Reading journal
Looking for Alaska
John Green
Published in 2005
268 pages
Chapter one
In this chapter John Green introduces the main character, Miles cavalry. Miles lives in Florida and is leaving his school to attend Culver Creek Boarding School in Alabama. When he is asked why he says, ‘To seek a greater perhaps’, the last words of the poet Francois Rabelais. One of Miles hobbies is to know peoples last words. His going away party was pathetic, with no one showing up apart from two people, he didn’t mind though. Miles was unpopular and had a boring life at his old school and is hoping that moving schools will find him a better life with new adventures.
This chapter is good as it describes Miles and his personality very well, and the
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Miles is having a shower when, as he steps out his roommate comes in. His roommate is the opposite to him, very short and well-built. He introduces himself as Chip Martin, but later on tells Miles to call him Colonel. Colonel is not one of the popular kids at school because he didn’t used to go to a privet school, but he doesn’t care. Miles and Colonel start talking and getting along really well. Colonel ends up making a nickname for Miles as well, calling him the Pludge, because he is skinny and tall.
This chapter is good as John Green describes what is going on in Miles’s head, when he meets Colonel for the first time. You can tell that Already Colonel is the closest thing Miles has to a friend, through the way john green portrays his thoughts and use of words. Colonel is not a shy character; he is quite different to Miles as he has different hobbies
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Alaska and Colonel have been good friends ever since he arrived in third grade. Alaska is portrayed as a confident and talkative person. when Miles meets her for the first time he describes her in is head as ‘The hottest girls in all of human history.’. Whilst Miles is talking to Alaska on the swings at night, he gets to know Alaska a little bit more and the things that her and Colonel have done together since they met. He then realizes that he might have mixed with what his mom calls “The wrong crowd”, but Miles didn’t care, he is looking for a little adventure.
I really like this chapter as you get to know the background of the characters a lot better. You also see a side to Alaska which wasn’t shown before, instead of being talkative and loud she was still talkative but in a quitter and more serious manner. She also spoke her heart more so you could tell what she was really thinking. This chapter I think is the begging of all the new experience and adventures that john will have.
Chapter
Task/Activity: Instead of taking a spelling test, students in both classes jumped right into PARCC preparation. Students received a packet containing a reading selection from the novel A Woman Who Went to Alaska and multiple choice questions that was included on the 2015 PARCC and released to the public. Students read the packet and answered the questions independently before the class reconvened, discussing the reading and its questions as a group. Following this activity, students worked together in pairs to write down the challenges they faced while completing the packet and identify the skills they still need in order to succeed on the PARCC exam. After this, the class received a packet titled “Ruby Bridges: Girl of Courage,” and were instructed to complete the first task, which including reading and annotating as well as completing four questions about the passage. The rest of the packet would be completed in stages during the following week.
Miles Pruitt is the center of this story; he is going through life in attempt to avoid the hardships it throws at him. He has to cope with the misfortunes that come with love, and by the end of the story, Miles will finally come to realize that his decisions to go through life untouched will not pay off.
When Jon Krakauer published a story about the death of a young man trekking into the Alaskan frontier in the January 1993 issue of Outside magazine, the audience’s response to Christopher McCandless’s story was overwhelming. Thousand of letters came flooding in as a response to the article. Despite the claims, especially from the native Alaskans, questioning McCandless’s mental stability and judgement, it soon becomes clear that McCandless was not just "another delusional visitor to the Alaskan frontier" (4). As Krakauer retells the life of Christopher McCandless and gives his own take on the controversy around McCandless’s death in Into The Wild, the reader also creates his own opinion on both McCandless and Krakauer’s argument. Krakauer
When being introduced to the characters, sometimes we learn about their appearance, personalities, profession, or history. Miles is a single man who does not have a successful love life. His first love, Carla Carpenter, was a distant girl (by choice) who ended up marrying Miles’ brother Dale. When Anna Thea Hayworth came along, Miles seems to fancy her but never did anything about it. He has nicknamed her Thanatopsis, but she married Wayne Workman, Staggerford’s principal. Miles does not get along with Wayne, probably due to his liking of Anna Thea. As for nonromantic relationships, Miles has is a friendship with the librarian Imogene Kite. Miles describes her as “too tall and bloodless to be attractive” (Hassler 29). On impulse, Miles kisses Imogene for no reason; this proves that Miles is desperate, lonely, and incapable of having clear feelings.
Jon Krakauer 's account of Christopher Mccandless’ journey takes us across the country with the hitchhiking “leather tramp” Chris, who by now is known by his nom de plume “ Alexander Supertramp”. We are privy to his thoughts and dreams via journals that he kept during the time. This remarkable young man had lofty ideals and a romanticized view of the Alaskan bush. Both Men practiced personal virtue and liberal individualism that invoked the idea of the mystical free spirit , reveling in the beauty of nature, wishing to escape the rigors of polite
The novel “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer goes into great detail to describe the main character, Chris McCandless, who died traveling alone into the Alaskan wilderness. McCandless, whom in the novel renamed himself Alex, left his home and family to travel to Alaska in 1992. In Alaska McCandless planned to live an isolated life in the desolate wilderness, but unfortunately he did not survive. This non-fiction novel portrays his life leading up to his departure and it captures the true essence of what it means to be “in the wild”.
