Paper Towns Symbolism

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We are all puppets on a string. The string connects us to the puppet master, who controls us; without the string, the connection to the controlling force is gone. Strings are important, both physically, and symbolically. They connect things, hold things down, and tie things together. Symbolically, strings can represent a variety of ideas, as seen in the novel Paper Towns, written by John Green. Throughout the novel, strings are a recurring symbol, and they are constantly referred to as the thread of fate, what grounds a person, and what holds a person together.
One thing strings are used to represent in the novel is fate. In Sea World, during Quentin and Margo’s night out, he thinks to himself, “And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure …show more content…

In the prologue, a man named Robert Joyner commits suicide after he and his wife have a divorce. Margo and Quentin are discussing why he did so, because many others have divorces but do not kill themselves, when Margo says, “Maybe all the strings inside him broke” (Green, 8). Joyner’s wife was the string connecting him to his life, but that was broken when they divorced. The string holding him together is gone, so he falls apart, and ultimately kills himself. Margo also breaks apart when her last string snaps. In the SunTrust Building during her revenge plot, she says to Quentin, “But it was the last string. It was a lame string, for sure, but it was the one I had left, and every paper girl needs at least one string, right?” (Green, 58). The last string she has holding her together is her friends, but they betray her and she no longer has any strings. Margo falls apart, taking revenge on all of them, and then disappears. She doesn’t have any connections to her life anymore, so she decides to throw away the world that she has known for eighteen years and become a new Margo. After the string holding Margo together breaks, she takes on a new life, effectively killing her old self and being reborn. These strings are what stop a person from falling

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