages o f death and dying. Pudge and the Colonel must navigate through the horror of
loss, revealing the steps into the heart of suffering.

After the initial shock o f the news

comes denial: “She’s not dead. She’s alive somewhere” (140). The guilt that first surfaced
transforms quickly into anger, the Colonel towards Alaska, while Pudge blames himself.
Both o f these young men turn to coping mechanisms to help them avoid entering into true
suffering. Alcohol and cigarette consumption increase. After memorizing the capitals o f the
countries o f the world, the Colonel takes an eighty-two mile walk, during which he
memorizes the populations of the countries of the world. Pudge reviews the last words o f car
19 For the remainder of the thesis I use ‘the Colonel’ when referring to this character.
20 On Death and Dying (1969) is the classic text authored by Kubler-Ross that originally outlined the five stages
of grief experienced by the terminally ill. Kubler-Ross eventually expanded her model to apply to any serious
loss. The five stages include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages do not
necessarily emerge in the order they are listed here, nor within a predictable time frame.

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accident victims including Princess Diana’s, “Oh God, what’s happened?” and James Dean’s,
“They’ve got to see us” (142). Fruitless attempts to rationalize this horror are undertaken
from such false assurances as “At least it was instant. At least there wasn’t any pain,” to
compulsive lists of possible scenarios intended to uncover what really happened (146). All of
these keep the sting o f grief at a distance. Green uses the World Religions class to introduce
the inescapable truth that the only way out of suffering is to enter fully into it. As Dr. Hyde
tells the students, everyone, at some point in their lives, loses their way due to suffering and
feels as though they are in a maze. Hyde thereby highlights the universality o f suffering.
What Hyde also implies is that the journey into suffering is a process that winds, meanders,
and confuses. As Pudge, the Colonel, and their close circle of friends take this winding path,
they go into the heart o f pain. Once there, everything feels different. They discover that
suffering and grief have not destroyed or separated them; rather they have strengthened them
and their relationship with each other.
Authentic relationship, like suffering, is a process which involves both our external
and internal worlds. Alaska offers us a view o f the outer and inner landscapes that shape
relationship and the challenging path that must be taken to bridge them. The “before,” and
“after” structure o f the story provides a way to bridge the two faces of connection. In
“before,” the outer landscape o f relationship is the focus. Pudge’s interactions with family
and friends mirror the superficiality of social encounters in the public realm. In “after,” we
journey with the narrator into the inner landscape o f relating where intimacy takes root.
As “before” opens, we are introduced to Pudge’s parents, who are hosting a farewell
party for him. The party is a dismal failure. Worse than having a party to which no one
comes, Pudge notes, is having one attended by only two boring people. Such is the case in

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this instance. The conclusion that he lacks a close relationship with friends seems inevitable
and is expanded to include his parents, whose obvious ignorance o f Pudge’s lack of
popularity suggests disinterest. After arriving at Culver Creek, Pudge imagines him self as
“cool” and able to make a good first impression (8). When he meets his roommate dressed
only in a towel, Pudge is ashamed: “Great, I thought. I ’m meeting my roommate naked” (9
italics in original). The Colonel lets him know that he is not going to be his “entree to Culver
Creek social life,” a comment which Pudge interprets as unwillingness to become his friend
(13). Since the lack o f friends is familiar territory for Pudge, he assumes that he is being
isolated. When we learn this roommate is well versed in classic poetry and can memorize and
itemize the names of countries and cities alphabetically, however, we infer his own status as
an outsider. The Colonel confirms this reputation as “other” when he confesses that he is a
regular boarder and considered inferior to the Weekday Warriors, the rich, popular kids.
There is strong rivalry between these two groups that mounts in “before” as they attempt to
outdo each other, resorting to mean pranks and comments. The result is disconnection.
Isolation also characterizes personal relationships. Pudge is unable to connect with Lara, the
girl Alaska introduces to him as a potential girlfriend; the Colonel has on-going conflict with
his girlfriend; Pudge has dissatisfying phone calls with his parents, while also experiencing
uncertainty in his relationship with Alaska and her circle o f friends. When Alaska’s violation
o f the “no ratting” norm is revealed, another vital component o f authentic relationship is
unveiled - trust. Trust is lacking within this small circle o f friends, a fact that is compounded
when Alaska confesses that her mother died when Alaska was eight and she feels
responsible. In the three years she has known the Colonel, this fact has never been revealed.

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In “after,” relationships take a twisting path into the inner dimension o f experience.
When Pudge learns that Alaska has been killed in a car accident, he knows “the ineluctable
fact o f the matter” - he is responsible for her death (141). Meanwhile, the Colonel dissolves
into tears o f regret for his part in this horror. This shared guilt becomes the basis for a
growing connection between them that is felt within, rather than stated out loud. As Pudge
recounts,
He grabs onto me and starts sobbing, again saying, “I’m so
sorry,” over and over again. We have never hugged before,
me and the Colonel, and there is nothing much to say,
because he ought to be sorry, and I just put my hand on the
back o f his head and say the only true thing. “I’m sorry,
too.” (143)
Guilt also reveals Pudge’s changing view of, and relationship with, others. When the
Weekday Warriors, who are mere acquaintances o f Alaska, express deep grief about her
death, the Colonel becomes angry. Pudge, however, is willing to accept their grief because
“everyone else had a better excuse to grieve than we did - after all they hadn’t killed her”
(159). Pudge’s relationship with his parents begins to shift during his first telephone
conversation with them “after” Alaska’s death. He realizes just how much he needs them to
simply pick up the phone. This exchange between Pudge and his parents conveys the reality
of the loneliness inherent in the journey into suffering. The path o f grief must be travelled
alone, yet it also offers the company o f others on this same path. The Colonel, Takumi, and
Lara have been important parts of Alaska’s circle of friends and remind Pudge he is not alone
in his grief:
I may have kissed her, but I really didn’t have a monopoly
on Alaska; the Colonel and I weren’t the only ones who
cared about her, and weren’t alone in trying to figure out
how she died and why. (195 italics in original)

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When Pudge is finally able to be completely honest with Takumi and Lara about the part he
and the Colonel played in Alaska’s accident, he feels even less alone. Pudge’s honesty
engenders trust and brings these friends closer. Together they come to realize that an ongoing
spiritual relationship with their dead friend is possible through their memories o f Alaska.
At the smoking hole Alaska’s close circle o f friends gather and the Colonel pulls a
cigarette out o f his package and throws it into the lake in remembrance o f Alaska. This
gesture takes on a ritualistic character when the others do the same. Pudge observes, “I liked
the idea o f connecting an action with remembering.. .1 imagined that Alaska would want a
smoke, and so it seemed to me that the Colonel had begun an excellent ritual” (193). When
Mr. Starnes announces the school is going to build a playground by the lake in honour of
Alaska, this circle o f friends objects. Lara stands up at the meeting and insists, “They should
do something funnier, something Alaska herself would have done” (199). The Colonel
suggests a prank is something more connected to their dead friend because Alaska loved to
plot outlandish pranks. When the friends get together again, the Colonel unveils the details of
The Alaska Young Memorial Prank. It will be “the crown jewel of pranks, the Mona Lisa of
high-school hilarity, the culmination o f generations o f Culver Creek pranking” because
“Alaska deserved nothing less” (200). Still, the prank will not work without the assistance of
the whole school and that includes the Weekday Warriors, Alaska’s archenemies.
Nonetheless, this rival group loves the idea o f the prank and together these two rivals, the
Weekday Warriors and Alaska’s close circle o f friends, successfully execute the memorial.
The loss o f Alaska and the living memory o f her spirit that still lives have created a bridge
for their rivals’ polarized relationship.

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There is still one vital piece missing in the growing intimacy Pudge has with his
friends. Slowly this missing piece emerges. One day Takumi confesses, “We all let her go,
really” (183). The vagueness surrounding Takumi’s comment leaves Pudge wondering what
it really means (183). The meaning o f this confession only becomes clear after Takumi takes
an early departure at the end o f school term without saying goodbye to his friends. He leaves
a letter explaining his sudden departure. Reading this note, Pudge learns that Takumi also
saw Alaska on the night of her death and failed to prevent her from getting into her
automobile drunk. Pudge realizes that he is not alone in keeping secrets: “There were so
many o f us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day” (214).
The realization that all o f us make fatal mistakes is the key that intimately connects Pudge to
his friend and himself. Vulnerability strengthens rather than weakens Pudge’s relationship
with him self and others. This insight bridges Pudge’s internal and external worlds, helps him
feel more connected to others, and brings him to an acceptance o f life’s unexplainable
suffering: “Those awful things are survivable” (220).
In Alaska Green gives us a portrait o f the spiritual terrain that bridges the divide
between religion and spirit in the twenty-first-century world. He creates a broad view o f the
spiritual domain using indeterminate or subtle details that require the participation of the
reader to achieve their meaning. Green’s indeterminate style allows him to reveal not only
the connections that exist within religion and spirit but also the dichotomies.

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Chapter Two: Labyrinth and/or Maze: Two Central Characters in Alaska
The picture most often painted o f the spiritual/religious life in the twenty-first-century
world is that o f polarities. Despite a number o f differences, however, Americans live together
cooperatively. This is the conclusion reached by Putnam and Campbell, two researchers who
conducted a thorough survey o f the spiritual life o f twenty-first-century Americans. They
discovered that there are many world religions represented in the population, as well as
significant numbers who claim to be spiritual rather than religious, and some who describe
themselves as atheist. According to these researchers, little conflict arises among people
despite having views that are, in character, polar opposites (Putnam & Campbell 2010).
Nevertheless, there is a cautionary approach to the spiritual in the public domain. Educators,
and some authors, fear including anything that might be interpreted as entering spiritual
territory because it may engender conflict. There are other contributing factors to the
avoidance o f the spiritual in the public realm that the Search Institute brought to attention in
their 2008 research report. With Their Own Voices stresses that the spiritual aspect of the
human being involves both an inward and an outward journey. Indeed, youth in countries
around the world who were interviewed about their spiritual lives reported that the inner
aspect o f their lives contains challenges and burdens (Roehlkepartain et al., 2008). In Alaska,
John Green using metaphor and symbol explores these tensions inherent in the visceral
aspect of life.
Green’s use o f metaphorical connections is prominent in his development o f the
characters who play key roles in his portrayal o f spirit. Alaska Young is the primary
character metaphor, but Dr. Hyde, the World Religions teacher, also plays a significant role.
Both are central to Green’s creation o f a story that unsettles the binaries that characterize

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traditional formulations of the spiritual. Alaska and Hyde each provide a metaphorical link to
the religious polarity and variety of spiritual views in modem America, as well as to the pain
and suffering that are part o f every human life. Despite interpreting these issues differently,
these characters share common ground, and Green uses them to offer us a picture o f the
spirit that has a “both/and” quality, in the midst o f what initially appears to be the “either/or”
dichotomy.
Alaska herself is young and wild like the state for which she is named. According to
an Alaskan tourism promotion, “nowhere else combines the conveniences o f the modem age
with the freedom and adventure of living on the edge o f a vast, unspoiled wilderness”
(“Moving to Alaska” Web). This state has been surrounded with an aura o f mystery and
mystique equated with the search for meaning ever since the publication o f Jon Krakauer’s
Into the Wild (1997), an account of Chris McCandless, a young man who dies seeking a
dream, and himself, in the far North. In Alaska, Green situates his central character within the
stifling, “oppressive” atmosphere of southern Alabama, the heart of evangelical Christianity.
This fundamentalist region imposes rigid rules for conduct and morals that counter the
freedom to explore meaning, a freedom that is associated with the North. The north/south
polarities that divide these two geographical locations mirror the divisions within American
spiritual life and between Dr. Hyde and Alaska. The southern United States embraces
traditional Protestant Christianity, which came to the United States with the Puritans in the
seventeenth century, while the North is aligned with liberal and mainstream religious views
(Hilbun 2008, Putnam & Clark 2010). These two regions also capture another binary that is
reflected in Alaska Young and Dr. Hyde. The state of Alaska is the youngest to join the
republic o f the United States, thereby symbolically representing youth, while Alabama

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reflects tradition. In Alaska, Dr. Hyde exemplifies old age and the rigidity o f traditional
religion in Alabama, whereas Alaska epitomizes youth and the spiritual questioning that is
connected to the North. Despite these seeming contradictions, however, these two characters
also reveal kindred parallels that broaden this juxtaposition. Together they metaphorically
bridge the tensions that have led to the avoidance of anything that might be deemed spiritual
in the public domain.
In Alaska, the title character is associated with youth. She is a student with a wild
impulsive nature, but she is also, less obviously, a broken spirit caught in a maze o f suffering.
It is Alaska who introduces the central theme in this novel: “How will I ever get out of this
labyrinth [of suffering]?” (Green, Alaska 19). By contrast, Dr. Hyde is referenced as “the Old
Man” with some qualities that are stereotypical o f old age. He is a rigid teacher who rules his
World Religions classroom with an iron hand, and Alaska describes him as “condescending”
(33). Yet Hyde, too, has another side that slowly emerges to reveal vulnerability. Pudge
encounters this sensitivity in the first meeting with his teacher: “I realized for the first time
how hunched his shoulders were, and he seemed suddenly sad” (50). Both Hyde and Alaska
incorporate aspects o f the ambiguities and elusiveness that characterize the spiritual domain.
What is significant about the portrait Green develops o f these two characters is the
interweaving o f their outer and inner beings to demonstrate that both are necessary to gain an
authentic view of who they are.
Alaska is introduced to us by Pudge and the first thing we leam about her is written
on the white board outside her dorm room. It says: “Alaska has a single” (14 italics in
original). Alaska lives alone because her roommate “got kicked out at the end o f last year”
(14). But her loss of a roommate also, less directly, signals her isolation. This separateness

