PaperTowns by John Green Essay

The Strings, the Grass, and the Vessel Life is very complex and often hard to define. However, this challenge does not stop people from trying to sum up the meaning of life in one word. In Paper Towns by John Green, the three metaphors the strings, the grass, and the vessel are used throughout the book to chronicle the protagonist’s, Quentin, experiences. The novel revolves around Quentin Jacobsen, a high school senior. When his former best friend and long time crush, Margo Roth Spiegelman, comes back into his life and then suddenly disappears, Q attempts to piece together the clues he believes Margo left behind for him. Each of these three metaphors represent what Q is feeling and allow him to view life from different perspectives. As he moves throughout his journey in the book, Q analyzes and assesses each other these three metaphors, casting aside the ones he does not agree with as he develops his own. As the reader, one naturally also considers and interprets each metaphor as it arises. One applies it to their own life to better understand it. After doing so, the real question for the reader becomes clear: which metaphor, the strings, the grass, or the vessel, best represents life?
“If you choose strings, then you’re imagining world in which you can become irreparably broken.”(301) The metaphor for life “strings” was first used by Margo in response to the suicide of Robert Joyner. When Q and herself were discussing what would cause someone to take their own life, she suggests that perhaps all of his strings broke. This metaphor implies that all the hardships, obstacles, adversity, basicly anything that cause us pain, is irreversible damage. In this sense, life is more fatal than death, every obstacle we face slowly clipping away at our soul; never to be repaired. In a way, the strings metaphor makes sense; we all have a finite amount of strings and every hardship we take affects our mortality. These events sever our string, one by one, until we have none