Paper Towns By John Green: A Coming Of Age Novel

John Green is an American author, vlogger, a producer and educator, who has written many bestsellers such as 'The Fault in Our Stars', 'Looking for Alaska', 'Turtles All The Way Down', 'An Abundance of Katherines' etc. Like most of his works, Paper Towns is as heart-wrenching and very well written. John Green has given a lot in the young adult genre. And the thing about him is that he can capture the reader’s emotions and make them cling on to every other word. Paper Towns was exactly like I expected. It was full of breath-stopping moments. Moments that made me hang on till the end. Moments that made me laugh so much that I had to leave the room. Moments that made me pray for the characters’ lives. I did not want it to end without it answering a lot of my questions. And, of course, the characters were able to entangle me in their ventures. There is this geeky boy who is love with this girl who is unpredictable and mysterious, who has sidekick best friends who at times are much more interesting and likeable than the geeky boy and the girl. And let’s be honest, sometimes the side characters have much more dimension than the main characters. And, I am a sucker for dimensional characters. “The town was a paper, but the memories were not.” (Paper Towns, 2008) At first, it seems like the title means that it is a story based on a town made of paper. But turns out, it is an actual term. Paper Towns, by definition means, unbuilt subdivisions and copyright trap towns that tend to appear on maps but in reality do not exist. The main characters; Quentin ‘Q’ Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman, are like paper towns. Both characters seem to be non-dimensional characters. 

Everyone seems to think that these two characters are exactly like what they seem to be like, but there is more to what meets the eye. “She loved mysteries so much that she became one.” (Paper Towns, 2008) “It was something I couldn’t imagine, that I would never imagine because I couldn’t be margo” (Paper Towns, 2008) “She’s somewhere by herself having the kind of fun we can only imagine.” (Paper Towns, 2008) Margo Roth. She loved adventures. She used to go to these epic adventures and every summer, her adventures would blow through their school like a storm: an old guy in Mississippi taught her guitar, she spent three days travelling with the circus, she drank herbal tea with the Mallionares and rejected the bassist of the very band. She only had a physical presence at the beginning of the book and the last part of the book. But, she's mentioned a lot between. Margo Roth was an overrated character. The book seemed to revolve around only her and not much about other characters. She wasn’t even actually present there. “Maybe she deserved to be forgotten. But at any rate, I couldn’t forget her.” (Paper Towns, 2008) Margo Roth was meant to be forgotten. There were characters, who deserved much more attention that she did. But, I couldn’t forget her. You know why? Because of my dear boy, Q, who wouldn’t stop talking about her. He always had to bring her up. I mean, the whole book is about Q finding her. So, him bringing her up is only natural. “I must ask the wounded man where he is hurt because I cannot become the wounded man. The only wounded man I can be is me.” (Paper Towns, 2008)