Book Report on Paper Towns by John Green Essay Example

Book Report on Paper Towns by John Green Essay Example Book Report on Paper Towns by John Green Essay Book Report on Paper Towns by John Green Essay Book Report Project in English By Claire Andrea Pascual – III-Arezzo Title: Paper Towns Author: John Green Genre: Young adult novel, mystery Characters: 1. ) Quentin â€Å"Q† Jacobsen – He is the protagonist and the one who is telling the story. He is childhood friends and neighbors with Margo, who he also had a crush on ever since they were children. As the years passed, their contact with one another has decreased. As the story progress, he tries to unfold clues he thinks Margo intentionally left for him when she went missing. 2. ) Margo Roth Spiegelman – Margo is Quentin’s childhood friend/neighbor who runs away from home. She was pursued by Q. She thinks planning out adventures is more fun than doing them. She was one of the popular kids in school before she ran away. 3. ) Marcus â€Å"Radar† Lincoln – He is one of Q’s best friends. He maintains a website called Omnictionary (which is very similar to Wikipedia). His parents own the largest collection of Black Santas. He assists Quentin in the search for Margo. 4. ) Lacey Pemberton – She’s been Margo’s best friend since kindergarten. Margo felt that Lacey had been very undermining throughout their entire friendship. She is also involved with searching for Margo. . ) Ben Starling – Another one of Q’s best friends who helps in looking for Margo. He becomes Lacey Pemberton’s boyfriend. Summary: â€Å"Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life- dressed like a ninja an d summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge- he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues- and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew. † Official Summary Synopsis: The story took place in Orlando, Florida and it started in a subdivision called â€Å"Jefferson Park†. Quentin, the protagonist and narrator, and Margo, his friend and neighbor, who were both nine years old at that time, went to the park and discovered the rotting corpse of Robert Joyner, one of the citizens of the subdivision who was divorced then committed suicide. The story then fast-forwarded to when they’re both in high school and they’ve both grown apart. One night, Margo showed up at Quentin’s bedroom window wearing all-black apparel and black facepaint. She convinced Quentin to follow her plan, sneak out using his parents’ car and go around town at night so he can help her get revenge on people who she thinks have hurt her. They first visited Margo’s ex-boyfriend, Jase, who was allegedly cheating on her with a girl named Becca. Margo made Quentin call Becca’s father and tell him that Jase and Becca are having sex in the basement. They then broke into Becca’s house, graffiti a blue ‘M’ on their wall and left a fish with a message for Becca. Next, they visited the person who told Margo that her boyfriend was cheating on her. She left the person a bouquet of flowers. This character was only mentioned once throughout the story. They then went to Jase’s house, broke in, left a fish with another message and a blue ‘M’. They visited a character named Lacey next. Margo felt that Lacey was not being a good friend to her, despite them being friends since kindergarten. She was constantly undermining her with seemingly harmless comments that she interpreted as subtle, backhanded insults. She left a fish in her car with a message, then sprayed a blue ‘M’ on the roof of her car as well. At 3:15 in the morning, they went inside the SunTrust bank building and relaxed for a short while. Margo said their town is a â€Å"paper town†, describing it as â€Å"fake† and â€Å"not even hard enough to be made of plastic†. When they left the building, Margo asked who Q wanted to take revenge on, and Q chose Chuck Parson, a bully in their school. They snuck into his house, used hair removal cream on one of Chuck’s eyebrows to remove it, and then proceeded to slather Vaseline on all their doorknobs. They escaped and then broke into SeaWorld, but Margo was disappointed because the animals weren’t there. They went back to their respective houses around the time they’re supposed to be waking up for school. All Quentin thought about the next day was how things have changed. He wondered if Margo will start hanging out with him and his friends, but she didn’t even show up in school that day. After Margo has been missing for three days, her parents filed a report. Margo’s parents were more frustrated than worried, because Margo already ran away five times in the past so they thought she’ll eventually come back. After learning that Margo ran away, he noticed a poster of Woody Guthrie attached to the back of the shades in her room. The poster led him to a song called Walt Whitman’s Niece, which then led him to a book of poems, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. There were sections in the book which were highlighted that led Q to believe that Margo intentionally left these for him to find. He then used these clues to find out where she was. He then found a piece of paper with an address on it. He and his friends skipped school the next day to go to the address indicated in hopes of finding Margo or at least, have an idea where she was. The address led him to a mini-mall which contained evidence that Margo was actually there. Eventually, the clues made Q believe that Margo may be hanging around one of the many abandoned subdivision projects around Orlando. His mother calls them â€Å"pseudodivisions†. After searching these â€Å"pseudodivisions†, he concluded that she was not there. While getting ready for graduation, Q discovered something which led him to believe that Margo was hiding in a fictional town in New York called Agloe. Q, Ben, Radar and Lacy all skipped graduation to drive to New York to look for her. They drove from Orlando, Florida all the way to New York just a bit short of twenty-four (24) hours. They found Margo in an old, dilapidated barn and they tried to convince her to go back. She reacted negatively when they found her, which offended Ben, Radar and Lacy. They left Margo and Q behind to spend the night in a motel, giving them the opportunity to talk to each other. She decided to stay in New York. Q wanted to stay with her but he returned to Florida with his friends in the end. Personal Review: I give it an 8. 5/10. It is one of my favourites, although there were a few points which made me rate it a bit lower. I loved the quotes and references there, there were a few funny moments, the suspense of where Margo was hiding in the story made me not put the book down, but the ending was quite the downer. I didn’t expect it to end that way, which if you look at it, makes the entire journey almost meaningless. What I loved about this book is how the characters were differently portrayed, and the way Q came off to me was that he really was just a normal teenager living in America, which makes his book more realistic. Margo is an interesting character, and she has a lot of good and bad points, so she is actually more human compared to other female protagonists. I also liked the format of the book when they were already on their trip to New York to look for Margo; it really felt like the clock was ticking and I could feel the tension, excitement and suspense building up to the final moment. All in all, it was a really good read, and I would recommend it to people who like a bit of thinking about possible outcomes while they read.