In previous years, The CDC has noted that 14% of high school students have seriously considered suicide. Out of that 14%, 11% have their death planned out while 6% actually attempt suicide. In the book Looking for Alaska, nobody is sure if Alaska was in the 6% of high schoolers who actually try to off themselves.. Another thing about Looking for Alaska is that it’s my favorite book. I am a huge reader, I’ve torn through several bookcases and read all kinds of literature and this book is still one of my top favorites that I’ve found. I find this book astonishing mainly for not only the fact it’s laced with a huge metaphor, but because there’s two of them and they are nothing alike. They show through some of the text, and especially the ending. I also love quotes, good ones anyways. Looking for Alaska has several that are phrased so simply, yet the lines show us much more about the character and the real world. Finally, I love the whole mystery to the story. Alaska is a very vague person who was the roots of unanswered questions, but does it so that people are intrigued by her. The complexity of her personality is displayed in her death, and is just beautifully written.
Metaphors have the biggest role in the book, and I appreciate the depth and the meaning behind them.  There’s two ongoing metaphors for two of the main characters, and they’re polar opposites. Pudge, or Miles Halters, sees Culver Creek as his Great Perhaps. He sees it as adventure, something new, something fresh. The Great Perhaps represents not only rebellion, but being at a place where there’s no dread or chaos; a promise land. He wants to be wild and out of his shell. He wants to make an impact for once in his life. Alaska just wants out. She sees life as a labyrinth. She quotes Simòn Bolívar with his last words, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?”. In the labyrinth you’re just trapped, spending years wandering down the same crumbling hallways and impossible puzzles until you manage to escape. Some see the escape as death, where others just see it as starting a new chapter in their life. No one knows how Alaska saw it, although some of her most memorable quotes showed signs of depression. Her quotes showed so much about her and how she thought, making them another role in this book.
I have great respect for people who can make a decent quote, and the author of Looking for Alaska has quite a fair share. The best part about his quotes is that they can be so vague and empty, but not be the trash spread on social media with the hashtag “#RELATABLE”. Personally, I find it intriguing how the quotes such simple word choice with little to no descriptiveness can mean so much.  An example would be the quote“Y’all smoke to enjoy it, I smoke to die.”. This particular quote is one of Alaska’s first hints that she’s not as happy as she seems, while showing how some people embrace the consequences of unhealthy habits. Alaska was fine with dying. The author managed to express this in under ten words with no adjectives. Another one is “ I’m just scared of ghosts, Pudge, and home is full of them.”. It shows how Alaska was very mysterious and vague, and always left you wondering what she meant. What she said was short and simple, but had a lot of depth. I find quotes like that the ones that will hit me the hardest. It gets me thinking about my own life and just sends me into a whirlpool of existential crises on the kitchen floor at 2 am. My absolute favorite quote is one of her last words, “I JUST HAVE TO GO! PLEASE HELP ME OUT OF HERE!”. It’s one of the last things she told her friends before she left and wrecked her car, making me wonder what she meant by “go”. Some of her quotes are solely a mystery that are left unsolved. 
There’s a huge mystery left unanswered in Looking for Alaska. Between Alaska’s last words and the subtle hints dropped throughout the story, I really have to wonder about her death. There’s so many questions unanswered about if it was an intoxicated mistake or if her emotions added up to be too much to handle. She was always reckless and ignorant to consequences, but she had a sad side to her also. One where she was constantly crying and apologizing for past mistakes. There were so many variables, from her being drunk to the fact she had her headlights off. No one knows and no one ever will know, she didn’t leave a note or a goodbye. It’s another things that gets me lost in thought. There’s just so many possibilities, and no one ever finds out the real cause of her death. The most eerie part of her death is that it can fit the metaphor. Alaska escaped her labyrinth of suffering.
Looking for Alaska just has so many wonderful elements like the metaphors, the quotes, the mystery to it. It’s been my favorite book for roughly a year, maybe a year and a half, because the mix is so meaningful and has a theme that should be taught in classrooms. We are all mortal, and we are all finite. We will live and live and we will die and fade away until there’s not even a vestige of us. Eventually, no one will know who Alaska was or if Alaska was in the 6% of teens who commit suicide, and we never will. That’s okay, though, because Alaska got out of her labyrinth.