Literary Analysis 1- Paper Towns by John Green

1.  Paper Towns begins in Orlando Florida, where Quentin Jacobsen has lived all his life, adoring Margo Roth Spiegelman since when they first met.  The book, however, starts with the background of Margo and Q's relationship (or the exposition of the book.)  Back when Q and Margo were in elementary school, they were friends... Until one day, when in the midst of their adventures, they found a dead man sitting under a tree.  Margo was really interested in the man, wanting to investigate his death, but Q wanted to leave and call for help immediately.  After they left and the police had taken over, Margo had actually looked into it herself while Q was at home.  One night after, Margo came to Q's window and tells him what she had figured out about the man and after her explanations, they become silent and just stare at each other.  Little did they know, this would be the last night that they truly talk to each other again.

In the rising action, Q goes about his every day life joking with his friends, Radar and Ben, at high school and playing video games at home until Margo appears at his window again for the first time again since that night.  Margo challenges Q to help her with a mysterious twelve part plan that will take all night.  Q willingly accepts since he as been in love with Margo ever since they were kids.  Over the course of the night, Margo sends dead catfish to three people who she used to call her friends and boyfriend with a note Q wrote saying "Your friendship with Margo Roth Spiegelman sleeps with the fishes."  To deliver all of these fish, they have to break and enter into several buildings and cars.  At one house, Margo finds her "best friend" sleeping with her (now ex) boyfriend.  They continue on their quest and after Margo does everything that she has planned for so long, she offers Q a chance to seek his revenge out on someone else.  Q chooses to prank the school yard bully that has tormented he and his friends for so long by veeting off one of his eyebrows.  Once all the pranking and plans are through, the last thing Margo has Q do is help her break into Seaworld just for the fun of it.  They get past all of Seaworld's security measures and into the park before a guard stops them and suggests that they leave the premises.  By the time they get home it is early morning and school is starting in a few hours.

The inciting incident begins when Margo isn't at school the next morning or the next few days.  Q doesnt think anything of it until he finds out that Margo has ran away, again (the fourth time to be exact).  Her parents say that they are going to change the locks and not look for her again because she is a burden on their family but Q thinks otherwise of Margo so he decides to try to find her himself.  Q knows that Margo leads clues for people to find every time she has ran away so he thinks that she has chosen him to find her, like she chose him that night to help her.
So Q is hell bent on finding out where Margo Roth Spiegelman is.  He will search and follow every clue that he finds even if it leads him to a dead end.  Some major clues she left were a highlighted copy of Walt Whitman's "A Song of Myself" where she had highlighted a line that pointed to unhinging the doors... Which Q eventually finds out is to be taken literally as Margo had hid an address in his door.  He follows the lead and finds nothing but an abandoned building but after he has inspected it many times, he finds that Margo had written something on the walls of the building but had painted over it.  That lead becomes a dead end too.
Q's endless search for Margo is taking a toll on his friendships.  Ben and Radar begin to get tired of him  only focusing on finding Margo rather than focusing on the last month of their senior year.  Ben starts dating Lacy, Margo's (ex) friend, and Lacy enlists to help Q find Margo.  His friends eventually come around and help Q but are hesitant at first.  They help him search "paper towns" or abandoned developments within several hours of Orlando but they don't find anything.

The climax of the book happens when Q finally figures out that Margo is in the paper town of Agloe, New York.  Q finds that a paper town is a nonexistent town on a map that mapmakers created to see if people were copying their work.  He notices that a person commented on an Omnictory( a website much like Wikipedia) saying that the population in Agloe would be 1 on the day after the boys graduated.  But what really tipped him off was the off-capitalization that Margo would use regularly.  So in an instant, Q decides to not go to graduation and road trip all the way to New York to find Margo with Radar, Lacy, and Ben.  The twenty three hour road trip brings all of them together as they race to find Margo.

In the falling action, they finally find Margo.  She is completely shocked that they have found her and is really rude to them.  Lacy gets upset at her reaction and leaves with Radar and Ben which lets Q finally talk to her.  Margo explains why she couldn't stay in Orlando anymore and how her wanderlust is too strong.  She explains that she already had her run away planned but when she found out her boyfriend Jase was cheating on her, she decided to execute her plan earlier than graduation.  Q pleads with her to come back to Orlando and to live with him and his family but Margo says that her future is elsewhere, asking Quentin to become her traveling companion.  Q knew his future wasn't with Margo regardless of how much he hoped it would be.

