Generally, I do not like to reread books. That may be the conclusion of the fact that commonly I prefer to read mystery and usually it seems pointless to reread a book when you already know the victim, the crime scene, the murder weapon and the killer.
But I reread John Green’s Paper Town. Two reasons.
1- it is not a mystery
2- a friend of mine reminded me of Margo Roth Speigelman. Because just like Margo, she left. Not in an unannounced or impromptu way like Margo but she left anyway. Slowly, she cut off all her strings. She comes home sometimes but it hit me when she was celebrating her birthday in some foreign town with her friends. She wasn’t looking forward to coming home anymore. She hadn’t got a home anymore. She had left.
Rereading Paper Towns was more pleasant and refreshing than I thought it would be. First of all, let’s talk about Ben.
Ben is “the friend”. Not your usual, casual hangout friend. He is the apex of the summit of all the friendship essays we wrote in middle schools. In the book, we see on several occasions that Ben appears to be inconsiderate and unapologetic when he should be considerate and apologetic. He ditches Q multiple times when he no longer needs to hang out with him or play resurrection. He prefers Lacey (whom he met a week ago) to Q ( his high school bestie). He’s overall disgusting, curses a lot, calls people bro and uses slangs to appear cool when he is a kind of cinnamon roll inside.
The idea of friendship is awesome. You get friends who hang out with you on weekends. You all eat spring rolls and chug unhealthy amount of soda. You sit together in your classes and pass notes, making fun of your teachers. You watch and play cricket together blah blah blah.
The idea is great but when you actually have friends, you’ll know that none of them even remotely resembles that friend about whom you wrote that friendship essay. You get a Ben. Ben, who prioritizes himself and Ben, who can be condescending sometimes. Ben, whose car runs on hope and Ben, who abandons you in the middle of the quest just so you can snap at him but Ben who ultimately ends up with you in the climax of your adventure and Ben who announces he’s leaving with or without you when things don’t turn out they way he wants them to.
The thing is we don’t fall in love with or befriend people. We befriend the idea of them. We think someone is like that but he is not. He is not you. He is not the idea you have of him. He is another person who may be polar opposite of the idea in your head. And in the end, we must learn to accept people for who they are. Sometimes they don’t change. Other times they do. They don’t turn out to be who we think they are. And its okay. That’s life. And we must learn to accept things the way they are if we want to continue to survive.
“What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.”
― John Green, Paper Towns
“When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out.”
― John Green, Paper Towns
Then I love the way the parent-children relationship was shown in the book. When Margo runs away, the first thing her parents do is change all the locks. It is totally understandable that Margo raised unnecessary kerfuffle in their household by occasionally running away and leaving a bread crumbs trail. But still, it doesn’t justify their behavior. They were willing to let Margo go after all.
Then we see Radar’s parents unnatural obsession with black Santas. His house is full of them and his everyday utensils even bear the black Santa trademarks. It feels odd when we think about it this way. But then we see Radar’s super unnatural obsession with editing and making entrees in the Omnictionary which is kind of a fictional Wikipedia. Obsession maybe runs in the family.
Finally, there are Quintens parents. Both of them were therapists. But as I read the book, I realized that being good therapists didn’t ensure being good parents. Yes, they supported Q in every way possible, but in the end, they had no idea about what he was really up to. They continuously congratulated themselves on raising the perfect child. YOUR CHILD IS SKIPPING HIS GRADUATION TO GO FIND THE MISSING NEIGHBORHOOD GIRL HE’S BEEN IN LOVE WITH SINCE KINDERGARDEN.
The thing is none of the parents in the book are perfect. The thing is none of the parents in reality are perfect. They are just good enough for us and that’s sufficient. Q is not angry at his parents because he understands them. So does Radar. Margo is angry at her parents but when she first gets a chance, she dials her mothers number.