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gains significance as “before” unfolds. Early in their relationship, Pudge brings our attention
to her outer presentation because the first thing that catches his attention is that she is “the
hottest girl in all o f human history.. .talking loud and fast” (14). If she is a beauty queen,
however, Alaska is also a “book worm.” Pudge is “stunned partly by the force o f the voice
emanating from the petite (but God, curvy) girl and partly by the stacks o f books that lined
her walls” (15). Thus, Alaska displays contradictory qualities. On the surface she is
uncomplicated, conveyed by the white board and her physical beauty. Inside, however, is
confusion. The stacks o f books that line her bedroom walls and overflow into piles o f books
everywhere throughout the room symbolize this other aspect o f her nature. Alaska’s
ambivalence is further revealed when she joins Pudge, who is sitting on a swing. A swing
suggests fun and entertainment, but the subsequent conversation counters this frivolity. She
asks, “Do you really memorize last words?” and on hearing an affirmative, she quizzes him
(18). In doing so she introduces the South American general, Simon Bolivar, who had a
vision o f South America free from Spanish control. Bolivar is connected with the labyrinth,
and his dying words set the keynote for the rest o f the novel: “How will I ever get out o f this
labyrinth?” (19). Simon Bolivar considered Spain the enemy at the centre o f his labyrinthine
fight for an independent state. He reached the end o f his life sick in body and, according to
Garcia Marquez’s fictional account of his last days, sick in soul as well (Marquez 1989).
Alaska’s invocation of Bolivar implicitly links her to the labyrinth and suffering.
The labyrinth symbol does, itself, have a significance that is often missed. In the
twenty-first century the meaning o f the word “labyrinth” has become skewed because it is
often used interchangeably with that o f “maze.” In fact, these two spiritual symbols are
different, yet connected. A labyrinth consists of a single circular, or unicursal, path, while the

40

maze is a network of paths, or multicursal. Each has a clearly marked centre to which the
paths lead, and the route into their centres is confusing. Most notably, the maze offers a
number o f false turns that do not lead to the centre. Ultimately, one can get lost in the maze,
unable to find the centre. In contrast, the labyrinth requires only that walkers have faith to
stay on its single meandering, albeit confusing, trail in order to reach the core. The circles
cause confusion because at times the path seems to be very close to the centre when, in fact,
it is actually the opposite. It is the process of navigating into, and out of, the twists and turns
o f a labyrinth that can bring new insights.
Early in the novel, Pudge overtly connects Alaska and the labyrinth when he points
out the similarities between the curves of a labyrinth and those o f the beautiful Alaska:
It was right then, between when I asked her about the
labyrinth and when she answered me, that I realized the
importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’
bodies ease from one place to another, from arc o f the foot
to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to waist to breast to neck to
ski slope nose to forehead to shoulder to the concave arch of
the back to the butt to the etc. I’d noticed curves before, o f
course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance.
(19)
Despite Pudge’s initial connection to the labyrinth, Alaska seems more like the puzzle o f a
maze. There are many confusing, false turns on the path into her centre. This title character,
herself, refuses to engage in the process o f wrestling with suffering that the labyrinth invites.
She sees this symbol in “either/or” terms and wonders: “Is the labyrinth living or dying?”
(19). Alaska lets us know she wants a simple, quick answer to Bolivar’s profound question
when she says to Pudge: “You figure out what the labyrinth is and how to get out o f it and
I’ll get you laid” (20). This statement offers a key to her character. Alaska is seeking a quick,
easy explanation for suffering that she hopes deconstructing it logically will produce.

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Discovering meaning in suffering, however, is not a straight path but rather, like the curves
of a labyrinth, a slowly unwinding process into what lies beneath the surface.
Unlocking the mystery o f Alaska proves to be a meandering process for the narrator.
As the chapter following this conversation opens, Pudge is pestering the Colonel with
questions about this beautiful girl. His enquiries focus on the surface details o f her life, but
the fact that he is taping a van Gogh poster to his door as he seeks information about Alaska
implies that there is something about her that he is not able to hear. Vincent van Gogh, who
cut off his own ear, is associated with self-destructiveness and emotional torment; the
presence of his poster in the midst of a conversation about Alaska suggests there is anguish
within this young woman. Alaska’s contradictions are many. On the one hand she displays
“casual malice,” as when Pudge goes to her room seeking sympathy after his cruel
orientation experience and she responds coldly, “Guess you went for a swim, huh?” (27). On
the other, she bubbles with sexual energy, silliness, and intelligence. Pudge captures her
inconsistency when he notes:
Maybe she could be m ean.. .but the way she talked that first
night about getting out o f the labyrinth - so smart. And the
way her mouth curled up on the right side all the time, like
she was preparing to smirk, like she’d mastered the right
side o f the Mona Lisa's smile. ..(31)
The meaning intended by the enigmatic expression on this famous face has been a source of
investigation for centuries. By using the Mona Lisa as a comparison for Alaska, Pudge is
both idealizing and limiting his understanding o f her. What lies below the surface cannot be
accessed with the eye. Nonetheless, the inner reality is a vital part of Alaska’s being that, in
idealizing her, Pudge misses.

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Alaska herself both invites, and resists, idealization. As she notes, rudely awakening
Pudge from a nap, “I’m unpredictable” (33). She interacts with Pudge in a playful, teasing
manner, yet screams at the Colonel when he asks for help with his ironing: “You’re not going
to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me” (34 italics in original). Her rebelliousness surfaces
in the World Religions class after Dr. Hyde ejects Pudge for staring out the window, and it
continues in a location Pudge describes as an oasis (39). In fact, the word “oasis” is
ambiguous because it is the secret smoking hole used by students. The route to the smoking
hole, “not even a path so much as a series o f hints,” mirrors what lies beneath the surface of
smoking (42). When Pudge asks her, “W hy do you smoke so damn much?” she replies,
“Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die” (44). This is the first overt evidence that Alaska is
self-destructive. In an interview about his novel, Green argues that smoking and drinking are
signs that his characters are experiencing self-destructive impulses, as so many teenagers do.
Green goes on to explain that he believes this desire “to hurt ourselves without killing
ourselves” is a coping mechanism for the unfairness of suffering in life (Barkdoll & Scherff
70). The reason he includes this element o f teen behaviour in his novel is not to raise the
issue o f under age smoking and drinking, but rather to raise the issue o f the suffering that lies
below the surface o f these behaviours (Barkdoll & Scherff 2008).
Alaska directs us to the reality o f suffering in a human life and the ways in which we
avoid it. She not only smokes and drinks, but also drives her car recklessly and indulges in
promiscuous sexual behaviour. When Mr. Starnes catches her smoking for the seventh time
she philosophically dismisses it: “It’s the eternal struggle, Pudge. ‘The Good versus the
Naughty’” (56). Mr. Starnes succumbs to the inclination to see the world o f teenagers
simplistically. He gives his attention to the behaviour being displayed, without considering

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what it might be covering. In addition, he judges this behaviour according to binary
divisions, either good or bad. Alaska, like the youth for whom she is the archetype, knows
this binary well. She delivers her observation about this polarity with a lightness that
disguises the confusion and pain such a simplistic division creates for times when bad things
happen to good people, or even worse, for those times when we ourselves do bad things. The
“either/or” binary forces separation and isolation, and is based on a perception system that
denies the reality o f “both/and.” Both good and bad do exist within the same human being.
Nonetheless, the reality is that Mr. Stame’s binary approach is the one youth meet most often
in their classrooms and homes.
Alaska continues to follow the winding path into the complexity o f life for youth.
Pudge asks Alaska about her first name. She tells him her parents allowed her, at the age of
seven, to choose her own name. Alaska was drawn to the name o f the northern state for two
reasons. Firstly, it was learning that this state’s name came from the Aleut word meaning
“that which the sea breaks against” (53). Secondly, the fact that this northern state was big,
and far away from where she was living, had great appeal. Alaska’s explanation for her
choice of personal name symbolically reveals significant aspects of youth seldom confronted.
Suffering is part o f youth’s experience, a big part, but it is far away from the life they are
expected to live. When Alaska notes: “Getting out [of Alabama] isn’t that easy,” she is
hinting that she has already experienced the impact of life’s storms, and the difficulty o f
escaping from the prison that ‘the way life should be’ imposes (53). Green, however, is doing
more than this here. Alabama, as the centre o f evangelical Christianity, symbolizes the
polarity that characterizes the religious and political aspect of twenty-first-century American
life. That Alaska, as the archetypal youth, is put in the centre o f such a polarized location, far

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from the freedom from suffering that she longs for, reinforces the tension that inevitably
arises when one approaches struggle within a binary framework. Alaska mistakenly believes
getting out o f the experience o f such tension is her only choice.
The binary framework chosen by Alaska and Pudge leaves no room for moral
ambiguity, paradox, or inconsistency. When Pudge learns she has violated the one important
rule among the students at Culver Creek, to “never never never never never rat,” he is
shocked (17). He realizes that Alaska is moody, but her disloyalty is far more unsettling. It is
ironic that this violation of Alaska’s is exactly the same as that o f which she accuses the
Colonel’s girlfriend: “How will stabbing one another in the back help women to rise above
patriarchal oppression?” (65). The reality is that human beings, young and old, female, male,
and transgender, do betray each other. Another o f Alaska’s friends notes that it was her fear
o f being expelled that prompted her betrayal, and this nudges both him and Pudge to wonder
why Alaska is so terrified o f being expelled (74). Nonetheless, when Alaska confesses she
did ‘rat out’ her roommate, Pudge refuses to accept her inconsistency. In fact, Alaska’s moral
ambiguity intensifies his lack o f trust in her. He prefers the Colonel, who, when he was
cranky, “at least had a reason” (75). His choice leads him further away from Alaska and
metaphorically projects the narrow image o f youth held by adults who educate and evaluate
them. Adults are unwilling to acknowledge the contradictory nature of human experience,
perhaps because o f the uncertainty, and therefore, discomfort it imposes.
Alaska continues to unveil a complex picture of youth. Alaska recognizes and has
sympathy for Pudge when he displays the same inconsistency that characterizes her own
behaviour. She entices him to stay at Culver Creek for Thanksgiving and Pudge calls his
parents to let them know about this decision (77). Later he has second thoughts and is

45

distressed by his willingness to “abandon” his parents (78). Yet when he calls them back to
say he has changed his mind, he is devastated to learn that his parents have happily gone
ahead with plans o f their own for Thanksgiving. Alaska is quick to assure him that he will
not be alone over the holiday because she’ll be keeping him company. Symbolically, she lets
Pudge know he is not alone in his vulnerability. Alaska goes on to reveal a glimpse o f her
own fragility when she confesses she chooses not to go home because she is “scared of
ghosts and home is full o f them” (80). During this holiday period together, Alaska displays
more signs o f suffering and coping strategies. She introduces Pudge to alcohol, reads Kurt
Vonnegut’s book C a t’s Cradle (1963) aloud to him, and shares lines from Auden’s poetry.
At the same time, however, Alaska also invades the rooms of the Week Day Warriors, whom
she despises, in search o f anything that might offer her clues for a cruel “prank” that will “hit
them where it hurts” (84). Into this tangle o f contradictions Alaska hints at the source o f her
personal suffering when she implies she may be the source and victim o f her life’s misery:
It’s not life or death, the labyrinth. [It’s] suffering. Doing
wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the
problem. Bolivar was talking about the pain, not about the
living or dying. How do you get out o f the labyrinth of
suffering? (82)
Alaska raises crucial issues for youth: the problem of injustice, or unfairness in life, as well
as the bad choices we make which can lead to pain, and a search for an explanation o f life’s
lack of moral reinforcement.
Alaska goes on to insist “nothing’s wrong” when Pudge suspects her observation
about “doing wrong and having bad things happen to you” is a sign that something in her life
is causing her pain (82). Nonetheless, Alaska is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to enter into
this pain and seeks, instead, a way to eliminate her distress. Immediately after sharing

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Auden’s beautiful lines, “You shall love your crooked neighbour/With your crooked heart”
and noting that they capture “love and brokenness,” Alaska suggests that it is time to search
other dorm rooms for some pornography to view (85). Truly, Alaska is trapped in the denial
of suffering in her public conduct while struggling with the reality of its existence within
herself.
After the school break, Alaska calls her circle o f friends together and reveals yet more
behind the suffering that lives within her. The “Best Day/Worst Day” drinking game Alaska
introduces to her friends captures the source o f her pain. This is a competition she improvises
to slow down their drinking. In this game all members o f the group will share the story o f
their best, and worst, days and the best storyteller in each category will not have to take a
drink. Alaska’s best day was a trip to the zoo with her mother when Alaska was eight years
old, a story which strikes her friends as a bit “lame” until they leam what happens next (115).
The worst day for Alaska occurs the day after her best one, when her mother dies from a
brain aneurysm. Alaska believes her mother would still be alive if she had not failed to call
911. When Takumi, one o f this close circle o f friends, points out that she “was just a little
kid,” Alaska retorts: “Yeah. I was a little kid. Little kids can dial 911” (119). Nonetheless,
Alaska continues to avoid, or deny the impact o f this profound incident with her closest
friends. Even when the Colonel, who has known her for three years, in a soft voice asks:
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Alaska brushes him off, “It never came up” (120). This is as
close as Alaska’s friends get to her suffering and they turn their attention to her outward
behaviour, not her wounded spirit. When Pudge points out Alaska’s excessive consumption
of alcohol she responds: “Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply
unhappy person” (124). Despite her wild public persona, Alaska is seriously troubled.

