I have stayed until
dawn reading Paper Towns by John Green and last weekend (again), I stayed late
to finish After You, the sequel of Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.
Surprise! This is a
boring reaction paper on the personality of the two female protagonists and
their profound impact on my psyche which makes me incredibly egocentric for
always connecting things with my life.
Paper
Towns
“Margo
always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never
stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much she became one.”
Margo is the school’s Barbie
doll, that’s what everybody thinks so. Actually, the characterization is a bit cliché
– a girl seemingly perfect outside but flawed inside and then, she hops to her
perpetual journey of leaving Florida (which she calls paper towns), leaving
clues to Quentin (male protagonist and Margo’s
childhood friend) on her whereabouts but later on, it was revealed that
she doesn’t want to be found at all. She wanted to be free and alone.;
liberated from the expectations and patterns of life – graduating from high
school and college, getting a job, building a family, raising kids and growing
old. She, with her book of Dickinson , wanted to just live.
She reminds me of a
fool, self-centered bitch. She did not care on the consequences of her actions.
I mean, leaving without any notice is selfish for whether she likes it or not,
there are persons who actually care for her (an ounce of care from her family,
a bottomless care from Quentin and his friends) and are willing to ditch their
graduation day to find her. They almost lost their lives on their roadtrip but
what did they get – “What the hell are you doing here? Where do you get off showing
up here without any warning?” with an exclamation mark.
It’s not really her
fault, by the way. Quentin misread the clues. He thought those were for
him. and he bought the idea that he is a
knight in shining armor that would save a girl he thinks he loves. It was an
idea, an idea that surely is only an idea because no one knows Margo except
herself.
On a positive note,
Margo is fearless. Her wandering and wondering spirit couldn’t be purged and
her identity unbent. She said on the last part to Quentin, “We are not
different sprouts of the same plant. I can’t be you. You can’t be me.” Sometimes, we play the role of Margo. We
are just pulled back by our responsibilities.
After
You
Did I warn you not to
read this book? Just kidding. As a matter of fact, it’s the book that can get you so depressed but only by reading it,
can you be cured. It’s like healthy suicide (Do I deserve a pinch me for
that idiotic oxymoron? LOL).
To summarize, After You
tells the events after Will Traynor decided to kill himself. Louisa had her
share of grief and she couldn’t cope with lost. She worked in a bar, fell on
her flat and was hospitalized, recovered, met Lily (unknown daughter of Will), helped
Lily out (who turns out to be an impossible case of juvenile delinquency) , fell
in love with Sam (paramedic who saved her from her accident) and eventually,
flew to New York to work.
If I were Louisa, I
might not recover from Will’s death ever and I won’t let myself fall for another
guy. But I am not Louisa. Louisa is a woman who has limitless potentials but no
confidence to embark on a new journey. She is terrified of things she has not
seen and experienced and she is always putting others happiness and welfare
first to the point that she almost wasted a grand career opportunity.
Louisa’s life is pretty
sluggish and below mediocre. She did not strive to be the Louisa that Will
Traynor had envisioned until the last part. She is on the chronic stage of
emotional cancer. Why? Her cells of selflessness have invaded all her system,
her mental faculty. I am not saying that selflessness is a bad thing but
sometimes, we should also fix ourselves first before we can lend a hand. She
was not whole. She was a fragmented soul scattered into multiple dimensions.
However, with the help of her lover, Lily, own family and Will’s family and
friends from the Moving On Circle, she moved on and finally, got the life she
deserves. (Is this the life she really deserves?)
If we compare Louisa
and Margo, they are totally unidentical.
Louisa has no sense of
adventure. She loves patterns. She likes being different but only in the way
she dresses. She is emotionally weak and she is sometimes ignorant. But you
know, the irony of it?
“You
don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.” (This is Will’s most unforgettable advice
to Louisa.)
Those things don’t
define her.
She is Louisa Clark. She
is.
She is somebody.
On a final note, these
two characters reveal different ways on how to live. We can either succumb or
fulfill our duties; we can either stay or run away. But remember, we are not
victims of fate. We choose how to live.
