Paper versions of ourselves
I’VE been on a reading marathon for the past two weeks before classes officially start. This summer, I chose to read John Green’s books and I just finished Paper Towns (way past my target finish date but still, awesome sauce!) It’s a beautifully compelling story of love and hate, adventure and routine, real and fake. It touches several points which basically boil down to finding out who we really are and how do we want other people to see us.
It’s a story that doesn’t really promise you a happy ending, like it’s just hanging in there. But what’s great about it is the process of reading through, of finding out how things came to be and ultimately, realizing that at the end of the day, what matters is how you see yourself just by being you. We live in a society that teaches, or to some extent, requires us to fit in and sometimes, or even most of the time, we give in and become “paper versions” of ourselves.
While it is not bad to compromise once in a while, we need to understand the importance of asserting one’s self and character. This is what makes Paper Towns an enjoyable read. Aside from flipping through the pages of Margo Ruth Spiegelman’s mysterious disappearance and following Quentin Jacobsen’s long search for this enigma of a girl, what we truly find in the end is the real Margo, which alternately reveals how Quentin also found his true self. This book will inspire young souls and spark countless adventures!