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That Alaska is disturbed becomes apparent in the chapter “the last day” at the book’s
midpoint. (125). After an evening o f heavy drinking, Alaska challenges Pudge to participate
in a game o f “truth or dare” (130). When he chooses “dare,” Alaska responds, “Hook up with
me” (130). These hook-up antics with Pudge are further evidence of behaviour Green
attributes to youth’s struggle to cope with life’s unfairness. Despite her drunken state, Alaska
makes clear the depth o f her despair when she returns to Pudge’s room later in the evening,
sobbing: “God, how many times can I fuck up?” (132). Indeed, she appears to be incapable
of accepting the unpalatable truth that there is no easy way out o f her suffering - at least not
the sort she is desperately seeking. Alaska’s friends support her in this faulty choice when
they allow her, despite her intoxication, to get into her car and drive. The words she utters,
that prove to be her final words, are “God, oh God, I’m so sorry” (132). But what is she sorry
about that causes her to make this life-threatening choice? This mystery becomes the
preoccupation o f Alaska’s close circle o f friends in “after,” the second half o f the book.
The problem of meaninglessness becomes profound in “after” when Alaska’s friends
discover that she was killed “in a terrible accident” (139). Alaska’s last words, “I’m so
sorry,” are the motivation behind the compulsion to understand what caused her accident that
overtakes Pudge and the Colonel (132). Pudge wants to know the reason this happened
because “people do not just die” (142). Surely, Pudge rationalizes, she is just playing an
“Alaska Young Prank Extraordinaire” (149). The Colonel attributes her accident to the fact
that Alaska has always been “so goddamned impulsive [and prone to] getting upset for no
reason” (149). The assumption that drives their responses is that there has to be a logical
reason for what has happened. They encounter problems when they use this frame of
reference to investigate Alaska’s death. Insisting on the “either/or” binary o f “she killed

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herself,” which the Colonel proposes, versus Pudge’s insistence that he and the Colonel, by
letting her get into the car when she was so inebriated, are “wholly, unforgivably guilty,”
proves to be a completely unsatisfactory explanation (157). This dichotomous framework
does not allow Alaska’s friends to move beyond certainty and begin to uncover a greater
understanding o f Alaska and themselves.
Slowly, Pudge and the Colonel open to the possibility that there are not always
logical answers or explanations. Neither eases the pain o f loss and Pudge acknowledges that
it must be hard to die, “but it cannot be much harder than being left behind” (151). In
addition, he comes to recognize that the anger the Colonel expresses in response to the pain
o f loss “just distracts from the all-encompassing sadness, the frank knowledge that you killed
her and robbed her o f a life” (153). Both o f these friends are shocked when they come upon
Alaska’s copy of The General in His Labyrinth as they are cleaning out her dorm room.
Pudge notices that Alaska has added a marginal note beside the sentence that has fueled her
search for an escape from suffering. It reads “Straight and Fast” (155 italics in original). This
note refuels the Colonel’s search for an explanation when he speculates that Alaska’s
accident was suicide. Pudge resists this explanation and suggests: “Maybe we should just let
her be dead” (164). Nonetheless, their exploration of suicide as an explanation for Alaska’s
death leads both of these friends to consider a different view o f her.
As the Colonel says, “Something happened that we aren’t seeing.. .Something inside
o f her” (188). This acknowledgement is a key shift for these two friends that leads them to
consider their own “inside” selves. The process o f doing so is traumatic because it means
looking honestly at their part in Alaska’s death. The Colonel cruelly shouts at Pudge: “ I was
drunk. What’s your excuse?” (171). Pudge screams in response, but his scream is about his

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failure to prevent Alaska’s death: “ I hated her for leaving that night, and I hated myself, too,
not only because I let her go but because if I had been enough for her, she wouldn’t have
even wanted to leave” (171). Nonetheless, the result of this altercation is that Pudge and the
Colonel are more willing to accept the aspects o f Alaska that irritated them and to remember
the qualities she displayed that enchanted them. This result leads to their execution of the
Alaska Young Memorial Prank, which captures the essence of Alaska’s fun-loving, but
rebellious, nature, and helps Pudge begin to accept the fact that it may not be possible to
discover exactly what happened on that fateful night. There is one more thing these two
friends need to do to deepen the understanding of this tragic event in their lives.
Pudge agrees to accompany the Colonel on a drive through the site o f Alaska’s fatal
crash. They choose to take this drive in the light of the afternoon, not in the dark o f night as
Alaska did. Symbolically, this drive, and the light in which it is undertaken, capture the
meaning o f suffering. After speeding through the spot on which Alaska died, Pudge notes:
And POOF we are through the moment o f her death. We are
driving through the place that she could not drive through,
passing onto asphalt she never saw, and we are not dead.
We are not dead! We are breathing and we are crying. (213)
Alaska was not able to drive into, and through, her pain, but her death has opened her
friend’s eyes to the awareness that the true nature o f suffering can be survived. It is an
experience to be lived through, rather than analysed. Such an experience, like the labyrinth, is
a “both/and” process, not the “either/or” approach required in a maze.
Pudge could not have reached this conclusion without another key character in this
novel, Dr. Hyde, the World Religions teacher. In Dr. Hyde, we find a guide for the spiritual
aspect o f being human within the educational setting. Unlike Alaska, who is caught in the
binary o f “either/or” thinking, Dr. Hyde challenges our tendency to think and to judge in

50

polarities rather than to struggle with a process-based approach to acquiring wisdom. Hyde’s
name captures the essence of non-dualism that characterizes his way o f thinking. This
appellation symbolically weaves together the inner and outer dimensions o f the human being,
thereby creating space for the spirit. Hyde is the private self of the infamous Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde. That the inner dimension o f this character is prefaced with the formal designation
“Doctor,” implies, symbolically, that the private self within the World Religions teacher is
also present in the classroom (32). Most significantly, this name broadens the stereotypical
picture o f religion, age, and teaching. Hyde is Jekyll’s inner, dark side and, as such, has been
kept separate, or apart from the rational world. This appellation joins the inner and outer
aspects o f Hyde’s character and thereby challenges a representation of religion, age and
teaching that keeps them apart. Nonetheless, Dr. Hyde, “the Old Man,” appears to be an
archetype for this stage o f life, and a counterpoint to Alaska as youth, rather than the wise,
caring, complex man that he is (31).
Our first introduction to Dr. Hyde paints a stereotypical picture o f old age. It begins
with the descriptor “the Old Man,” and the capital letters signify that the portrait being
unveiled invites a metaphorical interpretation. What follows is a physical description that
highlights the comical perceptions of age. Describing his first impression o f this teacher,
Pudge notes:
He breathed slowly and with great labor through his wideopen mouth. He took tiny steps toward the lectern, his heels
not moving much past his toes. The Colonel nudged me and
pointed casually to his notebook, which read, The Old Man
has one lung, and I did not doubt it. His audible, almost
desperate breaths reminded me o f my grandfather when he
was dying o f lung cancer. Barrel-chested and ancient, the
Old Man, it seemed to me, might die before he ever reached
the podium. (32-33 italics in original)

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Dr. Hyde captures the physical frailty of the old person and projects, metaphorically,
vulnerability. He is also a dictator in the classroom: “I will talk most of the time, and you will
listen most o f the time” (32). When students do not pay attention, or write notes to one
another, the Old Man ejects them from the classroom (39). Alaska finds him to be a
pedagogical horror show, but Pudge insists he is a genius. Pudge sees beyond Hyde’s
surface, and is inspired by his knowledge and passion for the subject he is teaching: “the Old
Man made me take religion seriously” (33). When this teacher introduces himself, he appears
to be reinforcing the stereotypical picture held by Alaska: “My nam e.. .is Dr. Hyde. I have a
first name. So far as you are concerned it is Doctor” (32). Nonetheless, despite his one lung
and his dictatorial remarks, Hyde’s inclination to plurality and openness begins to surface.
Dr. Hyde begins the first lecture o f his World Religions class by introducing his
students to religion within a comparative, rather than a “mono” focus. He makes no reference
to the doctrines, creeds, or rules embraced by Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism. Instead he
suggests all three o f these religions address the human search for meaning, and, by
implication, so will his class. Further, Hyde introduces the questions that all these faiths
address. These are questions that every young person begins to raise in adolescence, and that
adults contend with for the remainder o f their lives: “What is the nature o f being a person?
What is the best way to go about being a person? How did we come to be, and what will
become o f us when we are no longer?” (32). Dr. Hyde is offering a non-dualistic framework
o f inquiry to his students, rather than a directive one. Such a framework provides room for
personal exploration and secures the participation o f his students.
During one o f Hyde’s lectures Pudge turns his attention to what he sees through the
classroom window. He knows he is in trouble when he hears this teacher say “Mr. Halter,

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here I am, straining my lungs for your edification. And yet something out there seems to have
caught your fancy in a way that I’ve been unable to do” (39 italics in original). Dr. Hyde asks
Pudge to leave class. On the surface, this teacher seems to succumb to the pedagogical
impulse to tell Pudge how to act and think. On a deeper level, however, he is giving Pudge
the opportunity to learn from his experience. From the classroom Pudge looks at the
“wooded, slow-sloping hill” and, inspired by Dr. Hyde’s lecture on the Buddhist concept of
interconnection, sees “everything so intricately woven together” that trees and hill seem one
(39). When Pudge gets outside, however, “the woods were a totally different creature than
from Dr. Hyde’s classroom” (41). This is because he is now in the woods - not viewing them
from afar. Despite Hyde’s apparent concern with behaviour, he is finding ways to put his
students in charge o f their own learning. The next day Hyde reinforces Pudge’s lesson by
drawing his attention to the Buddhist concept of “being present” (50). Hyde continues to find
ways to broaden the outreach o f religion to include both the personal and public lives of his
students
Dr. Hyde strives to present religion as a resource that can help his students explore
the issues in their lives. Hyde’s concern with connecting his subject to the lives o f his
students is reflected in the topic he poses for the first semester’s exam:
What is the most important question human beings must
answer? Choose your question wisely, and then examine
how Islam, Buddhism and Christianity attempt to answer it.
(70 italics in original)
Hyde does not insist that these three religions provide answers to life’s difficult questions;
rather, he offers his students the opportunity to explore if, or how, they might find tentative
answers themselves. The Colonel is excited about the chance to investigate the central
question o f his own life: “I hope the poor bastard lives the rest o f the school year.. .because

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I’m starting to enjoy that class” (70). Dr. Hyde’s lecture on this particular day reinforces a
more personal view of religion. He begins by talking in a surprisingly casual way about Jesus
Christ. Breaking with the reverence central to fundamentalist Christian discourse, Hyde
identifies Christ with the peasants of first century Palestine, describing him as a “nobody in
an empire ruled exclusively by somebodies,” and goes on to say, “a nobody just like
you”(70). In connecting Jesus with his students, Dr. Hyde makes room for, and connects,
theory with the personal. As Pudge says, “Maybe Dr. Hyde’s class isn’t total bullshit” (82).
That Dr. Hyde is succeeding in opening religion to life becomes clear when Pudge, Alaska,
and their inner circle o f friends gather together and share stories o f “their best day” (114).
Pudge’s account shows evidence that he has embraced Dr. Hyde’s message about the
Buddhist concept o f presence: “Best day o f my life was today.. .just sitting here, even if I’m
watching the Colonel whittle, or whatever. Whatever. Great day. Today” (115). By bringing
theory, life, and questions together in his class, Hyde is moving beyond binaries.
Hyde’s focus on process becomes central in the second half of this novel. During his
first class “after” the death of Alaska, Dr. Hyde begins to transpose the knowledge of life he
has acquired into knowledge a teenager can discover (135). He begins by observing: “It is a
law that parents should not have to bury their children,.. .And someone should enforce it”
(157). Hyde’s statement suggests that there should be someone in charge o f the world, a role
assigned to God in religion, and to a higher source of power in spiritual traditions, but
apparently such a control is lacking. In fact, Hyde is acknowledging the messy nature of
suffering and connecting it to the subject under examination in his class. He notes: “The
questions of religious thought have become, I suspect, personal” (158). In other words, the
subject matter they are studying is no longer merely theoretical. The merging o f personal and

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theoretical is central to his final exam, which poses the question Alaska chose for her first
semester submission: “How will we ever get out o f this labyrinth o f suffering?” (158 italics in
original). Hyde is, symbolically, bringing Alaska’s suffering into the classroom. Further, in
this same class, he insists that suffering is part o f every human life.
Hyde’s analysis of suffering conveys a challenging reality. Bad things happen to
everyone, and there is no way to avoid or detour around pain. Rationalizing is one way we
choose to distance ourselves from the feeling of emotional pain. Dr. Hyde realizes that the
death o f a peer, by accident or suicide, is beyond logic, but he does not abandon critical
thinking or scholarly texts in his consideration o f loss. Most critically, he understands that
thinking and feeling do not need to be polarized:
I’m going to leave that [Alaska’s question] up for the rest o f
the semester,” he said. “Because everybody who has ever
lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that
question. At some point we all look up and realize we are
lost in a maze, and, I don’t want us to forget Alaska, and I
don’t want to forget that even when the material we study
seems boring, w e’re trying to understand how people have
answered that question and the questions each o f you posed
in yor papers - how different traditions have come to terms
with what Chip [the Colonel], in his final, called ‘people’s
rotten lots in life.’” Hyde sat down. “So, how are you guys
doing? (158)
All o f his lectures following Alaska’s death take up death and the pain of loss from multiple
perspectives. Yet in none o f these classes does he ever resort to imposing his views on his
students. Dr Hyde models a teaching style that engenders deep learning because it leaves
room for his students to reflect. He recognizes the power o f story to access feelings that elude
analysis but can be reached through the intuition and imagination. Pudge finds a Sufi story of
particular interest because it includes some great last words and is drawn to it for this reason,
rather than its spiritual or religious message (173). In his next lecture Dr. Hyde shares

