In the novel Paper Towns by John Green, one witness that one of the main themes of the novel is identity. Very few teenagers have a full understanding of their identity, and I would argue that the characters of Paper Towns are no exception. Paper Towns, is about teenager Quentin Jacobson falling in love of his neighbor and schoolmate, Margo Roth Spiegelman. Margo has unique identity, she likes breaking into abandoned buildings and theme parks. After a memorable night with Quentin, Margo runs away from home and goes missing. Quentin fears that she is danger, and he's determined to find her. Overall, I believe that this novel teaches its audience that identity in becoming the person you want to be and not paying attention to anyone's judgment …show more content…
I find that she uses this theory of her to play with Quentin identity. The night Margo and Quentin go out on their adventure, it obvious how Margo takes Quentin out of his comfort zone and he learns how to take risk. However, in the end Margo realized how she fell into her own paper girl theory, she states, “I looked down and thought about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else. And here's the thing about it. People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it, too. I cultivated it, you know?" (Green 293). This shows how Margo realizes that it's not life nor everyone in it who’s boring, but she’s the one who is boring, and she has to find what she really appreciates and loves in order to have completed her identity and eventually live life to the fullest. Therefore, Margo teaches the audience on how it’s wrong to change a person's identity and how it’s not one’s place, instead one should worry about completing and changing their own …show more content…
"Yeah, well, I wasn’t complimenting you. Just saying: stop thinking Ben should be you, and he needs to stop thinking you should be him, and y'all just chill the hell out" (Green 195). This demonstrates how Radar makes a good point of everyone being different, how we all have different personalities and we should learn how to accept each other's unique identity, instead of trying to change them. Therefore, I admire Radar’s point because he demonstrates how he is a good and true friend to Quentin. I also question how the world be if everyone acted exactly the same? In my opinion it will be quite boring.
In conclusion, by the end of the novel both, Margo and Quentin are confused about what their true identity looks like. They were both too worried about other aspects of life and never consider the fact to find their unique identities. Because, in my opinion everyone is different and has their own unique identity which makes them different, and that’s good because if everyone was to be same, this world would be so boring and
In the book, Paper Towns, there are many people that cause conflict like Chuck Parson, Jase Worthington, and Margo's parents. Throughout the story, these people cause small conflicts. The real person who is always in the center of conflict is Margo. Even though Margo isn't really a "villain", she is the main person that causes all of the conflict in this book. She is very well-known at her school, and she is dating the popular jock, Jase Worthington. Everyone knows Margo Roth Spiegelman.
My graphic representation shows the east coast states and a red line going through those states. That line is how Quentin and his friends got to Margo. That is the link between them. The red line is not just a route that he needed to follow. He had to figure out the final destination of this red line. Spending hours upon hours of trying to find Margo, he finally pinpoints her location to Agloe, New York. His biggest clue was the quote "fyi, whoever Edits this—the Population of agloe Will actually be One until may 29th at Noon." It wasn't the quote itself, but the way it was capitalized. Margo capitalizes randomly, and that is how Quentin knew it was her. The destination on the graphic representation is Roscoe, not Agloe. That is because Agloe is only a paper town.
At first, Margo seems like a legend, but she’s just a person. During this story, Margo runs away from home yet again. Police start to search for her and most students are concerned about her. In Quentin’s opinion the school feels empty without Margo, but eventually people stop caring. However, Quentin is still worried about Margo. “What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person”, Quentin still thinks of Margo as a mystery that needs to be solved, not just a person. This is a recurring theme in Paper Towns.
Lacey, the last main character in Paper Towns, is a kind-hearted person who helped Quentin during his road trip to Agloe. In the book, Lacey describes Margo, “‘I honestly never thought of her as anything but my crazy beautiful friend who does all the crazy beautiful things,’” (Green 185). In the quote, Lacey talks about Margo, like she was her friend and cared about her, even though Margo
At first, Quentin has trouble seeing Margo past her outer beauty and can’t think of her as just a normal person. Quentin and Margo go up to the top of the SunTrust building. When looking at the city of Orlando from that building, Quentin says that it is beautiful. He suggests this because you cannot see the rust or the weeds. You can see it the way it was imagined to be. Margo then says, “Everything is uglier close up” (Green 57) and then Quentin replies, “Not you” (Green 57). Quentin doesn’t really understand who Margo is. Quentin isn’t thinking about how the closer you get, the more flaws are shown. He is just thinking about external beauty. Margo is about to get revenge on her boyfriend for cheating with her best friend. Quentin wonders why he would cheat and Margo thinks it is because her friend is more attractive than her. Quentin basically says that Margo is so much more attractive. Margo responds to this by saying, “That 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 colour instead of taste” (Green 37). Margo is basically calling Quentin
In the novel Paper Towns by John Green, Margo Roth Spiegelman’s whole life has revolved around the philosophy of strings. Margo’s strings represented life, the living and dead, she uses metaphors and examples to show what strings are to her and the way she uses them. She used them to express being or something being broken, though in her eyes everything is shattered. She used the strings to explain how she was a paper girl which mean margo is fake, not real, and most importantly non existent in her eyes. Margo lived in a paper town which was full of paper people who she never liked because all they did when she ran away was make rumors.
