Paper Towns

Friendship is one of the most important themes in the novel. The central relationships are those between friends, which are more important to the adolescent characters than either familial or romantic ties. That being said, most of the characters often fail to really appreciate their friends. This failure is in fact what drives most of the novel’s events, most notably Quentin and Margo’s revenge on her supposed friends. When circumstances force characters to see each other in a new light they must reconsider their friendship as well. A prime example is when Margo ends her friendship with Lacey before leaving town because she had not told Margo that her boyfriend was cheating on her. As it turns out, Lacey proves to be a kindhearted friend who actually cares about Margo, and who had no idea that Margo’s boyfriend was cheating. In fact, Lacey breaks up with her boyfriend because he did not tell her about Jase’s infidelity. When the two confront each other at the end of the novel, Margo eventually acknowledges the fact that she was wrong and their friendship is strengthened by their newfound knowledge of each other.

Quentin and Ben’s relationship goes through a similar period of antagonism before the two eventually become even closer. Though they are best friends, Ben wants to enjoy the final weeks of high school, which means going to prom and becoming more involved with his new girlfriend, Lacey. He wants Quentin to relax a bit more, instead of obsessing about finding Margo, and spend what time is left with his friends. His frustration with Quentin even leads him to say that Margo is just trying to be the center of attention, even in her absence. Quentin, however, finds no pleasure in the things that Ben enjoys; they are just not important to him, especially in light of Margo’s disappearance. Despite their differences, Ben proves time and again that he is in fact a devoted friend and helps Quentin search for Margo. Radar, Quentin’s other best friend, encourages him to be more forgiving of what he sees as Ben’s shortcomings, and to remember what he likes about his friends before becoming angry with them and dismissing them as frivolous. Quentin is finally able to put this advice into practice when the group takes a road trip to New York to find Margo. He finds that Ben is the opposite of a “paper person,” and that his consistency as a friend is one of his most admirable qualities.

Friendship, then, reveals people’s complexities and helps people to make connections with others in spite of their differences. Quentin’s growing understanding of the role that compassion plays in accepting others as they are and not as someone wants them to be, is made possible through his experience of friendship.

Quentin’s final weeks of high school are overshadowed, not only by Margo’s disappearance, but also by his obsession with finding her, or at least with learning what has happened to her. This obsession creates a block in his overall growth, symbolically preventing him from growing up. He is still in love with the idea of Margo he has had since childhood and so remains stuck in a fixed state, despite the fact that his friends are all moving forward in life. He misses both prom and graduation—two seminal moments associated with the transition from adolescence to adulthood—in order to try and find Margo. His best friends’ experiences of trying to fit in and find girlfriends seem unimportant to Quentin. He does not want to participate in the events that are deemed to be rituals of growing up and leaving home, and more importantly, he does not consider them important or even necessary. His lack of interest in graduation, prom and relationships suggests a refusal to acknowledge the possibility of change and points to the difficulty of leaving one’s home and friends behind. Quentin admits throughout the novel that he likes routine and consistency and his obsessive search for Margo suggests his inability to imagine a different life to the one he is living at the moment.

Though he likes the regularity of life in Orlando, Quentin eventually recognizes the “paper town” qualities that Margo despises and relishes leaving the place where he has put down roots. In a symbolic gesture, he throws away everything in his locker before he walks away from high school, and is surprised at how easy it is, and how great it feels, to leave this period of his life behind. He wonders if Margo is right, if chasing this feeling of leaving indefinitely is the best path. He finally confronts this possibility when he finds Margo in Agloe. Margo has sworn off “paper towns” and the conventional ways of living. These paths are not real to her and she finds no meaning in them or in rituals like prom or graduation. Quentin, however, thinks that college and a career, even possibly children and a family, can bring both happiness and meaning to a person’s life. Ultimately, he decides not to follow Margo to New York to live a life of constant “leaving.” However, he now knows that he can leave, and he understands what it takes to do so.

The novel addresses several different ways of conceiving human connection. Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself”, is a recurring motif, and Quentin’s reading of the poem sparks his interest in the idea that human beings are tied together by a common root system, like blades of grass. According to Whitman’s metaphor, humans have an endless ability to understand and empathize with one another. In light of his own experiences, however, Quentin eventually finds Whitman’s leaves of grass to be an overly optimistic explanation of human relationships. He realizes he cannot “become” another person, or even get into another person’s head. In time, he decides that people are more like vessels. At first, they are perfect; over time, however, these vessels become cracked and damaged due to pain and loss. He thinks that people can see one another through these cracks, meaning that the experience of pain makes it easier for us to understand another person and their pain.

Quentin also thinks that Margo’s metaphor of human beings connected by strings is faulty. Quentin finds this theory too harsh to fully encapsulate the human condition. When they find Robert Joyner’s body as children, Margo thinks that the strings connecting him to other people have been snapped and that’s what led to his violent end. The metaphor of strings suggests that any break in connection is not only devastating, but irrevocable too.

Quentin often wonders if it is really possible to connect to another human being and understand where someone else is coming from. Quentin’s parents talk about human connection in terms of “mirrors” and “windows,” explaining that human beings “lack good mirrors.” In this sense, human beings struggle to understand and be understood by other people. Quentin’s mother adds that it is a common flaw not to see others as complex beings, but instead to idolize them or reduce them to animals. The difficulties associated with human connection appear throughout the novel, and are issues that all of the characters in Paper Towns must struggle to overcome.