The Death of Alaska Young

I am positively in love with books. I love the feeling that I am having a conversation with the author. One of my favorite books, Looking for Alaska by John Green, generates that emotion every time I open it. Its ambiguous nature allows me to discover something new each time, like I am uncovering a new layer of a dear friend with every turn of the page.

The novel is told from the perspective of Miles Halter (known in the story as Pudge) as he seeks his great adventure in an out-of-state boarding school. He finds it in Alaska Young, a headstrong, impulsive, messed-up girl who is best friends with his roommate. She has a history of a bad relationship with her father, cheating on her boyfriends, and she is often drinking alcohol and/or smoking a cigarette. She dies while driving drunk halfway through the novel. The plot then shifts to the question of whether or not her death was a suicide. John Green admits that he does not know if her death was intentional (230), and leaves that question to the readers.

Green (via social media) often encourages the idea that books are a conversation between author and reader. He brings up that point especially when questions regarding Alaska’s death are brought up. This has sparked me to form my opinion that despite Alaska’s early trauma and inferred depression, her death was unintentional.

Alaska was a truly messed up child. The first half of the novel offers glimpses into her past, hinting at why she is so wild and impulsive. Potentially the most important bit of her past that we learn, she describes while intoxicated. Alaska witnessed her mother suffering from an aneurysm and was unable to do anything to help her. When her father came home, he demanded why she had not called 9-1-1 and attempted CPR, but it was too late (Green 119). This event can be inferred as what potentially drove a wedge between her and her father and lead to her compulsive behavior. Later, Pudge discovers that Alaska was going to visit her mother’s grave the night she died (Green 211). She purchased flowers and was heading in that direction when she crashed with a large truck and a cop car. Without knowing why she died, we can know that she was feeling guilty for forgetting to visit the grave sooner, and that mixing her impulsive behavior with alcohol is not a good idea to begin with.

The beauty of storybook characters is that they can be understood as people, and Alaska is a very interesting person. According to David G. Myers the rate of suicide increases in those who are non religious, dealing with an unsupportive environment, and facing peer rejection. In addition, women are more likely than men to attempt to take their own life. And most importantly, suicide does not typically occur when someone is deeply depressed - it is an impulsive action taken when the person feels trapped (Myers 556). However, depression does affect the risk of suicide, and women are almost twice as likely to experience major depression compared to men, especially after a very stressful event such as the loss of a loved one (Myers 553). Alaska not only lost her mother, but she also saw her die and has harbored guilt over it for most of her life. She also was not positively viewed by most of her classmates, is at boarding school because she is not comfortable around her own father, and very openly condemns God. But, Alaska Young was the wild bird you should never cage because she would break down the bars to free herself.

Myers also discusses how the brain changes during depression. According to him, the left side of the frontal lobe is less active during depression than it is when experiencing positive emotions (Myers 555). This reduced activity may support research done in Singapore in 2011 by a team of psychologists. The research was taken from a very small sample of teens, making the findings difficult to generalize. However, the research did find a positive correlation between depression and cognitive distortion in delinquent adolescents (Nasir). Cognitive distortion causes people to see the world in a distorted way, and in teenagers it can lead to viewing negative behavior as both rational and socially acceptable (Nasir). Alaska exhibits one of the five factors of cognitive distortion throughout the course of the novel; a preoccupation with danger. Being a teenager, her frontal lobe is still developing and her depression inhibits her decision-making even more.

What prevents me from coming to the conclusion that Alaska’s death was a suicide is that she felt neither hopeless nor trapped. When Alaska is first introduced to Pudge one of the first impressions he has of her is how many books she owns. She explains that the collection has grown every summer since she was a child, and she plans to read all of them when she is too old to go on any more adventures of her own (Green 20). Alaska spends very little time in the novel talking about the past, and spends a lot of time in the present and future. When there was a problem, or unwelcome situation she was able to raise a small army of friends to follow along with her. The only time she felt trapped was when she realized she had forgotten her mother’s death. But she acted quickly and left to take flowers to her mother’s grave (Green 132). At the time she was full of emotions and alcohol - which impaired her driving. When two cars got in her way, she tried to get around them (Green 211). She was incapable of knowing it would cause a fatal collision, she just knew that she never let anything stand in her way.

Looking for Alaska is a beautiful novel for a long list of reasons, and one of them is the conversation that it has sparked between John Green and his readers. Even though the novel is not actually about whether or not Alaska committed suicide, it still allows the readers to ponder and discuss it. I do not think that she committed suicide, because even with her impulsive behavior, depression, and cognitive distortion, she was not trapped. When she died, she was traveling with a purpose, and a determination that only Alaska Young can posses.

Works Cited

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York, New York: Speak, 2007. Print.

Myers, David G. "Basic Concepts of Psychological Disorders, and Mood Disorders."Exploring Psychology in Modules. Ninth ed. New York: Worth, 2014. 550-557. Print.

Nasir, R.1, rohany@ukm.my, et al. "Cognitive Distortion As A Predictor Towards Depression Among Delinquent Adolescents." Pertanika Journal Of Social Sciences & Humanities 19.(2011): 75-82. Humanities Source. Web. 5 Feb. 2015.

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