Paper towns, written by John Green, is a about a young and timid teenager named Quentin. However, he is in for the night of his life when Margo Roth Spiegelman, the most popular girl at school, selects him to help her with risky pranks on the friends that betrayed her. However, Margo disappears the following day, which brings Quentin to develop an obsession of finding her. Quinten, unable to merely forget about Margo, embarks on a journey together with his friends to find the girl who stole his heart. The plot functions along with the main conflict, which is Quinten against the society. The first example of this conflict is demonstrated early in the novel. After Quinten helps Margo play the pranks on her ex-friends, Margo disappears the following
This book starts out when Margo runs away from home. The night before she and Quentin go settle the score she has with all of her friends. Margo also settles the score she has with her boyfriend since he cheated on her. After that Quentin starts finding clues that he thinks Margo left in order to lead
They were looking out over the town. Margo was thinking how ugly it was, and how fake it all looked while Quentin thought of how gorgeous the view was. “I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the 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 them at the paper convenient store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper thin and paper frail. And all the people, too.” (Green 57-58). Margo was saying that it is just one big boring town that is all the same. There is never any excitement. This relates society today because everyone does the same thing everyday. We wake up go to work or school or whatever we do first thing in the morning but we do it exactly the same, every day. People are doing the same thing all the time and that makes it not interesting. It's like school we wake up, we go to school, we do what the teacher tells us and we go to our next class. It's the same schedule everyday and that's what makes school
The definition of courage is the ability to do something that frightens one. Margo Roth Spiegelman is an astonishing character that displays this trait. Margo and Quentin first met when they moved into the same neighborhood, Margo being her curious self she decided to sneak into Quentin’s bedroom. They talked for hours on end and began to grow a strong friendship. Since that night, Quentin follows Margo on all of her mysterious adventures so she can try to get revenge on her cheating boyfriend. However, Margo then goes missing the next day and leaves a small number of clues for Quentin and his friends to find her. In John Green’s Paper Towns, Green demonstrates what it’s like to grow up with a moving family, arguments and many more at home issues that teenagers face daily.
Adventure is a clear theme and motif throughout his journey. While he loved the idea of finding Margo, the quest to find her was ultimately better than finding her. Their trip spanned the entire East Coast from Florida to New York. Speed pit stops, side stories of romance and even deadly cows were encountered in the process of reaching his final destination. After shock and disbelief strikes himself and the rest of his friends when they're left alone at a vacant and barren shack in the middle of nowhere, his friends are ready to end the journey there and make it home in time for their senior prom. Quentin had other plans. Quentin had gone blind, covered in the mask of love and made the choice to stay alone, while his friends had begun their trip to return home. When Quentin finds Margo roaming the streets of Agloe, he confesses his love, but instead of being met with joy, he discovers his misdirection. Margo wasn't leaving clues for him to find her, she was leaving clues to remind him that she was safe. Quentin now becomes enlightened on the fact that she didn't bring him the happiness that he had always wanted but instead the experience did. The experience of going on an adventure was what made him feel good.
Quentin Jacobsen (the main character) met his neighbour Margo Roth Spiegelman in his childhood. One day they, a dead man lay until a three. At night, Margo, for that reason, entered the window and wanted to get more information about the dead man. In that moment he knew, that Margo had mystical aspects of herself. In that scene, Quentin was a normal boy with plans.
Life is very complex and often hard to define. However, this challenge does not stop people from trying to sum up the meaning of life in one word. In Paper Towns by John Green, the three metaphors the strings, the grass, and the vessel are used throughout the book to chronicle the protagonist’s, Quentin, experiences. The novel revolves around Quentin Jacobsen, a high school senior. When his former best friend and long time crush, Margo Roth Spiegelman, comes back into his life and then suddenly disappears, Q attempts to piece together the clues he believes Margo left behind for him. Each of these three metaphors represent what Q is feeling and allow him to view life from different perspectives. As
The main character of Paper towns is Quentin Jacobsen. He is 18 years old, lives in Orlando, Florida, and is a senior about to graduate high school. He is a regular person in the beginning of the book with fears and isn't special in any way and he lives a very normal life, except for that he is madly obsessed about his lifetime neighbor, his childhood friend, and his lifelong crush, Margo Roth Spiegelman. Margo unlike Quentin, lives a very not normal life and her personality is the complete opposite of Quentin’s. Margo is brave, curious, confident, and is downright awesome. These attributes make Quentin feel like Margo is amazing and make him want to be with her. Nine years ago at the age of nine, Quentin and Margo find a dead body in Jefferson park, Quentin is scared of it and backs away while Margo on the other hand is curious and approaches it. Margo says that she can see that all the strings inside of the dead guy are broken. Then Quentin grabs her and they run home away from it. This shows that Quentin is a person that is easily scared and afraid of things, but he also really cares about the people he love. Then nine years later, Quentin Jacobsen is an average, unpopular student that is still afraid of things, while Margo Roth Spiegelman is one of the most popular girls in the whole school and is still courageous and brave. Quentin and Margo now hardly even talk to each other now until, One night, Margo goes to Quentin’s room and asks him if he wants to
The main goal of the protagonist (Quentin) is to find his childhood best friend, Margo after she “goes missing”. However, Quentin hasn’t spoken to Margo in over nine years, until she shows up at his window for the first time since they were kids. Margo takes him on a crazy adventure, but little did Quentin know that she was going to leave after that. He ends up being the last person to see her, so he feels like it is his obligation to find her. Margo loved leaving clues, so when quentin starts finding “clues” around her house and the town, he starts to believe that the clues were left for him. Quentin even said it himself, “i don’t know who she is anymore or who she was, but i need to find her”(pg.141) this shows how determined he was to find her, despite how much he even knows about her.