According to How To Read Lit like a Professor, every story is a quest. The Paper Towns has multiple quests within the book, however the book as a whole is one giant quest. The quest must first start out with a quester, since the story is told from Quentins perspective, he is the quester. The second element of a quest is a place to go. Throughout Quentin's quest he travels many places. From an abandoned minimall to multiple pseudovisions, Quentin travels all over the place until he finally ends up in Agloe, New York. The third element of a quest is obviously a stated reason for the quest, which in this novel is clear to see, to find Margo. The fourth element of a quest is the challenges/trials the quester must face along the way. Q goes through extreme measures and challenges in order to reach his final destination of New York. In multiple times in the book, Q finds himself absolutely stable and right back to square one. He is without any clues and is nowhere close to finding Margo which gets him frustrated at times. Causing inner conflict and challenges within his quest. He has a lot of troubles with family and friends, meanwhile getting in fights with people and misses the event he was most looking forward to, Prom. He faces extreme challenges when figuring out where the next clue is and what it means, leaving him confused and crazy. The fifth element of a quest is the real reason stated by Foster, is self-knowledge. Q finds a lot about who Margo is along his quest, however he discovers that he is strong and braver than he thought he was.
John GreenJohn Michael Green is an author of young adult fiction, YouTube video blogger (vlogger), historian and creator of online educational videos. He won the 2006 Printz award for his debut novel, Looking For Alaska his most recent novel, The Fault in our Stars debuted at number 1 on The New York Times best seller list in January 2012.] In 2014 Green was included in Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. |