Journal Entry #4

Personally, I didn’t really enjoy this last part of the book as much as the last 3 quarters. I found it rather dull for the most part. A majority of this part of the book was Pudge and the Colonel looking for answers of Alaska’s death. They search for the how and why answers and try to decide whether or not her death was a suicidal or accidental. They went to the police station and called Jake and got some clarity, but still did not know whether or not it was an accidental death or a suicide. They search for the warning signs of suicide and find that Alaska only shows 2 of the many warning signs. Ever since I learned of Alaska’s death, I believed that it was a suicide, and I still think so.

            Pudge and Colonel got into their first big fight in this quarter of the novel. Pudge told Colonel that he didn’t want to know what Jake had to say about Alaska’s death, and the Colonel got upset with him. He started to talk about how Pudge doesn’t even care about her and that he was just lost in his fantasy romance about Alaska. It’s obvious that Pudge reacted to this very badly and stormed off. I don’t think that this was fair of the Colonel to say. They have just both lost a very close friend, and he didn’t consider Pudge and his feelings when he was talking to them, and ended up hurting him very badly in consequence.

            I found it very immature of Pudge to just ignore Lara, his girlfriend, after Alaska’s death. They pretty much officially ‘broke up’ through their mutual friend, Takumi, which I thought, was quite lame. Eventually he talked to her and they became friends again, which I thought was great. Pudge and Colonel were very isolated from their friends for a long time, and even excluded Takumi on many occasions. It was clear to us that Takumi was bitter about this even when they stopped excluding him and told him the truth about the night Alaska died. Near the end we find out that Takumi also saw Alaska the night she died, after she asked Pudge and the Colonel to help her escape. He kept this to himself for the longest time because he was upset with them for excluding him for the longest time.

            Another very important part of this quarter was the end of the year prank that they did in memory of Alaska. It was a prank that Alaska had preplanned for their senior year. Pudge and the Colonel organized her plan with the help of some other students. I thought this was very sweet and a great way to celebrate the life of Alaska. I truly believe that if Alaska was watching them execute her prank, she would have been so happy and proud of them. I thought that her idea was brilliant, and hiring a male stripper to strip in front of the school was hilarious. In summary, I really liked the book but the end was sort of dull. I enjoyed the style of writing and the story line and I think that I will read another book from the author, John Green.

-Kira