compare and contrast
Compare:
Holy cow the amount of similarities between Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns is somewhat insane. These similarities include:
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Contrast
There are some differences between the books (obviously), however these differences are based on simple details throughout the novel, not necessarily the major content where the similarities are found. The differences include:
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Books are the windows to the soul
Here's where it all gets interesting. Based on these two books and how similar they are, there are a lot of inferences that can be made about John Green's life. For example, he obviously knows a lot about being a nerd considering that is a major similarity between the two novels. Along with the intellectual diction and references he makes to history and other literature he uses in his novels, I believe that it is safe to say that yes, John Green was a nerd in high school. That's not that hard to figure out if you have seen any of his crash course videos on youtube, just he and his personality sort of encompass the concept of a nerd. While this idea is pretty easy to figure out, there are some inferences that are more challenging to notice, and may even be incorrect. But based on the fact that in both of these novels the protagonist is completely in love with a girl out of his league that disappears, I believe that something similar to this must have happened to Green in his youth. I believe that there may have been a girl in his adolescent life that he believes just hung the moon and is completely in love with. However, while Alaska dies and Margo runs away, I think that the disappearance of the girl in Green's life may have been less severe. Maybe they just drifted apart, and Green considers this drifting as a sort of disappearance. Maybe he did actually lose the girl he was in love with in some form or fashion. I haven't read any biographies about John Green's life to allow this post to solely be about inferences from the novels, not from what actually happened to him. Below is button to the wikipedia bio on John Green if you're curious about what actually happened in his past and if my inferences are correct.