Mallory Ussery
12­13­14
English 10H
Block 3

Alaska Young

In your life whether you’re fourteen, forty, or eighty, someone you meet will light a fire in you that cannot die. This person will make you reveal things about yourself that you didn’t know was there. They make you see life in a different perspective, and teach you how to live, not just survive.
Looking for Alaska is a book that shows you how one person can make a huge impact on anothers life. Alaska Young is a rebellious, mysterious, and fragile teen who changes everyones life in a way no one else can.
Alaska is always looking to break the rules; if it has to do with pranks, drugs or alcohol she does it. Thanksgiving break she convinced Pudge to stay at school instead of returning home for the holiday. During the time off Alaska had made plans for her in Pudge which usually started with the phrase “Lets go to the smoking hole” (53). Pudge is a guy who would never smoke or do anything his parents wouldn’t approve of. Alaska brings out the rebel in him, and gets him to try his first cigarette while planning to prank the club that has harassed him on campus.
Some people reveal a years worth of information about them the first time you meet them, and some leave you wanting to know more. Alaska had a wall built up and only some could tear it down and get to know her on an interpersonal level. She loved mysteries, quincidently she was one to some people, you never knew everything about her. After Alaska passed away Pudge said “ maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one”(101).
The significance of this quote is that the night of Alaskas death she left drunk and in the process of an emotional break down to go visit her mothers grave, but refused to tell anyone where she was going. Her being a mystery, made Pudge fall in love with her even more.
“Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person”(75). Alaska just like every other