In the resolution, Q and Margo talk about how their adventures might have ended when they were younger if they had stayed in touch and about how they still love each other now, or rather the idea of each other.  The book ends with Margo and Q saying goodbye and promising to keep in touch.


2.  The theme of the novel is getting wrapped up in the mystery of things or idea of something.  Q was had been completely taken by Margo Roth Spiegelman since they first met but he really had no relationship with her.  He loved the idea of who she represented and all the mystery surrounding her.  He loved this idea that was supposed to be Margo, this superior persona that Margo couldn't really hold up the whole time.  He had spent his last month of senior year, his prom, and even his graduation trying to find Margo because he had this idea that Margo wanted it that way and that was why she was so mysterious.  He finally realized, though, that Margo wasn't the mystery or the idea that he had held so superior to the rest.  He finally saw that she was in fact a real person that made mistakes.  He was so wrapped up in this mystique surrounding Margo, he forgot what reality was.


3.  Although John Green's tone changes throughout the book, his tone is normally optimistic and has a determination about it to stop the dark possibilities of Margo's future.  "I found myself feeling thankful the lake was empty, so I wouldn't have to stare into the water and wonder if she was in the bottom somewhere expecting me to put on scuba gear to find her (p.165)."  Q can find positivity even if at times it looks like Margo has committed suicide.  He was so determined that he even cried out "I AM GOING TO FIND SOMETHING HERE!" (p.173) when he was going through pseudo divisions.  Regardless of the circumstances, there is a lighthearted sense of humor that John Green writes throughout the novel.  The dialogue and relationship between Q and his friends keeps the book light. "I'd heard Radar say 'the world's largest collection of black santas' perhaps a thousand times in my life, and it never became any less funny to me. (p.22)"  Something as random as Radar's parents collecting black santas helps keep a lighthearted tone throughout the book even though it deals with deeper and darker subjects.


4.  Allusions- Regardless of the circumstances, Q's everyday life and classes helped the book lighten up.  Like the typical student, he too had to read Moby Dick but procrastinated on it.  "Dr. Holden completely ruined Moby Dick for me by incorrectly assuming we'd all read it and talking about Captain Ahab and his obsession with finding and killing this white whale (p.159)."
More Allusions- Q's main clue to Margo's location is within Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself". "A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,... Like grass is a metaphor for God's greatness or something....(p.172)"
Rhetorical Questions- Sometimes Q lost hope and found himself second guessing Margo's fate.  "Or maybe I'd never find her.  Was that the better fate? (p.165)"  He couldn't help but sometimes wonder as anyone else would.
Repetition- "I missed her I missed her I missed her I miss her (p.157)."  Q's missing her so much made his determination even more stronger as he searched for her everywhere, following whatever clue came his way.
Imagery-  "And for the first, I had to picture it: Margo Roth Spiegelman, slumped up against the tree, her eyes silent, the black blood pouring out of her mouth, everything bloated and distorted because I had taken so long to find her (p.156)."  Q is forced to think about the gruesome reality of Margo's disappearance.  By showing this sick imagery, Green also shows part of why Q is so determined to find Margo.
Synesthesia- "... her eyes silent... (p.156)"  Green uses some synesthesia in his book during his descriptions of Margo and possible outcomes that might have happened during her runaway to produce a greater sense of gravity of the situation.
Pathos- "'Look, is it sick that it's a blessing to have her out of the house?' (p.103)"  Margo's parents don't want Margo at the house which makes you feel like Margo is misunderstood and that Q is doing this for the right reasons.
Simile- "'That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because they're pretty.  It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste.' (p.37)"  Margo had a very insightful mind.  She would use similes to make her point sometimes to show how outrageous things are even if they were as simple as this quote was.
Metaphor- "'It's a paper town.  I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all those houses that were built to fall apart.  All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.  All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for thema at the paper convienience store.  Everyone demented with the mania of owning things.  All the things paper-thin and paper-frail.  And all the people, too...'(p.57)"  Margo uses metaphors for her way of thinking in order to create the mystique that surrounds her.  If John Green wrote her character more straight forward, she wouldn't have nearly have been such a powerful, mysterious character.
Persona-"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.... The funamental 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. (p.199)"  Towards the end of Q's search for Margo, he starts to see the more realistic version of Margo rather than this persona he thought her to be.  Without Margo's persona, Green wouldn't have been able to write this novel.