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another Sufi story about a woman who bums the doors to heaven and extinguishes the fire of
hell with water:
A woman so strong she bums heaven and drenches hell.
Alaska would have liked this Rabe ’a woman, I wrote in my
notebook. But even so, the afterlife mattered to me. Heaven
and hell and reincarnation. As much as I wanted to know
how Alaska died, I wanted to know where she was now, if
anywhere. (174 italics in original)
This story leads Pudge to consider his own thoughts and beliefs about heaven and hell after
the death of his friend Alaska.
Dr. Hyde achieves something that, I argue, is key to the education o f the whole
person, and that is trust. He gives his students the room, and permission, to live the questions
that arise within them in light o f both the material they are studying and the loss they are
experiencing. Hyde goes one step further at the end of term when he gives the class their
final exam question, asking: “How will you - you personally - ever get out o f this labyrinth
of suffering?” (215). Recognizing that each of them has experienced “the incontestable fact
o f suffering” he believes that each of them now has his own view of its path (215). Getting
out o f suffering is not a possibility. Pudge and his classmates must live through their
suffering in order to get past it. He ends this class by reminding his students of the one
characteristic shared by each o f the three religions, “radical hope” (215). By linking suffering
and hope, Hyde implies that they are connected and can co-exist. This is very much a
“both/and” approach to suffering that provides room for what seems to be a contradiction.
The final class o f the year is not held in the classroom, but rather outside on the grass.
Bridging inside and outside, theory and experience, Hyde portrays a labyrinthine view o f life
and religion. Unlike Alaska, who approached suffering as a puzzle to solve, Hyde recognizes
the profound pattern within it. At the same time, he understands that it can be very difficult to

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see the pattern when one is inside suffering. In addition, Hyde comprehends that it is his age
and his life experience, both personal and professional, that have helped him establish his
labyrinthine view. Having lived as long as he has, and having experienced the death o f his
life partner, Dr. Hyde has developed the faith, and patience, to journey into the centre of
suffering.
Attaining the centre o f a labyrinth “demands faith,” suggests scholar Craig Wright
(Wright 3). In Alaska, faith is connected not with religion, but with the process o f suffering.
As the days pass after Alaska’s death, and the presence o f suffering is so clear, Dr. Hyde
brings one Zen thought to the attention of his students: “Everything falls apart” (Green
Alaska 196). This teacher goes no further than making this connection for his students,
allowing them time to consider the personal implication o f this reality as they continue their
journey into the labyrinth o f grief and loss. Dr. Hyde has faith in the process of life to help
his students find their own way through suffering. When Pudge receives a note from Takumi,
a fellow student, confessing his part in Alaska’s death, he suddenly understands how to get
through the labyrinth o f suffering: “we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth” (217). The
key word in this epiphany is “in.” Pudge is able to forgive Alaska, “his crooked neighbor,”
despite the fact that she forgot everyone who cared about her in those last moments o f her
life because she was preoccupied with her past: “When she fucked up, all those years ago,
just a little girl terrified into paralysis, she collapsed into the enigma of herself.” (218, 219).
Pudge realizes that Alaska was unable to allow herself to be fully in the experience of
suffering. Dr. Hyde and the World Religions class are central to Pudge’s life-changing
discovery.

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These two central characters, Alaska and Dr. Hyde, are powerful spiritual symbols for
our time. They bring the tensions that pervade spirit in both the public and private domains to
our attention and provide a way into and through them. Alaska and Hyde also symbolize the
weaving together o f inner and outer dimensions o f being human. This conclusion cannot be
finally reached until our reading journey through the “before” and “after” sections o f Alaska
is complete.

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Chapter Three: The Labyrinth and Reading
“Before” and “after” are two simple words that capture the essence o f spiritual
transformation. This same “before” and “after” quality captures the transformational nature
o f walking into, and out of, a labyrinth. A walker enters this figure for a host of reasons,
bringing whoever she is at the moment of entering the “mouth” o f this ancient symbol. In the
process o f putting one foot down after another, following the circuitous trail, a person
experiences a variety of internal feelings, thoughts or insights some of which arise
immediately, while others lead to transformation long after the walk has been completed.
Because a labyrinth is a public space, a walker will usually meet others who are traveling
into, or out of, this symbol. This meeting may be also include an encounter with the spirit of
others who have walked this path throughout history. All are encouraged to proceed at their
own pace and, in order to make this possible, there are places along the path to stop and
reflect, or to allow someone who has chosen a different pace to pass (See Figure 1).

-y |

These

resting places also offer opportunities to pause and connect outer and inner experience on the
path. A labyrinth has a clearly defined centre which provides another space to consider the
process o f the inward journey. What becomes clear in the centre is that in order to return to
the mouth of the labyrinth, a walker must turn around and walk back out along the same path.
Surprisingly, despite the fact that this journey out is a mirror image of the one taken into the
labyrinth, a walker is often surprised to see the path differently. Once the walker returns to
the mouth, she is encouraged to turn around and look back into the labyrinth. The process of
walking into and out o f the centre o f this physical landscape transforms the view o f the

21 Lauren Artress, in her text Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool (1995)
uses the term “labyrs” for these resting places.

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pattern o f the path, herself, others she has met on her journey, and the world into which she is
returning.
A labyrinth offers a metaphorical path into the complex, intangible nature o f reading.
Like the process o f navigating a labyrinth, the profound, evocative process o f reading is
transformational. Indeed, the two words “before” and “after” also characterize the experience
o f reading a work o f fiction. A reader enters the mouth o f a novel bringing all o f who she is,
the conscious and unconscious elements o f being, into the experience of reading. The book,
this concrete object within the reader’s hands, contains unknown twists and turns in plot,
character and setting. She enters with her uncertainties into the process o f turning each page
and, thereby, moves slowly into the mystery at the centre o f her being, connecting from there
to the unfolding events and characters. This connection is reached using both intuitive and
rational thinking capacities to make meaning. When the reader reaches the end o f a fictional
story, she comes back to her outer reality, but sees herself, others, and the world to which she
returns with new eyes.
The “before” and “after” structure of Green’s Alaska, like the “before” and “after”
quality o f walking a labyrinth, provides a concrete path into the visceral, elusive terrain of
reading. Green chooses a “before” and “after” structure for Alaska because he believes that
every culture and human being has a moment that becomes “the dividing line between what
we were and what we are now” (Green “Speaking”). M y personal and professional
experience has convinced me that reading has the power to be such a “dividing line,” and
Green’s novel reinforces my belief. A reader enters Alaska bringing her private thoughts,
feelings, and hopes into the physical object in her hands. The reader is not alone in this
experience because she has the company o f the narrator; in this case, Pudge is the reader’s

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guide and companion on this reading journey. Within the first few pages we learn that Pudge
is going to boarding school in search of “ a Great Perhaps” (5). According to Green, the
Dutch title o f Alaska is “Het Grote Misschien,” which means “The Great Perhaps.” When
one enters this Dutch phrase in Babel Fish, however, the translation for this figure o f speech
is “The Big Maybe” (“Speaking”). The Dutch phrase captures very simply the contradictory
nature o f the search for meaning in life. “Big” suggests importance and significance while
“maybe” conveys possibility and speculation without any surety. This metaphor o f a “Great
Perhaps” serves as the entrance into Pudge’s search for meaning in life and the impetus
behind his decision to attend Culver Creek school. The “Great Perhaps” adds an aura o f
uncertainty to Pudge’s desire for something more in his life and implies that his journey, and
the reader’s, will include unpredictability.
The reader’s point o f entry into Alaska is the preposition and subordinate conjunction
“before,” which Green chooses as the framework for the first part of his novel. “Before” is
for the reader what a “Great Perhaps” is for the narrator, a metaphor for the search for
meaning. This one simple word has strong connections to both chronos and kairos time. The
chronos time model is one that historians use to mark significant social, scientific or cultural
changes in the external environment in chronological or sequential order, while kairos time
indicates a moment in life when something special happens.22 Green’s use o f “before”
indeterminately introduces the Christian calendar which references all events as “before” or
“after” the birth o f Jesus Christ. By doing so, Green is subtly introducing the spiritual nature
o f his novel. In addition, the word “before” carries connections to life-changing personal
“before and after” moments that impact both one’s external and internal worlds. Readers may

22 The concept of kairos time was introduced by the Greeks who used it to describe time “in between” in which
something extraordinary takes place.

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not know that Green opens Alaska with this meaning-charged word because his story relates
the life changing moment in the lives o f his characters, but they will intuit that something
significant is about to unfold. What might happen, however, is at this moment a mystery.
The most critical effect o f the word “before” is that it engages the energy o f the
reader. In an interview with Jennifer Buehler, Green shared that he believes a book has a
certain amount o f energy. In order to attain the maximum amount of kinetic energy, he
contends, a book needs a reader (Buelher Web 2008). Reader-response critics, too, argue that
the reader is an essential element in the literary process. In Literature as Exploration (1995),
Rosenblatt describes the literary work as a “transaction” between the reader and the verbal
symbols on the page ( Rosenblatt Literature 26). The term “transaction” is one Rosenblatt
adopted from the work o f John Dewey because it counters the Cartesian dualistic paradigm
and offers room for the dynamics o f process that are crucial to her reading model (Rosenblatt
1993). Rosenblatt’s research has received little attention from current literary theorists and
critics. However, educators in the twenty-first century do continue to incorporate this readerresponse critic’s approach in their teaching o f reading within the English classroom. Two of
these educators, Jeffrey Wilhelm and Bruce Novak, argue that Rosenblatt’s transactional
theory is important. In Teaching Literacy fo r Love and Wisdom (2011), Wilhelm and Novak
attribute criticism o f Rosenblatt’s work to the perception that it is “merely subjective” and
“dangerously soft” (Wilhelm & Novak 12, 34). Building on Rosenblatt’s work, these two
educators argue persuasively for a renewed vision o f the teaching of English that includes the
evocative, connective, and reflective aspects of reading. Another educator, Cristina Vischer
Bruns, builds a detailed case in support o f the book as a transitional object in the life o f a

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reader.231 endorse Rosenblatt’s insistence on the essential role of the reader and on reading
as a process, as well as Wilhelm and Novak’s convincing plea for recognition o f the power of
story to deeply engage readers, and Bruns’s impressive defence o f the book as an object that
can transform its reader. The metaphorical interpretive lens of a labyrinth also offers a way to
explore more deeply the mystery within the reading experience. With Green’s use of
indeterminate details that engage the reader, Alaska is equally important in exploring this
aspect o f reading.
The uncertain, subtle elements in Alaska surface immediately. The first chapter of
Green’s novel, entitled “one hundred thirty-six days before,” brings chronos and kairos
aspects o f time together (Green Alaska 3). “One hundred thirty six days” is chronos time,
linear and ordered, with a definite beginning and end. “Before” is kairos time, circular and
indeterminate, having no clearly defined start or finish. By choosing this unusual chapter
designation, Green establishes the “both/and” nature of the path into his novel. The narrator
proves to be equally circuitous. “Miles Halter” is the name which Green chooses for this
character, a name that captures the essence o f contradiction (10). “Miles,” which derives
from the Latin word “millia,” meaning “thousands,” implies that a long journey is ahead.
“Halter,” however, conveys an image of a strap fastening an animal or piece o f clothing in
one place. Metaphorically, this name choice reinforces the indeterminate style o f Green’s
novel, which asks for the reader’s participation in the unfolding o f its meaning. In addition,
the narrator’s name implies the nature o f the connection between him and the reader o f
Alaska. The narrator offers the reader places to stop, or “halt,” on the journey into and out of
the “miles” o f this novel.

23 Bruns records her research in a text entitled Why Literature! The Value o f Literary Reading and What It
Means fo r Teaching (2011).

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The first stage o f the reader’s passage into Alaska is getting to know the guide. Soon
after Miles meets his roommate, he acquires the nickname “Pudge,” an ironic choice because
our narrator is “skinny” (14). Such a choice subtly conveys that there is more to Pudge than
meets the eye. In addition, such a nickname reinforces the contradictions within our narrator.
Pudge begins his story by presenting him self as a social outcast. He claims his only
connection is with a “ragtag bunch of drama people and English geeks” with whom he sat
“by social necessity in the cavernous cafeteria o f [his] public school” (3). Pudge’s mother
organizes a “Good-bye to Miles” farewell party “awash in the delusion” that her son has
kept his popularity a secret from her. As a result, she prepares for a “cavalry” o f his friends to
attend (3). “Said cavalry consisted of exactly two people,” whom Pudge describes as “vastly,
deeply uninteresting” (4). Despite insisting that his only social contact is with “drama
people,” Pudge contradicts his assertion when he responds to the news that his guests are
participating in a production o f Jesus Christ Superstar with the following:
I might have asked a question about Jesus Christ Superstar,
except that 1 .1 didn’t know what it was and 2 . 1 didn’t care
to learn, and 3 . 1 never really excelled at small talk. (4)
Pudge’s lack o f interest in this musical theatre production and in conversation with his guests
suggests superficial engagement. He further contradicts his self-evaluation when responding
to his mother’s enquiry about the reason for his decision to attend boarding school by reading
from a biography of the French writer Francois Rabelais. Pudge makes an aside comment for
the reader’s ears alone: “I liked reading biographies of writers, even if I’d never read any of
their actual writing” (5). These internal observations counter Pudge’s association with
“English geeks” (3).