Jon Krakauer, fascinated by a young man in April 1992 who hitchhiked to Alaska and lived alone in the wild for four months before his decomposed body was discovered, writes the story of Christopher McCandless, in his national bestseller: Into the Wild. McCandless was always a unique and intelligent boy who saw the world differently. Into the Wild explores all aspects of McCandless’s life in order to better understand the reason why a smart, social boy, from an upper class family would put himself in extraordinary peril by living off the land in the Alaskan Bush. McCandless represents the true tragic hero that Aristotle defined. Krakauer depicts McCandless as a tragic hero by detailing his unique and perhaps flawed views on society, his final demise in the Alaskan Bush, and his recognition of the truth, to reveal that pure happiness requires sharing it with others.
Christopher McCandless’ long, fascinating, but ultimately fatal journey into the wilderness of Alaska is depicted in the biography, Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer. Late in the summer of 1990, a very young Christopher McCandless left his ordinary world in Annandale, Virginia to pursue a solitary life in the untamed wilds of Alaska. Many will insinuate that Christopher McCandless’ actions were childish and idiotic, but a stronger argument would be that his unconventional thinking and desire to live life on his own terms allowed him to reach self-actualization. Before Christopher McCandless had been exploring the alluring west, he was a typical man attending Emory University, where he excelled academically, even qualifying for membership in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Christopher McCandless’ long, fascinating, but ultimately fatal journey into the wilderness of Alaska is depicted in the biography, Into the Wild, written by Jon Krakauer. Late in the of summer of 1990, a very young Christopher McCandless left his ordinary world in Annandale, Virginia to pursue a solitary life in the untamed wilds of Alaska. Many will insinuate that Christopher McCandless’ actions were childish and idiotic, but a stronger argument would be that his unconventional thinking and desire to live life on his own terms allowed him to reach self-actualization.
Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, describes the adventure of Christopher McCandless, a young man that ventured into the wilderness of Alaska hoping to find himself and the meaning of life. He undergoes his dangerous journey because he was persuade by of writers like Henry D. Thoreau, who believe it is was best to get farther away from the mainstreams of life. McCandless’ wild adventure was supposed to lead him towards personal growth but instead resulted in his death caused by his unpreparedness towards the atrocity nature.
Into the Wild, written by John Krakauer tells of a young man named Chris McCandless who 1deserted his college degree and all his worldly possessions in favor of a primitive transient life in the wilderness. Krakauer first told the story of Chris in an article in Outside Magazine, but went on to write a thorough book, which encompasses his life in the hopes to explain what caused him to venture off alone into the wild. McCandless’ story soon became a national phenomenon, and had many people questioning why a “young man from a well-to-do East Coast family [would] hitchhike to Alaska” (Krakauer i). Chris comes from an affluent household and has parents that strived to create a desirable life for him and his sister. As Chris grows up, he becomes more and more disturbed by society’s ideals and the control they have on everyday life. He made a point of spiting his parents and the lifestyle they lived. This sense of unhappiness continues to build until after Chris has graduated college and decided to leave everything behind for the Alaskan wilderness. Knowing very little about how to survive in the wild, Chris ventures off on his adventure in a state of naïveté. It is obvious that he possessed monumental potential that was wasted on romanticized ideals and a lack of wisdom. Christopher McCandless is a unique and talented young man, but his selfish and ultimately complacent attitude towards life and his successes led to his demise.
In the novel, “Into the Wild,” by Jon Krakauer, a young man named Chris McCandless (also known as Alex Supertramp) is headed to Alaska on a challenging journey. Chris McCandless gave everything up to go, “Into the Wild,” for many different reasons. McCandless’s reasons for this decision include self-reliance, his hubris personality, and his home environment. The wilderness represented freedom for Chris, using it as an escape from reality and time for himself to think. Chris decided to take on the “Alex Supertramp” persona to start a new life and bring in a new, braver, personality for himself.
Looking for Alaska is a book written by John Green. The main theme of the book is “Looking for the Great Perhaps.” In the first three chapters of the book, the main characters, Miles “Pudge” Halter, Chip “Colonel” Martin, and Alaska Young are introduced. Looking for Alaska is a story about a guy named Miles Halter who recently switched to boarding school in Alabama in order to find out who he really is as a person. At the boarding school, Miles becomes very close friends with his roommate, The Colonel, and a girl named Alaska Young.
...comes obsessed with and starts seeing his ghost. Finally, at the end of the novel she begins to look to Miles for a sense of belonging. It may even seem as if she wants to find love so badly that she smothers him to the point of death and kills him. He also may have died because she frightened him to death. In the last few scenes, the governess seems to frighten the boy so badly, they he starts sweating and breathing hard and she even starts to shake him. She longs for love so terribly that she believes Miles is Peter Quint. Finally, the governess has a "victory" at the end of the novel and she finally is able to control and manage everything she wanted to know before. The governess and her unreliable narrator poses far too many questions for answers but all the clues point to her infatuation being so strong in Bly, that she needs to have a feeling of belonging.
The next unclear situation is when the Governess learns of Miles’ expulsion. This is one of the main mysteries within this story. The question, “What does it mean? The child’s dismissed his school,” is the only question that the reader has throughout the conversation between the Governess and Mrs. Grose (165). Even though their conversation does inform the reader that the school has “absolutely decline[d]” Miles, it doesn’t clarify what exactly he has done to be expelled (165). The Governess comments, “That he’s an injury to the others” and “to corrupt” are her own opinions as to why Miles was expelled (165, 166). Nevertheless, her comment does not help the reader in any way because the remark in and of itself is unclear. Her first comment suggests that Miles might be causing physical harm to other students but her second ...