25 Discussion Questions for Looking for Alaska by John Green (With Analysis) | Chapterly Blog
John Green's Looking for Alaska is a novel about the impossibility of fully knowing another person, and Looking for Alaska discussion questions push readers to examine how we construct stories about the people we love — especially after we lose them. Whether you are in a book club, a high school English class, or a YA reading group, these questions are designed to move your conversation past the surface mystery and into the novel's deeper philosophical concerns. Published in 2005 as Green's debut novel, Looking for Alaska follows Miles "Pudge" Halter, a quiet teenager who leaves his ordinary life in Florida to attend Culver Creek boarding school in Alabama, seeking what the poet Rabelais called "the Great Perhaps." He meets Alaska Young, a magnetic, self-destructive, brilliant girl who changes everything — and then is gone. The novel is structured as a countdown ("before") and an aftermath ("after"), with Alaska's death as the dividing line. These 25 questions are organized by theme. Looking for Alaska Discussion Questions: The Great Perhaps and the Search for Meaning Green structures his debut around a devastatingly simple insight: we cannot fully know the people we love, and we certainly cannot know them after they are...