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All o f these initial details provide opportunities for the reader to develop a
relationship with Pudge, who weaves together his outer life and inner responses to what is
unfolding and, thereby, leaves room for the reader to come into the process o f making
meaning. The heat o f southern Alabama is physically unbearable for Pudge, and he seeks
relief from it in a “magnificently cold shower” (9). As he bends into the shower to turn on the
faucet, Pudge cannot help examining his naked self in the mirror and noting:
My skinniness always surprised me: My thin arms didn’t
seem to get much bigger as they moved from wrist to
shoulder, my chest lacked any hint o f either fat or muscle,
and I felt embarrassed and wondered if something could be
done about the mirror. (9)
Immediately following this self-deprecating confession, Pudge exits the bathroom wearing
only a towel to cover his skinniness and encounters his roommate for the very first time.
Chip Martin “stood five feet and nothing, but was well built, like a scale model o f Adonis”
(9). Pudge’s comparison is a key element in the relationship the reader is developing with
him. What reader is not familiar with the tendency to make personal comparisons on first
meeting someone based solely on appearances? Pudge’s conclusion is also familiar to the
reader. She inevitably empathizes with Pudge’s inclination to evaluate him self on external
evidence and find himself wanting. On the other hand, this same act of comparing allows the
reader a path o f connection with this imaginary person.
Making such a connection as quickly with someone in our external world seldom
occurs in life, as Pudge continues to demonstrate. Our narrator finds him self in an awkward
place after asking what he thinks is a harmless question: “So where are your parents?” (10).
When Chip responds with details from his personal life, Pudge feels awkward and responds,
“Oh” (10). Privately, he admits that he is not sure how to respond to such personal

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information and acknowledges, “I shouldn’t have asked, I guess, if I didn’t want to know”
(10). Chip comes to Pudge’s rescue by taking things back to a surface level when he declares,
“I’m a top bunk man. Hope that doesn’t bother you” (10). Chip then tells him, “Listen. I’m
not going to be your entree to Culver Creek social life” (14). To this remark Pudge replies
nonchalantly, “Uh, okay” but confesses, privately: “I could hear the words catch in my
throat. I’d just carried this guy’s couch beneath a white-hot sun and now he didn’t like me”
(13). Each turn in Pudge’s school experience is part o f a process that engages Pudge’s
internal, as well external, response to this new life. For the reader, each turn o f the page is
part o f the process of a growing relationship with Pudge. Reading about the unfolding events
in Pudge’s school experience and his evolving relations with fellow students, the reader has
opportunities to consider possible connections with him. The words on the pages o f Alaska
and the reader’s own lived experience of, and imaginative response, to those words
determines the nature o f this growing relationship.
Meeting the beautiful Alaska Young restores Pudge’s hope for a “Great Perhaps” at
Culver Creek. This meeting is also a significant event for the reader of Alaska. The fact that
Alaska is the title character makes her a person o f special interest for the reader. Indeed, this
character heightens the reader’s curiosity, and prompts her to wonder how Alaska might be
connected to “before” or the “Great Perhaps.” Another clue is provided later that day when
Alaska joins Pudge on the swing and asks, “So do you really memorize last words?” (18).
This seemingly innocent question leads to the introduction o f the labyrinth as a significant
symbol in Alaska. Alaska pulls out her copy o f Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s historical novel
The General in His Labyrinth and reads aloud the words of Simon Bolivar that introduce the
labyrinth. Pudge admits to himself and, thereby, the reader that he does not know who Simon

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Bolivar is and makes a mental note to get a copy o f a biography to relieve this mystery. He
does, however, ask Alaska, “So what’s the labyrinth?” (19). Some readers may also not know
what this ancient symbol is and, therefore, not recognize that at this moment they are,
themselves, navigating a labyrinth. Alaska responds to Pudge’s question: “That’s the
mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape - the world or
the end o f it?” (19).
Alaska’s response to Pudge’s enquiry about the word’s meaning provides a subtle,
but significant, shift in the direction o f the path into this novel. By introducing the binary
framework o f “either/or” and connecting it to “living or dying” (italics mine), Alaska
confuses the labyrinth with a maze. This common misunderstanding highlights an important
characteristic of the topology o f a labyrinth in regards to the act o f reading. If one examines
the ancient Cretan labyrinth, one discovers that its construction is achieved with the squaring
o f a circle.24 The square shape incorporates the logical, linear nature of binary thinking that
is dominant in the public realm. The circle, however, breaks apart this dichotomy to provide
room for mystery, uncertainty, and meaning (See Figure 2). This same, seemingly impossible
combination is present in the experience of reading. Pudge ignores the profundity within
Alaska’s question, “Is the labyrinth living or dying?” when he responds, “Uh, I don’t know”
(19). He then changes the direction of the conversation by asking a less complicated
question: “Have you really read all those books in your room?” (19). Pudge’s response
mirrors the resistance I have encountered in the public realm when I bring the visceral
component o f reading to attention. The tendency is to skirt around the topic, as Pudge does,
hoping to find something more tangible and comfortable to address. Alaska does not overtly
24 The source for this information is the work o f well known labyrinth scholar, Hermann Kern, reported in
Through the Labyrinth: Designs and Meanings Over 5,000 Years. The interpretation o f the squaring o f the
circle and how it applies to John Green’s novel is my own.

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give the reader details to help her discover what the labyrinth is or what the unfolding events
might mean. Nonetheless, Green gives the reader many clues that encourage going beneath
the surface o f both the plot and self to make meaning. Pudge’s inner, private responses to
Alaska and the events that are unfolding both enlighten and confuse the reader in the search
for their meaning.
The plot o f “before” continues to turn and twist as Pudge struggles to understand this
beautiful, troubled girl. The narrator focuses his attention on Alaska’s surface behaviour and
emotions yet, unknowingly, offers hints to the reader o f what might not be visible to the outer
eye regarding Alaska and himself. Pudge refuses to accept the reality o f Alaska’s moodiness
and contradictions despite the fact that Takumi, the Colonel, and Alaska herself point them
out repeatedly. Indeed, our narrator seems equally unaware of his own moodiness and
contradictions. On the one hand, he resolves to sleep in his clothes “no matter how miserably
hot it got” in order to avoid unexpected disaster (28). On the other hand, Pudge feels “the
fear and excitement o f living in a place where you never know what’s going to happen or
when” (29). Pudge captures the paradoxical nature of the reading process. Sometimes there
are elements in a plot which confuse or confound the reader. She may be tempted to avoid, or
skip over such details. But the landscape o f reading is also a place where the reader is caught
up in the mystery o f not knowing “what’s going to happen or when” (29).
This mystery o f not knowing “what’s going to happen or when” is what keeps Pudge
and the reader walking together into the unfolding plot o f Alaska. The process o f doing so
requires a willingness to persevere when confronted with contradictory details that prompt
intuitive leaps into one’s own experience. During the first World Religions class, Dr. Hyde
raises some o f the existential questions that will be the focus o f his lectures. One o f these

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questions, “What are the rules o f this game, and how might we best play it?” sparks Pudge’s
excited response: “The nature o f the labyrinth, I scribbled into m y spiral notebook, and the
way out o f it” (32 italics in original). This connection is based on intuitive, not concrete
evidence. This same open-ended existential question offers the reader a labyrs moment, an
opportunity to halt and reflect on its meaning for Pudge and herself.25 She may not choose, or
be able, to keep pace with the narrator when he notes:
The Old Man made me take religion seriously. I ’d never
been religious, but he told us that religion is important
whether or not we believed in one, in the same way that
historical events are important whether or not you
personally lived through them. (33 italics in original)
Religion is a taboo topic in the public domain and, therefore, rarely addressed so overtly.
Pudge’s observation about Hyde’s representation of religion counters the rigidity and
ambience o f political correctness that surround the stereotypical view o f this domain and
invites the curiosity o f the reader. She has the opportunity to retreat to the safety o f her inner
thoughts and experience to consider how religion relates to “before,” the “Great Perhaps,”
Alaska, or even self.
Pudge adds other details that keep the path into Alaska turning towards the
transformational event predicted by that significant word “before.” For the reader these twists
can be confusing. Many details may seem trivial or even irrelevant in “before” because she
cannot see their significance at this point in her journey. Just as a walker in a labyrinth finds
herself at times moving in a direction that seems to be taking her very close to the centre, but
then takes another step and finds herself moving away from the centre, so, too, the reader of
Alaska. The reader needs to trust that the entire path with all its twists is necessary to get her

251 am using the term labyrs that Lauren Artress introduced to identify the resting places within the labyrinth
and applying it to the reader’s process (See Figure 1).

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to the crisis at the novel’s mid-point that is the dividing line between “before” and “after.”
But puzzlement, even the discomfort of uncertainty, keeps the reader turning each page to
encounter whatever twist in plot awaits. The rivalry between the Weekday Warriors and
Alaska’s inner circle o f friends is one such twist. As the Colonel says, “there is only one time
when I put aside my passionate hatred for the Weekday Warriors and their country-club
bullshit,” and that is when he attends a Culver Creek basketball game (45). Within the
“before/after” structure, this comment prompts the reader to speculate how the Weekday
Warriors or a basketball game might be connected to a life changing moment. Furthermore,
whenever Pudge mentions the Weekday Warriors, he always adds some reference to
“pranking” (47). Perhaps a dramatic prank is the transformational event to which “before” is
leading. Such a possibility is the logical conclusion suggested when Pudge reports a disaster
that is inflicted upon Alaska. Storming through pounding rain, Alaska tells the Colonel and
Pudge:
The fuckers flooded my room. They ruined like a hundred
of my books! Goddamned pissant Weekday Warrior shit.
Colonel, they poked a hole in the gutter and connected a
plastic tube from the gutter down through my back window
into my room! The whole place is soaking wet. My copy o f
The General in His Labyrinth is absolutely ruined. (70-71)
To this announcement the Colonel replies, “Don’t worry dude, God will punish the wicked.
And before He does, we will” (71). Perhaps a prank is the “before” to which Pudge’s
narration is leading. The juxtaposition of this Weekday Warrior “prank” and the “absolutely
ruined” copy o f The General in His Labyrinth, however, metaphorically projects both
superficiality and depth. Uncertainty, as well as the resulting tension it elicits, mounts.
Then, yet another possibility surfaces. “Sixty-seven days before” Takumi takes
Pudge aside to inform him about Alaska’s betrayal o f her ex-roommate, Marya. According to

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Takumi, Alaska was in the process o f leaving campus without formal permission and was
caught by the Eagle. She chose to rat on her friend because she was “afraid o f getting
expelled” and her co-planner of pranks, the Colonel, does not know about her defection (74).
Takumi goes on to say to Pudge:
I don’t know what kind o f prank Alaska and the Colonel are
going to come up with to end this, but I’m sure w e’ll both
be involved. I’m telling you all this so you can know what
you’re getting into. (74)
Perhaps “before” involves Alaska, Pudge, Takumi and/or the Colonel being expelled from
Culver Creek. The reader’s uncertainty about where, or to what, “before” is leading is now
enmeshed in possibilities. Is “before” leading to a dramatic prank, or to someone’s expulsion
from Culver Creek, or to Alaska’s betrayal o f her friends?
Pudge adds to the confusing twists in his narration when he returns to his growing
romantic feelings for Alaska. Awaking to find Alaska sitting on his bed with her butt against
his hip Pudge decides to accept her invitation to stay at school over Thanksgiving and keep
her company. The Colonel warns Pudge: “If you’re staying here in hopes o f making out with
Alaska, I sure wish you wouldn’t. If you unmoor her from the rock that is Jake [her
boyfriend], God have mercy on us all. That would be some drama indeed” (78). The
Colonel’s statement offers another possibility for the direction the path into “before” is
taking. Perhaps the life-changing event is the evolution o f the relationship between Pudge
and Alaska. Maybe “before” reveals the transition o f this relationship from one o f friendship
to one that is sexual, and “after” reveals the possible effects o f such an alliance. Culver
Creek’s expellable offences include “genital contact,” along with alcohol consumption and
drug use (23). Pregnancy is another possible consequence o f such an act. As Pudge lies
beside Alaska under the stars, drinking strawberry wine, realizing he loves her, he steels

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him self to say those “Three Little Words” (82). Alaska takes him in a completely different
direction, however, returning to the subject o f Bolivar’s labyrinth and connecting it to
suffering: “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.. .[it’s] suffering. Doing wrong and having
wrong things happen to you” (82). Our narrator is certainly reinforcing the uncertainty
surrounding “before.” The reason for Alaska’s preoccupation with the labyrinth o f suffering
is a mystery; the reader cannot help but wonder why Bolivar’s labyrinth and suffering keep
appearing in the midst o f casual flirting, hints of expulsion and betrayal, and visions o f grand
pranks.
As Pudge relates all o f the confusing details in his life at Culver Creek school to the
reader, he continues to weave together concrete facts and his private responses to them. What
meaning is to be made of this strange melange is a mystery that keeps the reader turning
pages. In the process o f doing so, the reader becomes more attached to Pudge and the new
friends he is making. After his surprise invitation to Thanksgiving dinner at the Colonel’s
home, Pudge, too, feels more secure in his new relationships. Both Pudge and the reader are
jolted back to uncertainty, however, when Alaska admits that she told the Colonel about her
betrayal of Marya. According to Alaska, the Colonel did not take this news well:
He said he’d never let me out of his sight during pranks.
That he couldn’t trust me on my own. And I don’t blame
him. I don’t even trust me. (95)
This revelation is puzzling and hints that there is something about this girl that has not yet
been revealed. Despite being extremely upset, however, Alaska artfully dodges Pudge’s
enquiry for the truth about why she betrayed Marya. The reader cannot help but wonder what
Alaska is avoiding. Pudge and the reader meet at the same spot on the path into the labyrinth

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when the narrator observes: “I didn’t even know what [Alaska] was talking about anymore”
(96). Mystery continues to dominate “before.”
After Christmas break, “eight days before,” Alaska enters Pudge and the Colonel’s
room with news (97). She wants a “pre-prank” to “lull the administration into a false sense of
security” and divert their attention from the grand prank she has in mind (98). “Three days
before,” Pudge learns the details o f the prank that Alaska and the Colonel have cleverly
plotted. According to the Colonel, this prank will “prove once and for all that we are to
pranking what the Weekday Warriors are to sucking” (102). Since this risky prank includes
hacking into the staff computer network to alter the progress reports of the Weekday
Warriors responsible for Pudge’s near drowning in orientation and Alaska’s ruined book
collection, Pudge concludes: “We are definitely going to get expelled” (103). Yet Pudge
notes, the “Great Perhaps” may be the real prize. Together with Takumi, Lara, Alaska, and
the Colonel, Pudge enters wholeheartedly into this adventure. Still, he has second thoughts
when he learns that Alaska has failed to “follow the plan” and altered the progress reports of
all the Weekday Warriors (108). Alaska, however, is not at all worried, insisting, “I’ll take
the fall” (110). Given Alaska’s track record in that department, the Colonel responds
sarcastically, “like you took the fall for Paul and Marya” (110). Takumi is more confident
and assures the Colonel that the administration will not learn the source o f this prank, but
should that unfold, “I’ll take the fall with Alaska” (110). The centre represented by “before”
seems very close.
“Two days before,” the path into the centre o f “before” shifts dramatically. On the
evening following the execution o f the grand prank, Alaska, Pudge, the Colonel, Takumi, and
Lara are camping and Alaska suggests playing a drinking game, called “Best Day/Worst

