Looking for Alaska

It has been well over a month since Alaska’s death, and Miles and his friends have been receiving cigarettes as a form of charity from other students. However, Miles is uneasy about these gifts, as he and the Colonel feel party responsible for Alaska’s death. He therefore feels some relief when this charity runs out and they have to buy cigarettes for themselves.

Miles and Takumi have received disappointing results in their pre-calculus test; possibly because Alaska is no longer around to teach them and neither one has spent much time studying. Miles also remains perturbed by the thought that Alaska no longer exists. Even moments of fun turn to sadness, as they prompt Miles and his friends to realize that she is gone.

Miles had not wanted to talk to Lara, but Takumi pulls “the ultimate guilt trip” (191) by asking him how Alaska would have felt about this. Miles points out that Lara could take the initiative, but Takumi jokes that Miles shouldn’t spend his high school years ignoring the girl who first gave him oral sex. This lightens the mood, and Miles agrees to talk to Lara.

When Miles knocks on the door of Lara’s dorm room, she emerges looking annoyed. Miles says that he is sorry for everything, and Lara replies that she had not forced him to be her boyfriend and that he could have just been her friend. Her roommate shouts out, telling her not to forgive him, but Lara hugs him and tells him that he has her forgiveness. Her roommate then emerges and kicks Miles in the crotch, informing him that now she forgives him.

Miles and Lara walk to the lake and talk about Alaska, with Lara commenting that she has had to deal with both her friend’s death and Miles’s avoidance. Miles reveals as much of the truth as he can and says that, after Alaska died, he could not think of anything else, as it felt like cheating. Lara replies that this is not a good enough reason for his standoffishness, and he agrees. She is glad that he realizes this, and, though she is still angry, they are at least on speaking terms again.

Later, Miles and Lara join Takumi and the Colonel at the Smoking Hole and throw cigarettes into the water to honor Alaska. Miles is not religious, but he likes rituals that connect actions with remembrance. As the tone of conversation becomes introspective, Takumi shifts the topic to practical matters by asking what proof they have that Alaska’s death was suicide. The Colonel takes out his notebook and writes down that she never hit the brakes. However, while she was very upset, she had been upset many times before without attempting suicide. The flowers may have been intended as a memorial to herself, but this seems out of character: while she could have planned the flowers, she had no way of knowing that the police car would be present at the right time and place.

They then consider evidence suggesting that the crash was an accident, and Takumi notes that Alaska was very drunk and therefore might not have known that she would hit the other car. Lara suggests that she may have fallen asleep, but Miles says that she could not have carried on driving straight were this the case.

They conclude that Alaska showed no signs of planning to commit suicide, and the Colonel says that the next step is to find out where she was going. Takumi has a gut feeling that knowing will only make things worse, but Lara says that she wants to know. At this moment, Miles is conscious of what Takumi had said to him about not having monopoly on Alaska: there were other people cared about her, too.

The Colonel now determines that they are at a dead end and that someone else needs to figure out what to do, as he is out of ideas.

Since the investigation has stalled, Miles has begun studying again. Reading up on Buddhism, he wonders if he will ever experience a moment of enlightenment in which he understands Alaska and the role he played in her death. However, he is doubtful.

Dr. Hyde refers to an introduction to Zen, which states, ‘Everything that comes together falls apart.’ He goes on to state that the Buddha knew something that science failed to prove until millennia after his death: that entropy increases and things fall apart. This prompts Miles to think about how we are all going, whether it be Alaska the girl or Alaska the place; even the earth itself. The Buddha said that desire was the cause of suffering, meaning that the end of desire led to the end of suffering. In short, if people would stop wishing that things would not fall apart, they would stop suffering when this happened.

Miles speculates that maybe this is the only answer that they will ever have: that Alaska fell apart because that it what happens. The Colonel seems resigned to this, but Miles is still hoping for enlightenment.

Miles receives a call from his mother, who has a tendency to ramble, and as he sits by the pay phone, he notices that someone has drawn a flower among all the other scribbles. He imagines Alaska drawing it while on the phone to Jake and then coming to a sudden realization. After his own phone call, he consequently tells the Colonel that he has some new information. He also points out that Jake had said that Alaska said she was doodling when they last spoke. As the Colonel points out though, they still do not know why she suddenly became so distressed.