Life Essays :)

Seen and Unseen (Book report about Paper Towns)

-----THIS IS A BOOK REPORT-----

Published in 2008, Paper Towns was written by John Green. His desire for mystery novels compelled him to write one. The author is known for his works like "Looking for Alaska, "An Abundance of Katherines", and "The Fault in Our Stars." He received the Michael L. Prints Award in 2006 and the Edgar Award in 2009 with his book "Paper Towns". He also became a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His books are sold worldwide. Together with his brother Hank, John Green became famous on YouTube with their videos in Crash Course and Vlogbrothers.

Paper Towns is all about John Green's junior year of college while on a road trip. He came across a paper town in South Dakota called Holen. The story of Agloe presented in the novel is mostly true according to him. This novel is about a boy named Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman, the popular girl in their school. One night, Margo showed up in Quentin's bedroom window and asked his help on taking revenge on the people she hated including her cheating boyfriend, Jase. Margo and Quentin drove house to house to execute her plan.

Quentin thought that everything would change from that night on. He wondered if Margo would start hanging out with him and his friends. The next day and on the following days that arrived, Margo didn't show up in school which caused Q to worry a lot. However, she left indirect clues so Q could find her. After several efforts of investigation and research, they finally found her in a paper town in New York. This paper seeks to answer the question, "Did Margo just disguise herself in school to hide the real her?" by looking at the book in the deconstructionist perspective.

Literature is literature, as simple as that. It can either be good or bad depending on the eyes of the readers and the writer. But how we see somebody, what we think they are, these aren't really the things even close to describe their true personality. Same goes with literature. Interpretations from a myriad of perspectives differ ranging from the fictional characters' to the real life itself. We have to dig deep unto the gems and even the stains of each literary piece to know and understand what's supposed to be.

According to Royal Holloway English Department, studying different ways of interpreting offers not only perspectives on works of literature that are new, interesting, and exciting but also helps to generate new ideas and understandings about our world and our own selves. How we read and interpret tell us about ourselves, about others, and about the world (Eaglestone, 2000). That's why there are various lenses through which we can "unravel" the very meaning of the literary pieces. Literary theories, as what you call them, have different types but we are only going to focus on one, the deconstructionist criticism. It questions the noticeable assumptions that we usually realize when we cast our eyes unto the book. It's like a bunch of facts that proves a splendid book to be not at all splendid.

It pulls out the usual beliefs from it and makes it appear wrong. Aside from being challenging yet fun, the deconstructionist mode of criticism analyzes every significant detail to turn our typical ideas the other way around. "Did Margo just disguise herself in school to hide the real her?" This will be our topic. Why is it considered as a deconstructionist question? John Green exposed to the readers that Margo Roth Spiegelman's character is a popular and an outgoing lass. Everybody likes her because she easily changes her persona, her persona that is being decided by her notions toward each student in her school and vice versa.

The question allows us to rethink on Margo's identity, which is contrary to the common texts found in the novel. One thing true about Margo Roth Spiegelman though is that she does not want to participate in the state's evil systems which aim to associate one another in a certain society order that, like what she is somewhat saying, has a deformed sense. The author said, "I was really bothered by the way that I was seeing people idealize (and thereby dehumanize) the people they were romantically interested in.

I wanted to write a mystery in which the obstacle was ultimately that one character (Quentin) has so profoundly and consistently misimagined another character (Margo) that he can't find her not because she's hard to find but because in a sense he's looking for the wrong person... I only see the pure terror and misery of never getting to be away from being one's performed self, which is the problem that Margo Roth Spiegelman has in this novel, although her performed self is played out on a tiny stage

. Paper Towns is a novel about the problem of imagining other people as manic pixie dream girls (or manic pixie dream boys, for that matter). No one IS a manic pixie dream girl; they're just constructed that way by those observing them" (John Green). In addition, a line from the novel itself states, "And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her.

I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made--and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make--was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl" (Quentin Jacobsen, Paper Towns, 2008). These proofs show that Margo Roth Spiegelman is not really the predictable honeybunny that everyone in her school loves.

As one can see, Margo did not really disguise herself around the people she thought were her friends. Well, that's the opposite of what she thought she did. As a matter of fact, the reflection serves as the bridge from the story to her real personality, to the real Margo.

Her "way of pretending" mirrors Margo Roth Spiegelman's being an extrovert, at the same time being the misimagined and mysterious girl. This is somewhat similar to an alter ego. She did not cause herself to be admired. She was already admired because of her unseen (Margo's point of view), or should I say, seen (the point of view of the people around her) disguise. It seems that she herself didn't know who she really was. We have to be true to ourselves and to others so that we will know who we really are.

In spite of this dangerous planet we are living in, there are still people who will truly love you even though you feel extremely imperfect. Probably, something valuable that we can learn from Paper Towns is that sometimes, unseen disguises from a person unexpectedly lead the common people to appreciate the real personality of that person automatically without both of them knowing.

End.

----Infini3s signing out------