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Day” (114). The rules o f this game require each player to share a “Best Day” and “Worst
Day” story. When Alaska tells the story o f her “Worst Day,” which takes place the day
“after” her “Best Day,” she relates that her mother died o f a brain aneurysm because she
failed to pick up the telephone and dial 911. Pudge is shocked. This public confession strikes
Pudge dumb because “he was too surprised and uncomfortable to talk” (119). Privately
Pudge concludes:
It was the central moment of Alaska’s life. When she cried
and told me that she fucked everything up, I knew what she
meant now. And when she said she failed everyone, I knew
whom she meant. It was the everyone and everything of her
life, and so I could not help but imagine it: I imagined a
scrawny eight-year old with dirty fingers, looking down at
her mother convulsing. So she sat down with her dead-or
maybe-not mother, who I imagine was not breathing by then
but wasn’t yet cold either. And in the time between dying
and death, a little Alaska sat with her mother in silence. And
then through the silence and my drunkenness, I caught a
glimpse of her as she might have been. She must have come
to feel so powerless, I thought, that the one thing she might
have done - pick up the phone and call an ambulance never
even occurred to her. (120)
The reader is right with Pudge at this point. Every reader has experienced a situation in
which words seem inadequate and from which, therefore, she withdraws. Imagination offers
a way to enter into what cannot be grasped tangibly. Pudge’s imagined portrait o f Alaska’s
private reality leaves room for the reader to broaden her own view of this complex character
and to imagine how Alaska might be connected to the transformational “before.”
In the final pages o f “before,” the space between the narrator and the reader on the
path widens. On the “day before,” Pudge admits, “I should have done extraordinary things. I
should have sucked the marrow out o f life” (124). The reader halts in order to prepare for
whatever dramatic event may be around the next turn. The last day, however, life seems to

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return to normal. Pudge and the Colonel begin their school day in the usual way. After school
Pudge gets together with Lara, the girl Alaska has chosen to be his girlfriend. This time
together captures the awkwardness and humour o f attempted intimacy. Just as the reader
begins to relax, the direction o f “the last day” shifts (125). Pudge and the Colonel join Alaska
to celebrate the success o f their pranking efforts. As he watches Pudge and the drunken
Alaska “hook up,” the Colonel observes, “that wretched beast, drama, draws nigh” and he
concludes : “This is going to end poorly” (130,131). The reader is on the edge o f her seat, but
Pudge pays no attention to the hints his friend gives him. Not even when Alaska comes
sobbing to Pudge’s room later that same night does the sober Pudge give any thought to what
her crying means or attempt to find out why she suddenly needs to drive off campus. Instead,
Pudge and the Colonel help a desperate Alaska get into her car and drive away from school,
despite the fact that she is highly intoxicated. This event seals the reader’s immersion in the
unfolding drama. Pudge reports that he and the Colonel return to their room and “sleep like
babies” (133). Just before doing so, Pudge shares his private thoughts that foreshadow
approaching disaster:
We did not say: D o n ’t drive. You ’re drunk, We did not say:
We aren 't letting you in that car when you are upset', We
did not say: We insist on going with you; W e did not say:
This can wait until tomorrow: Anything - everything - can
wait. (132 italics in original)
Pudge does not tell the reader exactly what will happen but his words both push her into the
discomfort o f not knowing with certainty, and repel her from turning the page.
What follows is one blank page (134). The reader is in the centre o f “before,” an
empty space free o f words, but, metaphorically, she is fully in the world o f Alaska. There is
nothing concrete to grasp or to explain what has happened, but the lack o f anything tangible

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underscores the authenticity of this imaginary space. All that is required in the centre o f a
labyrinth is for the walker to turn around and walk back through the turns o f the path that has
led to this interior place in the experience. All that is required in the centre o f Alaska is to
turn the page and take the first step out into what lies ahead. What appears on the next page is
one word, “after” (135). This simple word signals profound change in the lives o f the
characters. For the reader, the inner terrain is the focus o f “after.” From this point on the
reader is completely immersed in Pudge’s world. This inference is supported by Green’s
choice o f chapter headings. The reader’s “after” journey is framed by chronos time, as was
“before,” but the numbers are in reverse order. “Before” began “one hundred thirty-six days
before” while “after” begins “the day after” (137). In addition, the reader’s “after” journey
takes place in kairos time, which is circular and indeterminate, having no definite end point.
Just as a walker in the labyrinth takes the same circuitous route out of the centre and into the
world left behind, so does the reader o f Alaska. Paradoxically, this path looks very different
when navigated from the inside to the outside. Both Pudge and the reader discover this truth
in the process of navigating “after.”
“The day after,” Pudge awakes to the sound of “three quick knocks” (137). When he
opens the door to his room and sees the Eagle standing there, Pudge is sure that he is about to
be expelled because o f the progress report prank. Next, Pudge considers possibilities for the
emergency meeting to which he and his fellow students have been called. Despite the Eagle’s
announcement that his friend Alaska has died in a tragic car accident, despite his knowledge
that “you don’t let someone drive drunk,” and despite the visible evidence o f distress Pudge
sees in his fellow students, he insists “[Alaska] had not died at all” (140). Pudge is clinging
to the world o f “before,” resisting the reality o f this tragedy and the suffering which

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surrounds it. Just as Alaska in “before” chose a maze path into her suffering, Pudge, in
“after,” takes a winding path that appears to be like that o f a maze. Pudge’s path, however, is,
in fact, taking him deeper into his suffering. The reader travels this path with Pudge because
all of us have experienced some kind o f loss - if not the death o f someone close, then the
death o f a dream or something vital to us. When Pudge telephones his parents to tell them
about the death o f his friend and they ask him if he wants to return home, Pudge answers
honestly : “No, I want to be here.. ..I can’t believe it” (144). The ambivalence Pudge admits
comes from deep within himself. He confesses his private feelings: “I felt paralysed into
silence” he tells us, yet wonders why he is so terrified (144). Pudge reports all that he hears
and sees but adds details that are invisible to anyone except the reader. As a result, the reader
experiences the depth o f the pain surrounding loss, a depth which is rarely, except between
the covers o f a book, unveiled so poignantly.
The line between the reader and Pudge is less pronounced in “after.” If Pudge and the
reader were companions on the journey out o f the centre o f a labyrinth, they are now walking
very closely together. Pudge is brutally honest about his experience of this loss, but at first
only with the reader. “Two days after,” Lara asks Pudge if he saw Alaska on that last night,
and he replies: “She got drunk. The Colonel and I went to sleep, and I guess she drove off
campus” (143). To the reader he adds privately that this is a lie. The guilt surrounding his
participation in Alaska’s accident isolates Pudge from everyone except his companion on this
journey o f suffering, the reader. In the privacy o f reading, aided by imagination and personal
lived experience, the reader is able to bridge the distance guilt imposes and connect with
Pudge. Some of what Pudge shares with the reader is very personal and rarely expressed in
public because such information is relegated to the private domain. The nature o f the

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growing relationship between Pudge and the reader is shifting from one o f companionship to
one o f intimacy. Pudge’s first person narration allows the reader an honest view o f his inner
experience o f the unfolding events surrounding death and loss, a view rarely encountered in
life.
When the Colonel learns that Alaska’s aunt is coming to pick up her personal
belongings he begs Pudge to help him. Entering Alaska’s room to help the Colonel find
anything that her family might not want to find there, things like condoms, bottles o f liquor,
sex toys or “God knows what,” Pudge recognizes her smell (154). Suddenly, he confesses,
“[Alaska] flooded into my present, and only tact kept me from burying my face in the dirty
laundry overfilling the hamper” (153). Pudge is at this moment in kairos time - his past and
present are intimately connected. The linear, ordered representation of past and present has
no room for Pudge’s suffering. Pudge risks telling the Colonel that this experience o f sorting
through Alaska’s personal belongings “is unbearable” but he delivers this message “matterof-factly” (154). These contradictory descriptors polarize feeling and thinking and mirror the
approach to the reading experience in classrooms. Logical analysis and response is the choice
in the public realm, while feeling is relegated to the private territory. This division fails to
acknowledge the two world views represented by the labyrinth. The topology o f the labyrinth
weaves square and circle together, acknowledging that both are present. The reader o f Alaska
recognizes this interconnection o f feeling and thinking and this recognition helps to deepen
her connection to Pudge.
The contradictions between what is unfolding in the external world and Pudge’s
internal responses provide many opportunities for the reader to connect intimately with the
grieving narrator. Our narrator is struggling with integrating his memories o f Alaska that are

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now, according to the chronos time model, in the past. Nonetheless, the past is present in his
current reality and he clings to these memories out o f fear o f losing them. Pudge harbours his
memory o f discovering Alaska’s secret hiding place for her alcohol because “sharing the
memory might lead to its dissipation” (155). In kairos time there is room for both past and
present because such time is circular, with no definite end or beginning. G rief is a process.
Slowly, Pudge navigates the twists and turns such a process imposes. Our narrator asks
him self uncomfortable questions about his part in Alaska’s death: “If I had cared about her as
I should have, as I thought I did, how could I have let her go?” (159). The Colonel holds tight
to rational analysis, insisting on figuring out exactly what happened to Alaska and why, but
Pudge admits, “I don’t know. I don’t really want to know” (161). Pudge especially does not
want to know who telephoned Alaska on the last night o f her life. Privately he confesses: “I
had wondered who called, and why, and what made her so upset. But I’d rather wonder than
get answers I couldn’t live with” (160). Uncertainty is Pudge’s choice because he is afraid of
what he might find out.
Pudge’s disclosure about his fear o f discovering the truth has strong metaphorical
connections to the reader and the visceral element o f reading. The reader is fully in this
experience with Pudge, wanting to know what happens, yet unsure how it will end. There is
the possibility that Alaska will end with something she would rather not “live with” (160).
Uncertainty is hard to face. Not surprisingly, Pudge is tempted to escape his new reality,
which is filled with inconsistency and has no simple answers. He confesses:
I imagined just going back home, ditching the Great Perhaps
for the old comforts o f school friends. Whatever their faults,
I’d never known my school friends in Florida to die on me.
(165)

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The “Great Perhaps” has reappeared but Pudge seems unwilling to acknowledge its presence
here in the midst o f loss. The reader’s sense o f the “Great Perhaps,” however, has matured.
She now recognizes that intimate relationship comes with risk. Pudge resists confronting this
reality and considers withdrawing from this situation. Some first-time walkers on the path out
o f the centre o f the labyrinth have reported the same response to their experience. These
walkers entered this ancient symbol with great hopes for the insights it would provide, yet
uncertain o f what this wisdom might be. On reaching the centre, however, they realize that
nothing great or inspiring has been reached, and the inclination to abandon the process and
walk directly out is very tempting. This same disillusionment may entice some readers who,
like Alaska, want a “straight and fa st” exit from the labyrinth (155 italics in original). Still,
the “Great Perhaps” is on the path into “after” just as it was on the path into “before.”
Pudge acknowledges the “aura of mystery” surrounding Alaska, and the reader
extends that to the “Great Perhaps” (168). The path leading to the “Great Perhaps” is not
simple or linear but rather complex, winding circuitously. Reaching the “Great Perhaps” is a
process, not an end in itself. The Colonel refuses to accept this emerging actuality and
claims: “There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough” (168, italics in
original). Pudge claims he does not want to know what happened to Alaska on the last night
o f her life. The Colonel wants certainty, while Pudge holds onto what his friend judges to be
“fantasy,” a secret love affair with Alaska (170). Both are equally limited perspectives. In life
there is much that is unpredictable, elusive, and inexplicable. Avoiding the discomfort
inherent in facing the truth about life’s unfairness and uncertainty, or insisting there must be
some logical reason for what has happened, inevitably leads to road blocks. Indeed, some
questions eventually prove difficult, even impossible, to answer.

