In the book “Looking For Alaska”, written by John Green, we learn about how death can come at any time, and that dealing with it is quite difficult. John shows this message throughout the story, as every character encounters a death at some point in their life, and we get to see the rather depressing after effects of this. We follow the journey of Miles Halter entering a new high school, and his rather fortunate meeting with some good friends. Then later into the story we get to watch Miles and his new friends deal with the fact that a girl called Alaska died in a car crash, after they got her out of the school to go driving somewhere. Basically, they helped in her eventual death. Then afterwards, they try to figure out why she wanted to go out driving. Miles is depressed and doesn’t want to know why it happened, for fear of what he would discover. But his friend forces him to realise that what he is doing is just wrong, and that he is keeping a false image of Alaska in his head. After realising this, they finally come up with a rather accurate theory as to why Alaska went out driving on that night.

The reader picks up on this message by the fact that John made death a central point in the story. Alaska dying, her mother dying, and Miles fascination with last words. Alaska’s death was totally unexpected to the main characters, as was the death of Alaska’s mother when she died by an aneurism. Both were a surprise, and in both cases, all involved blamed themselves for the death. The reader was the only one expecting anything to happen, as there was countdown per chapter, but even then it wasn’t known what would happen. So the sadness and shock still existed for us. By the end, the reader has realised that death is extremely sad, and sudden, with pretty much no way to deal with it. And the effect into the future of someone dying is huge, as that too affects everyone around them.