Hi everyone! Kathy here with passages from pages 56-110!

First and foremost, this section was super important to character, relationship, and plot development in general. Along with that comes some really great passages and quotes. The one that caught my attention most was:

Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not f*ck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane. (88)

This passage is extremely important to the development of Alaska and Pudge's relationship. It shows how unattainable he thinks she is and how highly he thinks of her. It's an illusion that she's putting up for him, in my opinion, and it's going to break. What do y'all think about this, specifically what it says about Alaska's character and Pudge's idealization of her?


Bonus passage! You don't have to think as critically about this one. I just wanted to include it, as it is also important to Pudge and Alaska's relationship, which is a critical theme for both the book and this section in particular.

Her hand just above my knee, the palm flat and soft again my jeans and her index finger making slow, lazy circles that crept toward the inside of my thigh, and with one layer between us, God I wanted her. And lying there, amid the tall, still grass and beneath the star-drunk sky, listening to the just-this-side-of-inaudible sound of her rhythmic breathing and the noisy silence of the bullfrogs, the grasshoppers, the distant cars rushing endlessly on I-65, I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and f*ck Lara and f*ck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, "It's not life or death, the labyrinth." (81-82)

So I included this because it, too, is incredibly important to Alaska and Pudge's relationship, especially Pudge's side. I'd just like y'all to think about it, but not necessarily speak to it directly in your responses.

Kathy