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Pudge encounters this difficulty “twenty days after,” when the Colonel tells him that
he is going to call Jake, Alaska’s boyfriend, to find out what, if anything, happened that
might have upset Alaska during their telephone call on that life-changing night. When Pudge
insists, “/ don’t want to know about them. I already know what she told me, and that’s all I
need to know,” the Colonel challenges him (170 italics in original). The Colonel asks: “If
she loved you so much, why did she leave you that night? And if you loved her so much,
why’d you help her go? I was drunk. W hat’s your excuse?” (171). Pudge avoids the pain
these questions unleash by becoming angry at the Colonel, at himself, and, finally, at Alaska:
“I wanted to be to be the last one she loved. And I knew I wasn’t. I knew it, and I hated her
for it. I hated her for not caring about me. I hated her for leaving that night” (171). Within
minutes, however, Pudge returns to the idealized picture o f Alaska he created in “before” and
acknowledges that she “had embodied the Great Perhaps” (172). Then, once more, he turns
abruptly back into the painful reality of his “after” :
Now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps. I could
call everything the Colonel said and did “fine.” I could try
to pretend that I didn’t care anymore, but it could never be
true again. You can’t just make yourself matter and then die,
Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I’m
sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me
Perhapless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. (172)
The labyrinth o f suffering has reappeared, and Pudge chooses to enter it in what appears to
be the same way as Alaska did in “before,” with questions. Pudge’s questions, however, are
not “either/or” in character but more open-ended. Pudge recognizes that he “never knew”
Alaska (173). In order to grieve his loss, he realizes, he must discover who this girl really
was. As he admits, “Before I could begin the shameful process o f forgetting the how and why

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o f her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What." (173, italics in
original).
Immediately following this confession, Pudge encounters a Sufi story that asks the
question “Do you know how you’re going to die?” (173). This question shifts the direction of
the path into “after.” The reader has the opportunity to halt and reflect on the implication
within this question. How much can we know at a conscious level about death and dying?
The Sufi story concludes that the kind of knowing that can access the mystery o f death is
“spiritual” (173). Later that same day, Pudge has a conversation with Takumi at
“Mclnedible” that metaphorically represents Pudge’s struggle with the conflict between his
external existence and his internal, guilt-ridden experience. Pudge’s encounter with Takumi
underscores the labyrinth o f suffering in which he finds himself. After Takumi shares how
much he misses Alaska, Pudge tells him that he misses her, too. Privately he adds:
Sorry I haven’t talked to you because you couldn ’t know the
truth about the Colonel and me, and I hated being around
you and having to pretend that my g rief is this
uncomplicated thing. (175 italics in original)
Pudge’s admission that his inner and outer realities do not match is an invitation to the reader
to join him in his labyrinth o f suffering. Who has not experienced incongruity between outer
and inner realities? The path into Alaska continues to weave inner and outer, “before” and
“after,” elements together.
“Twenty-seven days after,” Pudge is playing a video game with the Colonel when he
resurrects a memory o f Alaska from “before” (175). As Pudge describes it,
I nearly elbowed the Colonel in the face, swinging my arms
wildly as if contorting my body in the right ways mattered
as much as pressing the right buttons at the right moments the same video-game playing delusion that had always
gripped Alaska. (176)

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At the same moment, the Colonel brings Pudge’s attention to their present, “after” reality.
Alaska, their “booze connection,” is “POOF. Gone” (176). Since the Colonel is attempting to
recreate the details o f Alaska’s last night and determine if her accident was indeed suicide, he
needs alcohol to drink. Takumi approaches the Colonel and Pudge insisting that he be
included in whatever “secret shit” they are planning because Alaska was his friend too (177).
The Colonel assures him, “Tomorrow. Honestly” (177). Pudge, however, resists inviting
Takumi into their private hell o f guilt. The fear o f expulsion that appeared in “before” then
makes a return visit when the Eagle knocks on the door o f Pudge’s dorm room while his
roommate is consuming the forbidden alcohol. Pudge quickly lights a cigarette to draw the
Eagle’s attention away from the Colonel. The Eagle reminds Pudge about “living within the
confines of the rules lest he risk his place on this campus” (181). In doing so, the Eagle
reintroduces the possibility o f expulsion and appears to be reclaiming his “before” persona as
the teacher most likely to “bust you” (16). Still, the Eagle departs after asking the Colonel if
there is anything he can do to help him and even suggests that the boys keep their light on
until they are ready to go to sleep. The Colonel returns to his drinking and together he and
Pudge conclude that it is unlikely that Alaska committed suicide, but “maybe she fell asleep”
(182). The uncertainty surrounding Alaska’s death remains. “Twenty-eight days after,”
Pudge enters his dorm room to find the Colonel telling Takumi what happened on Alaska’s
last night. Takumi’s response is a question, “so you think it was suicide?” (183), to which the
answer is “maybe” (183).
“Maybe” becomes a familiar companion on the journey into the reality of Alaska’s
death, but this uncertainty gradually becomes more bearable. After hearing the Colonel
pronounce that there has to be something that they are not seeing that will help them solve

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this mystery, Takumi humourously observes: “So we just have to read the mind o f a dead
person” (189). “Forty-six days after,” Takumi, according to Pudge, pulls “the ultimate guilt
trip” by calling attention to Pudge’s neglect of Lara (191). A surprising thing happens after
Pudge risks telling Lara “I’m sorry” (192). In his experience with Lara “before,” Pudge could
find nothing significant to talk about. “After,” however, they talk meaningfully and honestly
about Alaska, and their feelings about her loss. Together, Pudge, the Colonel, Takumi, and
Lara search for the meaning o f Alaska’s impulsive drive away from school. They agree that
they want to know what exactly happened to Alaska but also wonder, “how the hell are
[they] going to find out?” (194).
“Fifty-one days after,” with the investigation “stalled,” Pudge turns back to the
routine of life at school (195). In World Religions class, Pudge realizes that his life is
evidence o f the truth within the Buddha’s claim that “everything falls apart” (196). Alaska
“was slipping away, falling apart in [his] memory and everyone else’s, dying again” (196).
“Sixty-nine days after,” Pudge concludes, despite “the hint of resurrection” in the maple trees
on campus, that “we had finally lost [Alaska]” (199). This seems more than clear when, later
that day, the Eagle announces that “the school was going to build a playground by the lake in
memory of Alaska” (199). This seemingly inappropriate choice o f monuments proves to be
the impetus that motivates Alaska’s close circle o f friends to find something that would better
represent their dead friend. Their choice is a prank which consists of “Subverting the
Patriarchal Paradigm” (199). Alaska, herself, had planned this prank, which she had hoped to
carry out during her senior year. According to Pudge, the Alaska Young Memorial Prank is:
The crown jewel of pranks, the Mona Lisa of high-school
hilarity, the culmination o f generations o f Culver Creek
pranking. And if the Colonel could pull it off, it would be
etched in the memory o f everyone at the Creek and Alaska

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deserved nothing less. Best o f all, it did not technically
involve any expellable offenses. (200)
This prank brings together many elements from “before.” In “before,” Pudge compared
Alaska, or the Alaska he idealized, to the Mona Lisa; he spent time with Alaska helping to
prepare for their Weekday Warrior industrial-strength blue hair dye prank; and he lived in
constant fear o f being expelled. This prank has the potential to bridge “before” and “after.”
According to Pudge, the Colonel returns from spring break with plans for the
execution o f this “crown jewel of pranks” and “an excitement I hadn’t seen in him since
Before” (200). He notes that “the prank could not work without the assistance o f the
Weekday Warriors” (202). Longwell Chase, a Weekday Warrior and victim o f the industrialstrength blue hair dye prank in “before,” joins Pudge to tell the Eagle about the speaker they
have chosen to represent the junior class at the annual Speaker Day event. Unbeknownst to
the Eagle, this speaker is, in fact, a male stripper. “To ensure” that no one in the junior class
“would get expelled,” Takumi and Pudge collect five dollars from each student (204). Still,
Pudge realizes that “everything would fall apart” if anyone told the Eagle (204). “One
hundred two days after,” however, Maxx, “a male stripper with more aliases than a covert
CIA agent,” successfully arrives at Speaker Day disguised as “Dr. William Morse, a
professor who studies adolescent sexuality” (203). In the middle o f Dr. M orse’s speech on
the tendency o f boys to objectify girls’ bodies, Lara stands and interrupts Dr. Morse :
“You’re so hot! I weesh you’d shut up and take o ff your clothes” (208). Maxx obliges,
shouting loud enough for Takumi, who is in charge o f the music, to hear him: “This one’s for
Alaska Young” (208). The Eagle “[is] up in a flash” and, “not smiling, but sucking his lips in
as if not smiling [requires] effort,” indicates with his thumb that Maxx should leave (209).

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The prank is “Alaska’s prank through and through,” and her four friends are, at day’s end,
“aglow in the success o f it” (209). Alaska, they believe, has been suitably put to rest.
A week and a half later, “one hundred fourteen days after,” Pudge, the Colonel, and
Takumi suddenly make a connection that seems central to Alaska’s death. Takumi asks
Pudge: “January 10. That date ring a bell?” and Pudge replies, “Yeah, it’s the day Alaska
died” (210). Takumi then reminds Pudge that January 9 was Alaska’s “best day,” the day her
mother took her to the zoo,” and Pudge exclaims “Holy shit” (210). Still, connecting the date
o f Alaska’s death to the date on which her mother died does nothing to solve the mystery of
why Alaska drove into the police car. Pudge reports that it does allow them to admit failure
and give up the search for the meaning o f Alaska’s death. There is just one more thing they
choose to do. Together, Pudge and the Colonel drive through “the accident scene” (212).
“After” they have made it through this traumatic scene Pudge relates, “ PO O F we are
through the moment o f her death” (213). “P o o f’ is an ironic statement because their suffering
has been the twisting pattern o f process, not the sudden passage suggested by the word
“poof.” Pudge and the Colonel take the next exit off the freeway and pull off to the side o f
the road. Hugging his friend closely, Pudge confesses: “God we must look so lame, but it
doesn’t much matter when you have just now realized, all the time later, that you are still
alive” (214 italics in original). Pudge’s comments echo those he made early in “before” when
he painted the picture o f himself as a “geek” with a “minor life” (1). There is a significant
change here, now, with the Colonel. Journeying into the labyrinth of suffering caused by
Alaska’s death has led Pudge to deep connection with another human being.
The reader, too, feels a sense o f connection to Pudge and his friends and begins to
slow her pace realizing that there are not many more turns until the end o f this experience.

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Pudge and the Colonel return to their school work, and their room becomes “Study Central
with Takumi and Lara over till all hours” (214). “One hundred and thirty-six days after,”
Pudge notes that there are just twenty-four hours left in his semester. He has completed his
precalculus exam without Alaska’s assistance, and is optimistic about the results. The
Alabama heat has returned, and Pudge’s parents will arrive the next day to help him pack and
return to Florida. Pudge has only one more thing to accomplish and that is to complete his
final for the World Religions class. When he opens the door to his dorm room, he discovers
a note from Takumi in which his friend confesses that he, too, let Alaska go on that fateful
night one hundred and thirty-six days ago. This confession helps Pudge write his way “out of
the labyrinth” (219). Pudge has returned to the mouth o f his labyrinth and is able to turn
around and look back at the path that has led him into, and out of, pain. He admits: “I still
believe in the Great Perhaps, and I can believe in it in spite of having lost [Alaska]” (219).
Pudge feels more connected to himself, his circle o f friends, and Alaska after his journey into
the mystery o f suffering. His winding journey has given him a new understanding o f self and
o f life.
The reader, too, has new eyes, standing with Pudge back at the point where the
journey with him began. Just as the unicursal pattern o f a labyrinth is difficult for a walker to
recognize from within the symbol, so, too, is the structure of Alaska difficult to fully
comprehend from within the novel. Once a walker navigates into and out o f a labyrinth,
however, and turns around to look back into the symbol, the unicursal shape is much clearer.
The process o f reading Alaska, then standing outside to ponder the implications o f the
“before” and “after” framework and the indeterminate details that now have deeper meaning,
transforms the reader’s view o f this novel. Now there is room to see Pudge as the mythical

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Greek hero Theseus, who uses a magic ball of thread to track his journey into the centre o f
the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur, and then uses this same thread to find his way back out. 26
In the original Greek myth, the Goddess Ariadne discovers that the only way to navigate the
labyrinth is by taking the same path into and out o f it; to ensure Theseus can escape the
labyrinth, Ariadne gives him the thread to mark his way. For Pudge and the reader, Alaska is
the thread into and out of the narrative. This thread is more visible to the reader when she
looks back into her reading experience: she now appreciates that every twist and turn
contributes to the meaning o f the whole, and that this meaning is open to her interpretation.
She finds herself drawn back to “before,” the “Great Perhaps,” and her companion on this
reading journey, Pudge.
The reader may notice that “before” and “after” begin and end with “one hundred
thirty-six” days, implying that the “before” and “after” paths are the same (3, 16). Yet the
reader views the indeterminate word “before” with new eyes. Now this term more clearly
conveys transformation, a profound dividing line in Pudge’s life that marks who he was
“before” Alaska’s death, and who he is “after” this event. The simple word “before” now
connects more obviously to the life and death o f Jesus Christ. This prophet is, according to
Christian scholars, an agent o f transformation with deep connections to the spiritual life.
Thus, “before” indeterminately introduces the transformational and spiritual essence o f the
story that is to follow. With “after” eyes, the reader sees Pudge, and his pursuit o f “The Great
Perhaps,” quite differently.

26 Knossos on the island o f Crete is the legendary location o f the labyrinth in which King Minos imprisoned the
Minotaur - half bull, half man. Such early labyrinths as the one in the Greek myth are not puzzle mazes. The
Minotaur was at the centre o f a single circuitous pathway, a fact that the Goddess Ariadne learned from the
Knossos labyrinth creator Daedalus.

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When Pudge first introduces the “Great Perhaps” as the last words o f Francois
Rabelais he insists: “That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking
a Great Perhaps” (5). Ironically someone does die in order for our narrator to find his “Great
Perhaps.” Indeed, in the pursuit o f this goal both Pudge and the reader’s view o f the “Great
Perhaps” has been transformed. No longer is this a journey toward a simple end but rather
one that weaves together the many uncertain, complex aspects o f being human and the
intangible rewards o f navigating life’s beauties. Reconsidering apparently trivial details,
more irony surfaces for the reader. At the beginning, as Pudge stands in the dribbling shower,
he wonders “whether I had made a grand miscalculation” (5). The reader now knows that this
statement is an understatement. The metaphor of the labyrinth o f suffering, introduced by
Alaska and by Pudge’s fascination with dying words, takes on deeper meaning with “after”
eyes. Within the first pages o f Alaska Pudge makes reference to several dead people - Jesus
Christ, Francois Rabelais, John F. Kennedy, James Joyce, Humphrey Bogart, and Henrik
Ibsen. Then Alaska introduces another person long dead - Simon Bolivar. From a “before”
perspective, their dying words or actions seem to suggest that such words will capture the
essence o f these significant people. “After,” quite the opposite is true. Dying words, the
“Great Perhaps,” and the “labyrinth of suffering” are now infused with uncertainty and
contradiction. Pudge’s references to great works o f literature such as Ethan Frome, Edith
Wharton’s 1911 fictional account o f the ironic twists of fate in the life o f its narrator,
reinforce this picture o f ambiguity and unpredictability. With every turn o f the page the
reader sees more signs o f the depth of meaning to be found within seemingly ordinary
details.

