Paper Towns: By John Green
Topic
Friendship
Q's friendship with Ben and Radar
Q is loyal no matter what arguments they go through.
Ben still goes on the road trip, no matter how hard he finds it that Q is absorbed in finding Margo.
He even comes to pick a drunk Ben up from a prom party.
Love
Q's love for Margo
He changes in order to be the person he thinks Margo needs in her life, proving his love.
It was what kept him determined to find her.
It allowed him to find her and almost save her.
Title
Green writes, "It is through this that he eventually finds Agloe, a town that was fake but then made real by virtue of having been put on a map, and in doing so finds Margo. Basically, I wanted a different definition of 'paper towns' for each section of the book, each representing a different way of his imagining Margo."
Klassen, A. (2018). What Does 'Paper Town's Mean? John Green Spills. [online] Bustle. Available at: https://www.bustle.com/articles/72093-what-does-paper-towns-title-mean-john-green-explains-the-titles-mysterious-meaning [Accessed 12 Nov. 2018].
Plot
Q tells her that it is true, he is braver now. They kiss once more, then they part ways with promises of keeping in touch and visiting.
Represents how their relationship grew stronger and at the of the day they matured through experiencing loss and running from problems.
The notebook contained a world that she wished was real- one where her parents gave her everything, and Quentin was a brave, heroic boy who would take a bullet for Margo.
Q lets her stay, and they kiss, finally after Q being in love with her for forever. They have a "memorial" for the memories of the past, burying a fictional tale Margo wrote in her notebook when she was 10.
Turns out, not all the clues were supposed to be there, and Margo did not want to be found.
They find Margo sitting in the General Store of Agloe, the only building in it. She is writing in her notebook. They greet her. She is surprised, but doesn't show it.
Q, Ben, Radar, and Lindsay (Ben's girlfriend and Margo's best friend) go on a road trip to Agloe. They even have a near-death experience when the car goes spinning out of control when they avoid a cow in the street.
Middle
Q discovers an anonymous comment on a page of a research site he frequently uses titled "Paper Towns", and the comment said "as of Aug. 13, Agloe's population will be 1." This leads Q to believe that Agloe, a real paper town, is where Margo is.
He needs to know more, so he continues to look for clues. All the while, though, Ben and Q have a very big argument, mostly because Ben hates that Q is so absorbed in the Margo situation.
Q finds out what "Paper town" means- a pseudo-division.
A major clue is the fact that she seems to have disappeared to a "paper town."
He and his friends Radar and Ben do a lot of in-depth searching for all the clues, including going to an abandoned minimall, where they spend a lot of their time finding clues because Margo had stayed there before moving on.
An example of an abandoned minimall, similar to the one in the book.
The next day, Q finds out that Margo disappeared and seemed to have left him a lot of clues to find her. He thinks it is a quest to prove his bravery to her.
Margo takes Q out of his house at midnight on a revenge quest after her boyfriend cheated on her.
Major Conflict
A major conflict is profound near the end of the story.
She thinks that she had so many different versions of herself (popular at school, indifferent at home, etc.), and people liked it that way.
She couldn't take it anymore, so she ran away.
"People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it too." pg. 113, Margo.
She runs away to a paper town, believing that she is a paper girl, foldable and flimsy.
"I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else." pg 113, Margo
"A paper town for a paper girl," she says. (pg. 112)
Margo cannot accept herself as who she is.
Person Vs. Self
The Most Impacting Paragraphs in the Book
But the strings make pain seem more fatal than it is, I think. We’re not as frail as the strings would make us believe. And I like the grass, too. The grass got me to you, helped me to imagine you as an actual person.
"But there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it’s only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside." (Margo)
Green, John. Paper Towns (p. 116). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.
“When I’ve thought about him dying—which admittedly isn’t that much—I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?” (Margo)
Setting
Important Settings only.
Agloe
General Store
School desk and chair, no lights
Dusty and old
Nighttime is when they find Margo there.
Flat land, grassy and dusty
Minimall
Rolled up carpet used by Margo as a bed and pillow.
Full of graffiti, some done by Margo when she stayed there.
Abandoned, so not taken care of
Dark, run down
Theme
Poetry is a key to understanding life
He eventually realizes that all the metaphors used in the poem are about life, like grass intertwining one another, and strings that break. These are repeated throughout the story.
Q uses Margo's copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in order to find her. She had highlighted a certain 15-20 pages of it, a few phrases actually relating to her disappearance.
Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!
Green, John. Paper Towns (p. 44). Penguin Young Readers Group. Kindle Edition.
This part of the poem hints to Q to do as it says, then he finds a note in a hole in his bedroom door.
Windows And Mirrors
Everyone has mirrors and windows because everyone changes when they are around different people. People love people with mirrors and windows.
They play an important part in the symbolism in the book: the windows are how everyone else sees us, and the mirrors are how we see ourselves in each different surrounding.
Margo refers to everyone as a window and mirror- everyone has them.
Character
Quentin (Q) Jacobsen
Accepting of life, choices and fate.
Begins to understand poetry with difficult meanings, applying it to the situation of Margo's disappearance.
More detail-oriented
He becomes more adventurous after following Margo through many different settings with danger.
Seems to be not so much adventurous as he would hope, for Margo's sake.
"I liked being bored. I didn't want to, but I did." Pg 9, Quentin
Optimism deteriorates when faced with a negative sign, like any regular person.
Easily angered when it comes to his friends and Margo.
Determined
Significant Characters: Quentin, Margo, Ben, Radar, Lindsay
Margo Roth Spiegelman
End
Still very sure of herself, knowing what she will do next. lots of plans.
"I'm leaving for New York City, today." pg. 110, Margo
Is able to talk to her friends, especially Q, after everything he had gone though to find her.
Opens up towards who she is, and accepts herself.
Beginning
Very closed off.
Seems very sure of herself.
Has different "personas."
"Margo Roth Speigleman was a person, too. And I had never quite though of her that way, not really." pg. 76, Quentin
Almost polar opposite of Q.
Wildly open to adventures.
