Paper Towns Complex Characters

There is always more than meets the eye, no matter the individual. Complex characters often reflect this standard, never revealing too much until necessary and then proceeding to change to adapt or overcome the issue. In other words, complex characters demonstrate a significant amount of dynamics after being confronted with conflict. In John Green’s Paper Towns, there is evidence for multiple complex characters, however, the main character is able to display this with more precision and inevitability. Due to his personal thoughts, views, and decisions, the narrator of Paper Towns is the main complex character, and can be compared to multiple aspects of real teenagers in present day society. Although there are multiple complex characters in John Green’s Paper Towns, the most evident is none other than the narrator, Quentin “Q” Jacobsen. The book is set in present day Orlando, Florida, in which Quentin is an average senior in high school. Like the majority of the other students, he has a group of friends, a college he plans to attend after graduating, and an …show more content…
This is when the reader begins to truly realize Q is slowly changing, in regards to his views of Margo. He eventually realizes his inability to understand her, revealing that the entire time he had been only seeing what he had expected, due to his affection and past childhood friendship with her: “Imagining it isn’t perfect. You can’t get all the way inside someone else. I could never have imagined Margo’s anger at being found, or the story she was writing over. But imagining being someone else or the world being something else, is the only way in” (Green 299). This describes that Q has accepted he had only imagined Margo to reflect what he wanted her to be like, and that it was by imagination that he felt close to