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Significantly, the reader also has a very different view of Alaska with her “after”
experience. The reader cannot help but recognize the many subtle indicators o f Alaska’s pain
and life’s fragility. Alaska’s broken spirit is not tangible but, with “after” eyes, is more
visible. When Alaska tells Pudge, “There are people with real problems. I’ve got real
problems,” the reader recognizes the truth hidden within this statement (27). And when
Alaska replies to Pudge’s question about her mother smoking with “Not anymore,” the reader
now knows this is an honest response. Alaska’s reading choices also now have broader
implications and help the reader make deeper connections with this central character. Gabriel
Garcia Marquez’s The General in his Labyrinth reveals that Bolivar never recovered from
the death of his wife. Indeed, her death proved to be the “before” and “after” event o f his life,
just as the death o f Alaska’s mother became the dividing line in her life. Referring to Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick, Alaska tells the Colonel, “I like that book” (59). The Colonel
responds to Alaska’s declaration with the observation, “You would. Big white whale is a
metaphor for everything. You live for pretentious metaphors” (59). With “after” vision the
reader recognizes the depth in the Colonel’s observation. Metaphor is multi-faceted and
complex and implies there is much below the surface o f what is being described. There are
many levels to Moby Dick'yasX as there are to Alaska. In addition, both Moby Dick and The
General in his Labyrinth are texts that subvert linearity and embrace the symbolic dimension
of life in a way that requires both intellectual and imaginative, intuitive capacities to fully
experience. The lines o f poetry Alaska shares with Pudge similarly offer the reader myriad
implications for understanding this young woman. For example, Alaska summarizes the lines
o f Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening” with, “It says so much about love and
brokenness” (85). The reader now realizes Alaska says this in light of her own experience

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with these two realities o f life. When Alaska quotes Edna St. Vincent M illay’s poem “Night
falls fast. Today is in the past,” and tells Pudge, “It’s about depression, dumb-ass,” the reader
now sees this seemingly funny comment as self-revelatory black humour (89). Indeed, the
reader recognizes that there is much more to this character, and this novel, than what appears
on the surface o f its pages.
The process o f reading this narrative makes the reader mindful o f details that on first
glance seem merely superficial, but in fact encode deep truth. With an “after” view, the
reader is more likely to consider Alaska as a twenty-first-century version o f the Christ
myth.27 Alaska is a Christ figure and her death brings her disciples, Pudge, the Colonel,
Takumi, and Lara together in a way that leads to their resurrection. “After” Alaska’s death
Pudge, the Colonel and Alaska’s other inner circle review the time they spent with her in the
days preceding her death and attempt to make sense of their loss. Like Christ’s disciple Peter,
who betrayed Christ, Pudge needs to assuage his guilt. After “one hundred thirty-six days” of
navigating his labyrinth o f suffering caused by Alaska’s death Pudge realizes: “I know now
that [Alaska] forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I
know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her” (219). Ultimately it is this knowledge
o f Alaska’s forgiveness, like the forgiveness o f Christ, that gives Pudge and his friends new
life. When viewed within the “before” and “after” structure o f Alaska this possible
connection to the Christ myth is strengthened. Alaska is also an agent o f transformation or
resurrection for the reader. She is not the same person that she was “before” this reading

271 am using the word myth in the sense that Pudge summarizes in Alaska: “Myth doesn’t mean a lie; it means a
traditional story that tells you something about people and their worldview and what they hold sacred” (33
italics in original). Myth encodes deep truth.

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experience. Her reading journey has transformed her view o f self and the world to which she
has returned. 28
Mystery is a central dynamic in the process of reading Alaska and walking a
labyrinth. Both offer unexpected twists and turns into an uncertain centre. On the path into
Alaska, like that into a labyrinth, one slowly releases the details o f one’s outer life and
becomes one with the characters in the story. The inner and outer worlds o f Pudge and the
reader draw together. When or how this happens is unclear, for the process is like that of
following a circuitous path into a labyrinth. Navigating Alaska and a labyrinth involve the
surrendering to spirit. Pudge concludes his account of the journey into his labyrinth with
words that capture not only the vital essence of the spirit in the imaginary character of
Alaska, but also in reading and life:
I believe now that we are greater than the sum o f our parts.
If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life
experiences and the relationships she had with people, and
then you take the size and shape o f her body, you do not get
her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her
greater than the sum of her knowable parts. (220)
As there is part o f Alaska “greater than the sum o f her knowable parts” so, too, there is more
to reading and life than rational, objective evidence reveals. There is the inner, mysterious,
and intangible dimension of reading and life - spirit.

28 My choice of the female pronoun throughout this document is deliberate. What I have been addressing in my
thesis is the intimate, personal quality o f the reading experience. Gender neutral language is more formal and
impersonal and does not capture the essence o f what I am arguing. Furthermore, my early reading encounter has
strongly influenced my view o f the reading act and I am female and see this experience through my eyes. In
addition, the spirit, according to ancient and eastern cultures, is viewed as divine feminine energy. The use o f
female language has allowed me, indeterminately, to acknowledge all of these elements.

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Conclusion: Before and After
The labyrinth captures the essence o f my experience researching and composing a
thesis about the visceral, elusive element o f reading - spirit. I find myself standing back at the
mouth o f this labyrinth with the opportunity to turn around and look back into the path I have
traveled and report what I now see. This journey began long ago with the book that I read
when I was ten years old. That book opened me to the reality that there is something more to
reading than the physical object held in my hands. The years I spent introducing works o f
fiction to youth confirmed my belief in the central role o f the spirit in the reading act. The
process o f researching the representation o f spirit in American adolescent fiction, confronting
the resistance this taboo subject elicits, and reporting what I have learned has strengthened
my argument for the acknowledgement of the spiritual component of reading. This same
process has given me new eyes to see a path to bridge the essential contribution o f mind and
spirit in reading. The labyrinth metaphor and Green’s Alaska have proved to be rich
resources providing me with a depth and richness that demonstrates the spirit at work.
Both the academe and education in our twenty-first-century world are shifting in their
resistance to the presence o f the spirit in the reading act but there remains a tendency to set
up compartments between and within ourselves when we delve into the spirit. The challenge
is to allow the “either/or” and “both/and,” the scientific rational and the mysterious intangible
approaches to inform and influence one another rather than to isolate them from each other.
Ammons judges the postmodern propensity to question everything to be in opposition to
hope and idealism (Ammons 2010). What if questions and hope are vitally connected? In
Alaska Dr. Hyde introduces the three religious traditions he will be teaching using questions.
In the final class of the year he summarizes the essence o f these same religious traditions:

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“Each brought a message o f radical hope” (215). We are closest to spirit when we are asking
questions. The search for meaning is a quest which, with faith, patience, and perseverance,
uncovers new possibilities. The Search Institute currently maintains that there are two
significant challenges to addressing the spirit in academic research fields. One is that spirit
has been conflated with religion. But what if spirit cannot be separated from other aspects of
our being and doing? Further, what if, as Dr. Hyde insists, “religion is important whether or
not we believed in one, in the same way that historical events are important whether or not
you personally lived through them?” (33 italics in original)). The second challenge to the
study of the spirit that the Search Institute highlights is the twenty-first-century world’s
insistence on a solid theoretical foundation for any academic pursuit. But what if the path to a
more solid foundation for study is to be found by entering fully into the discomfort that arises
when we loosen our rational, empirical boundaries? Dr. Hyde points out that “the Buddha
knew one thing science didn’t prove for millennia” (196). I suggest that rather than searching
for a “Straight and Fast” path into this terrain, we need to direct our attention to the twisting,
turning path that characterizes process and, in time, discover new meaning and connections.
Adolescent fiction, as Green’s Alaska reveals, is particularly suited to explore new
avenues into the spirit. Green loosens the boundaries that have restricted the spirit to the
private domain. His methods o f doing so include indeterminacy. Both spirit and religion in
Alaska are represented indeterminately with a focus on exploring the meaning and purpose of
life, struggling with life’s uncertainty and fragility, and seeking connections with self, others,
and the world. Green’s use o f such open-ended details depends on the participation o f the
reader inviting her reflective engagement to make meaning. The reader’s vital role in
meaning-making is further assisted by the questions that are shown to be intrinsic to religion,

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spirit, and life. In addition, the “Great Perhaps” and the “Labyrinth of Suffering,” two
metaphors that are indeterminately connected to death and dying, take us into the heart o f the
discomfort in the modem world elicited by matters that cannot be explained logically. What
Green succeeds in doing, however, is to give a new face to this suffering. Suffering becomes
a foundation on which the spirit can grow and develop without abandoning logic and
analysis. When Pudge asks the Colonel, “So how will we ever get out o f this labyrinth of
suffering?” he replies: “It still seems like straight and fast is the only way out - but I choose
the labyrinth. The labyrinth blows but I choose it” (216). As I stand back at the mouth o f my
study o f this novel, I support the Colonel’s choice. I see the possibilities for what can be
gained by entering the discomfort that surrounds the visceral. Perhaps suffering and
discomfort are, in fact, the place in which a new approach can arise. Perhaps also we could
approach the spirit within a comparative framework just as Green does with the three
religions taught in the World Religions class.
As I have argued in this thesis, metaphor is a vital component in the process of
bringing together the tensions inherent in our approach to the spiritual. With Alaska Young
and Dr. Hyde, Green brings the inner and outer aspects o f our being into productive tension.
His metaphorical portrait o f these two characters implies that the separation o f church and
state, and the contradictions between our inner and outer experience, are realities that exist
within each human being. Alaska attempts to navigate the inexplicable nature o f her mother’s
death by limiting herself to “either/or” thinking, denial, and coping mechanisms like flirting,
drinking, and smoking. What happens, however, is that her choices increase her suffering.
What Alaska mistakenly envisions is a life free from suffering, and all her efforts are directed
to this end. This same mistaken vision pervades our modem culture about matters that are

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currently thought to lack a solid theoretical, logical foundation. But as Dr. Hyde notes,
“Everybody who has ever lost their way in life has felt the nagging insistence of that question
[How will we ever get out o f this labyrinth o f suffering?]. At some point we all look up and
realize we are caught in a maze” (158). Instead of denying this reality, Dr. Hyde invites his
students and the reader o f Alaska to enter into it. He does this without overt directions.
Rather, using stories and questions, he offers his students a way to consider how the subject
o f their study might respond to the uncertainty and unfairness that exist in their lives. As
Hyde notes immediately following Alaska’s death:
Even when the material we study seems boring, we are
trying to understand how people have answered [Alaska’s]
question and the questions each o f you posed in your papers
- how different traditions have come to terms with what
Chip, in his final, called ‘people’s rotten lots in life.’ (158).
Hyde does not abandon critical thinking but finds a way to weave together the rational and
mysterious aspects o f navigating life. Again the participation o f his students and the reader is
key to achieving this connection.
Reading, as my thesis, personal, and professional experience demonstrate, has the
potential to be transformational. Green’s “before” and “after” structure for Alaska mirrors
this elusive aspect o f reading. There is so much more to these two simple words than first
meets the eye, as the winding plot of Alaska reveals. Green’s structure indeterminately
highlights the dynamic o f non-duality that is central to my argument about the reading act.
Both the inner, mysterious, intangible nature of time and the concrete, linear, rational aspect
o f it mirror the reading process. Alaska also portrays reading as a threshold between the
public and private realms or, to put it a different way, between our outer and inner
experience. That reading is a process that takes us deeply into the mystery at the center o f our

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own being and allows us to connect from there to the characters in the story is dramatically
portrayed by the blank page following the conclusion o f the “before” section o f Alaska.
However, making such a connection does not end with the closing of the cover o f the book.
Rather this connection informs and influences our feeling o f connection with fellow human
beings and may impact future decisions we make in our daily lives. The labyrinth metaphor
is especially crucial in calling our attention to this aspect o f reading. This symbol also
concretely mirrors the nature o f process that characterizes reading. Process twists and turns,
slowly unveiling new possibilities.
“Conclusion” is a word that implies a final destination has been reached, but such is
not the case for me when it comes to drawing my thesis research on the visceral dynamic o f
reading to a close. I set off on this journey like Pudge, who enrolled at Culver Creek in
search o f a “Great Perhaps.” The “Great Perhaps” first appeared to me back in my childhood
when I read that book that transformed my view o f m yself and the life I was living. What I
comprehend now that I am back at the point of my entry into the study o f this subject o f spirit
is that I, like Pudge, entered this endeavour hoping for a grand revelation. The process o f
navigating the realities o f the study o f something that eludes my rational left-brain education
has included much struggle. I now have a genuine appreciation for the labyrinth o f suffering
we need to walk in order to uncover what might be if we enter fully into the challenges o f
addressing the spirit in the public realm. Furthermore, like Pudge, whose attempts to discover
an explanation for Alaska’s death gave him enough “to rediscover the Great Perhaps,” I
acknowledge that my study has left me enough to rediscover my “Great Perhaps” and given
me hope for the future of reading. The boundaries surrounding spirit are indeed loosening,
and, with time, the process o f entering into this unknown and therefore uncomfortable

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territory will bridge the divide between the mysterious and theoretical aspects o f reading and
strengthen the scholarship directed to this vital field in the education of youth.

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Fig. 1 A Chartres Labyrinth29

Labyrs (resting place)

Centre

Mouth

29 This Chartres labyrinth pattern is drawn by Gary Dean in Autocad and used with permission.

99

Fig. 2 A Cretan Labyrinth30

J

L

J

n

r

n n

30 This Cretan labyrinth pattern is drawn by Gary Dean in Autocad and used with permission.

100

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Young Adult Fiction Titles
Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. New York: Razorbill, 2007.
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Zarr, Sara. Story o f a Girl. New York: Little, 2007.

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