“What is the best way to go about being a person?…What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”
This is the central question that Alaska Young and Miles Halter struggle with throughout the novel Looking for Alaska
What is the Labyrinth and how does it relate to the central question?
What is a Labyrinth? It is a maze or a complex system of paths or tunnels in which it is easy to get lost.
The first time we read about the labyrinth is when Alaska is quoting for Miles her favorite last words said by Simon Bolivar:
“He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line. The rest was darkness. “Damn it,” he sighed. “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!”
How does this quote explain what the Labyrinth is? Even Alaska teased Miles into thinking about it; “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying? Which is he trying to escape–the world or the end of it?…You figure out what the labyrinth is and how to get out of it.”
Even though Alaska challenges Miles to figure out what the labyrinth is, she eventually gives Miles the answer. She explains, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth”…”So what is it?”…”Suffering…doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolivar was talking about pain.”
So the labyrinth = suffering + doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you + pain
I also want to add that in Looking for Alaska the labyrinth has a double meaning. The labyrinth refers to the above and Alaska herself is also a metaphor for the labyrinth.
Let’s have a look at this quote: “I realized the importance of curves, of the thousand places where girls’ bodies ease from one place to another, from arc of the foot to ankle to calf, from calf to hip to waist to breast to neck to ski-slope nose to forhead to shoulder to the concave arch of the back to the butt to the etc. I’d noticed curves before, of course, but I had never quite apprehended their significance.” The different curves of Alaska’s body are like the different curves or angles you experience when walking through a labyrinth or maze.
It is through exploring the Labyrinth of Alaska that Miles eventually figures out how to escape the Labyrinth of suffering and pain leading him to answer the central question: “What is the best way to go about being a person?…What are the rules of this game, and how might we best play it?”
How do Miles and Alaska escape the labyrinth of suffering? According to them what is the best way to go about being a person? What rules do they abide by and how do they best play the game of life? This will be explored in my next post.
Share with me your thoughts by leaving a comment!
Previous related post: Looking for Alaska book review.
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First of all, I LOVE “Looking for Alaska”. It’s the best book ever.
I think that when Dr. Hyde says that at some point we all look up and realize we are in a maze portrays the fact that Miles wasn’t always viewing Alaska as a labyrinth: he was kind of viewing her as a paper girl (explained in John’s 3rd novel “Paper Towns”, which actually has nothing to do with “Alaska”, but I figured it was kind of similar). He sees an idea of a perfect girl and he decides to see Alaska as that, and then as the novel progresses, he slowly begins viewing Alaska as a labyrinth, as every person is, but Alaska in particular. But I still haven’t answered your question, so I will now.
The way to go about a person is…undecided. It’s kind of like the Great Perhaps (though that was talking about the Perhaps of death, not life). There is no set way to live, and no set way to escape the labyrinth. Alaska’s strategy was to escape the suffering by going straight and fast, by solving her problems quickly before she couldn’t anymore. Miles’s strategy changes throughout the novel: in the beginning, he ignores the labyrinth, he buries himself in the last words of “the already dead”, until he realized that wasn’t the way he wanted to go about being a person. At the end, he still isn’t completely “out” of the labyrinth, but at least he acknowledges he is in one. I guess his way of escaping is to not only accept he is in the labyrinth, but to give in the complexities of Alaska, to know that he won’t understand her, and that he never did. But he knows that doesn’t change anything between them (I’m trying SO HARD not to spoil anything too drastically, but it’s so difficult!) So I think one thing we have to understand is that there is no set way to be a person, and no set way to escape the labyrinth. And we have to accept that answer and move on, like Miles accepts the thing that happens that I won’t spoil here.
I LOVED THIS BOOK. it made me like cry