As time perpetually launches forward, anything enclosed within this universe is encased within a shell of mortality and transience. While humans are forced to face continual change, man must witness the morphing of identities and accept that life is dynamic and will eventually come to an end as the universe continues. Within John Green’s, Paper Towns, the theme of veiled identity is enigmatically examined as five teenagers struggle to find themselves as well as the real Margo Roth Spiegelman, a “daring” and unequivocal “adventure” of a person. Delving into the catacombs of individuality, Quentin, or Q, a studious and plain young man, finds that an identity can easily be painted over, but this facade can never truly hide the underlying veracity
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With this interpretation of “paper towns,” Q realizes, “Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl”(198). While the pseudo divisions lurk throughout the still and shadowed corners of the society, Q is beginning to see Margo’s human silhouette form from the shade of the sidelines. Not fully realizing who Margo is yet, Q begins to sketch Margo as a human rather than an unobtainable virtue, but he still has not uncovered her true identity. And finally, Q finds the third meaning of “paper towns” within the mystery of history as he learns that cartographers drew deceiving towns as a trademark to their specific map. With the pretend “paper town” clue surfacing upon Q’s quest, Margo has become something he never wanted to imagine, “Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else”(299). But as this classification of “paper towns” cryptically becomes a cozen dot upon a piece of paper, Q finally discovers that Margo is a dot upon the paper that is this world, and she was a pretend person just like the rest of the dots that heap onto this obstructing and corrupt world. Nonetheless, through this final description of “paper towns,” Quentin reaches the realization that paper is just paper, towns are just towns, people are just people and fabricating perpetually astounding images about a person is not important in this world of mirrors and paper, for it is “a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person”(282). But, at the same time, it is important to see people in a way of many dimensions and not in the flat, papery, inhuman storybook way. Even still, the view of a person will never be enough to fulfill the wondrously intricate
With this interpretation of “paper towns,” Q realizes, “Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl”(198). While the pseudo divisions lurk throughout the still and shadowed corners of the society, Q is beginning to see Margo’s human silhouette form from the shade of the sidelines. Not fully realizing who Margo is yet, Q begins to sketch Margo as a human rather than an unobtainable virtue, but he still has not uncovered her true identity. And finally, Q finds the third meaning of “paper towns” within the mystery of history as he learns that cartographers drew deceiving towns as a trademark to their specific map. With the pretend “paper town” clue surfacing upon Q’s quest, Margo has become something he never wanted to imagine, “Imagining isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else”(299). But as this classification of “paper towns” cryptically becomes a cozen dot upon a piece of paper, Q finally discovers that Margo is a dot upon the paper that is this world, and she was a pretend person just like the rest of the dots that heap onto this obstructing and corrupt world. Nonetheless, through this final description of “paper towns,” Quentin reaches the realization that paper is just paper, towns are just towns, people are just people and fabricating perpetually astounding images about a person is not important in this world of mirrors and paper, for it is “a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person”(282). But, at the same time, it is important to see people in a way of many dimensions and not in the flat, papery, inhuman storybook way. Even still, the view of a person will never be enough to fulfill the wondrously intricate