MEHEDI HASAN Meaning of Friendship
Friendship a relation between two people holding mutual affection and trust for each other can become an obsession of leaving everything for him/ her. Friends are people who are not blood related but they are more than blood relatives. The novel “Paper Town” by John Green is a clear evidence of that kind of friendship as the lead character of the book Quentin Jacobson tries to find his neighbor childhood friend Margo Roth Spiegelman and in this quest Quentin gets help from his best friends Ben and Radar. Quentin chooses his friendship relation than a relationship with an idolized mirage such as Margo.
Quentin’s friendship with ben and Radar were overshadowed by his love for Margo, he ultimately learns to appreciate them and recognize their loyalty to him. Quentin gets so obsessed about finding Margo that he only thinks about the clues left by Margo and he can’t even tolerate the fact that everyone is so busy with other things but no one seems to care that Margo is missing. After the prom night Quentin gets angry on Ben and when Radar finds it out he tells to Quentin “I’m too obsessed with a reference Web site to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That’s okay, too. That’s me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You’re funny, and you’re smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually.” (Page. 194). This quote supports my paragraph claim as Radar make Quentin understand that not everyone is same and that’s a reason they like each other. Then Quentin understands Ben and Radar’s loyalty to him. Then in the party at Radar’s house Quentin understand what Radar was really meaning and relieves the moment of his joy of friendship and says “This is what I liked most about my friends: just sitting around and telling stories. Window stories and mirror stories.” (215) this quote supports my paragraph claim as Quentin realizes not everyone is same but being loyal and supportive is important. Quentin learns to accept Ben for who he is because he remembers how they became friends “Ben had been my best friend since fifth grade, when we finally owned up to the fact that neither of us was likely to attract anyone else as a best friend. Plus he was trying hard, and I liked that- most of the time” (12). A study on friendship and personal adjustment during adolescence by Claes and M.E shows “The level of attachment adolescents maintain with close friends remains stable across our three age groups. However, expectations towards one’s friends and the presence of inter-personal conflict decreases between 12 and 18 years of age.” ( page 13). This quote supports my claim as it shows how 18 year old kid Quentin wants his friends to be but he doesn’t and struggle with his friendship with Ben and then eventually realizes that however his friends are they are loyal to him.
Quentin proves his worthiness as Margo’s best friend as he gets more obsessed about finding her more than anything such as prom, graduation day. Quentin got into the clues so much he always thinks about them, he passed the whole night of prom in an abandoned minimall full of rats because he got the clue of Margo’s scent and stays there. He was so obsessed with Margo that he started reading literature to solve the clues though he didn’t liked his literature English class. Quentin spends much of the books obsessing over Margo that he loses touch of reality. Quentin seeks help from Dr. Holden to decipher the clues from “songs to Myself” and Quentin pays attention to her class when she was teaching “Moby Dick” and he says “I wrote down as much as I could of what she said, realizing that I could probably pull off my final reaction paper without actually reading the book” ( 159). This quote supports my claims as it proves how much obsessed Quentin is. Quentin never misses his school but he bunked school, one of the effects of his obsession with tracking Margo. He even lied to his mom and all this karma he did just for Margo. Quentin became so obsessed that he had a misunderstanding with his best friend since fifth grade as Radar says to Quentin “I could hate you for not being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman” ( 194) this quote supports my paragraph claim as Radar says clearly that Quentin had been obsessed with Margo. Quentin even misses his graduation for Margo as he leaves for New York. He says to his parents “Okay, so I’m not going to walk, because I think I found Margo and I just have to go.”( 239). This quote supports my claim cause it shows Quentin is abandoning a student’s most precious thing graduation day to find Margo and choosing an 29 hour drive from Orlando, Florida to Agole, New York. A recent study on negotiating close friendship by K. Rowling shows a dialectical perspective as Lawler states, “Dialectical theory orients scientific thought to the understanding of the basic essential oppositions whereby a particular sphere of being develops itself”(p 12). This quote shows a particular sphere and that is obsession of the relationship. While Quentin does eventually find Margo, the fact that their reunion is so different from what he expected describes that perhaps he was more obsessed with the chase than with Margo herself.
Since this is mystery, and Margo Roth Spiegelman is the mystery, Quentin solves the mystery. Though Quentin does not find Margo dead, he realizes the similarity between finding someone who has committed suicide and witnessing the liminal existences of a location that was never finished. After discovering Margo, she shows little concern for what Quentin, her friends, and her family has gone through in her absence. However, she does still wish to grow up, moving to New York to pursue a path of self-discovery. Quentin realizes that he cannot put his life on hold for her. This growth stems from him overcoming his false perceptions in Margo and see the truer form of love in the friendship of his friends Ben and Radar has for him as they helps him in his journey of solving mystery of Margo.