In the prologue of the book, we see a young Margo and Q find a dead body in the park. He had committed suicide. When the question arises that why would a man end his own life? Margo responds by saying: Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
Even at the end of the book, Q is still contemplating what Margo meant by it. “The Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman helps him a lot but he figures out his own definition finally. What I thought she meant by strings was literal meaning. Connections. Relations. In the end, Margo finds herself tied by those strings. She is strangled by them, the real Margo choking behind the idea of the “it” girl Margo. People who love her have such high expectations from her that she doesn’t get to do what she wants to do. She doesn’t get to be herself. And when she is betrayed by her own friends, she decides to cut off all the strings at once and leave. But she thrives. In her own way, she flourishes. Away from home, without a home, she feels free. But when she offers Q a chance to run away from all the things she did run away, he declines.
She doesn’t understand. Why would he want to live in a world where he constantly has to worry about the future, good grades, his career, family when he can just leave the paper towns and the paper people behind and live in the moment according to his will????
Then we see Radar’s parents unnatural obsession with black Santas. His house is full of them and his everyday utensils even bear the black Santa trademarks. It feels odd when we think about it this way. But then we see Radar’s super unnatural obsession with editing and making entrees in the Omnictionary which is kind of a fictional Wikipedia. Obsession maybe runs in the family.
Finally, there are Quintens parents. Both of them were therapists. But as I read the book, I realized that being good therapists didn’t ensure being good parents. Yes, they supported Q in every way possible, but in the end, they had no idea about what he was really up to. They continuously congratulated themselves on raising the perfect child. YOUR CHILD IS SKIPPING HIS GRADUATION TO GO FIND THE MISSING NEIGHBORHOOD GIRL HE’S BEEN IN LOVE WITH SINCE KINDERGARDEN.
The thing is none of the parents in the book are perfect. The thing is none of the parents in reality are perfect. They are just good enough for us and that’s sufficient. Q is not angry at his parents because he understands them. So does Radar. Margo is angry at her parents but when she first gets a chance, she dials her mothers number.
In the prologue of the book, we see a young Margo and Q find a dead body in the park. He had committed suicide. When the question arises that why would a man end his own life? Margo responds by saying: Maybe all the strings inside him broke.
Even at the end of the book, Q is still contemplating what Margo meant by it. “The Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman helps him a lot but he figures out his own definition finally. What I thought she meant by strings was literal meaning. Connections. Relations. In the end, Margo finds herself tied by those strings. She is strangled by them, the real Margo choking behind the idea of the “it” girl Margo. People who love her have such high expectations from her that she doesn’t get to do what she wants to do. She doesn’t get to be herself. And when she is betrayed by her own friends, she decides to cut off all the strings at once and leave. But she thrives. In her own way, she flourishes. Away from home, without a home, she feels free. But when she offers Q a chance to run away from all the things she did run away, he declines.
She doesn’t understand. Why would he want to live in a world where he constantly has to worry about the future, good grades, his career, family when he can just leave the paper towns and the paper people behind and live in the moment according to his will????
Some people are like Margo. They will be happiest when they cut off all the strings. They don’t need a home or a family. Seems impossible but there are people I’ve seen in my life who have cut off the strings inside themselves and are free now. They left. And like john green wrote:
“It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.”
― John Green, Paper Towns
And some people would simply die if the strings inside them broke. Like the dead man we see in the beginning. Q is just like that man. He belongs to the paper towns. He may be tied by those strings but by choice. At the end of the day, he will go home and embrace his mother and call Ben to come play videogames with him.
“Here's what's not beautiful about it: from here, you can't see the rust or the cracked paint or whatever, but you can tell what the place really is. You can see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean, look at it, Q: look at all those culs-de-sac, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.”
― Paper Towns
Some people don’t have it in them to cut off their strings. They are nothing without them. Once the strings break, they are gone. So, they keep making new strings. Making more friends. Getting a family. Worrying about their future. They belong in paper towns. They are paper people. People who must be handled and controlled by strings. And that’s fine. Paper towns are not so bad after all.
― Paper Towns
Some people don’t have it in them to cut off their strings. They are nothing without them. Once the strings break, they are gone. So, they keep making new strings. Making more friends. Getting a family. Worrying about their future. They belong in paper towns. They are paper people. People who must be handled and controlled by strings. And that’s fine. Paper towns are not so bad after all.
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