The Literary Analyst

Many more will have to suffer, many more will have to die, don’t ask me why – Bob Marley.  Bob Marley wasn’t a Buddhist, far from it, but these song lyrics capture a Buddhist truth and belief that resonates through the book Looking for Alaska, a truth that revolves around suffering and desire and the path of the Labyrinth.

Buddhist believe that suffering is caused by desire and we desire things that in essence have no enduring reality, “All things fall apart.” These cravings and desires in our mind are the cause of our happiness or unhappiness.

These cravings and desires can involve self as well as others. Alaska had a very difficult time dealing with the death of her mother, mostly because she blamed herself.  Nonetheless, Alaska was not blind to the necessity of suffering in life, as she states, “There’s always suffering…suffering is universal.”

Alaska’s suffering related to death and her attachment/desire/craving toward wishing she had done things differently (dialed 911 and her mom would be alive today). This desire is the source of her suffering, as death is inevitable, “We are all going,” and an attachment to life, which has no enduring reality, creates suffering—this is Alaska’s labyrinth.

Miles also became caught in the web of suffering, his craving/desire revolved around relieving himself from the guilt and mystery of Alaska’s death, this desire however dug him deeper into the labyrinth of Alaska and increased his suffering. Buddhist believe that the more you try to protect yourself from suffering the more you will experience suffering.

Miles however realized, “The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did.”

Alaska was not able to reach the aforementioned state of mind. Her desire did not cease; she continued to question how she could have failed her mother. She was caught in a web of perpetual action so she wouldn’t suffer the consequences of inaction again.  However, her desire to escape her own suffering inadvertently caused her to “collapse into the mystery of herself” and her suffering never ceased.

In contrast, Miles accepted the reality of what is. That is, he had, “Finally had enough of chasing ghost who did not want to be discovered” and accepted “The accicide, the suident.” Answers to these perpetual questions were no longer important. According to Buddhist belief, suffering only ends when craving/desire ends and when one becomes aware and sees things for what they are with a clear consciousness—without craving or an aversion to pain/problems.

For Buddhist everything is constantly changing and things are impermanent; therefore, attachment to impermanent things is futile and leads to suffering. Hence, accepting death and that “All things fall apart” is necessary in order to escape the labyrinth of suffering. Miles took this idea and expanded on it further by proposing that one also forgive. A life spent trying to hold things together and basing security and self worth on impermanent things leads to disappointment, hopelessness, suffering and pain.

This is a guest post from Maggie Zhang (pictured above), she is a junior in high school from New York who loves reading, writing, and photography. Her favorite writers are Chuck Palahniuk, Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Safran Foer, and John Green.

In an attempt to find simplicity in an intricate world, the characters in John Green’s Looking for Alaska seek answers. Whether exploring the enigma that surrounds people, the ambiguity found in last words, or the concept of the “Great Perhaps,” they ultimately find that there is more to life than any of them can comprehend. However, through allusions to other literary works, the imagery of labyrinths, and the numerous questions posed in the novel, Green suggests that we are not supposed to understand everything about the world; the idea of human life is that we try. Not all questions have answers, yet perhaps questions are all we need.

The way Miles Halter approaches books reveals his penchant for answers. He describes his reading process, “I began at the end…I had no intention of reading all the way through” (128).  Yet when he encounters poet Rabelais’ last words of leaving to seek a Great Perhaps, Miles realizes that knowing the end of Rabelais’ life was not enough to understand this vague description of the afterlife. As a result, Miles decides to search for it. However, the pursuit of a Great Perhaps is paradoxical; a “perhaps” can never be “definite.” Green uses the

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