Looking for Alaska is divided into two halves named 'Before' and 'After' as in before and after Alaska's death, and are narrated by main character Miles Halter. Rather than the typical numerical system, each chapter is denoted through the number of days before Alaska's death or the number of days after. The genesis of this structure resulted from John Green's influence of public reactions to the events on September 11, 2001.[12][13] In an interview with Random House Publishing, Green recalled that newscasters stated that people would now view the world through the lens of either before or after 9/11.[12] Green says in the same interview, “We look back to the most important moment in our history, and that becomes the dividing line between what we were and what we are now. So I wanted to reflect on the way we measure and think of time.”[12] For the characters in Looking for Alaska, Alaska's death proved a life-altering moment, and Green wanted to reflect this importance by creating the structure of the novel around the axis of Alaska's death.[12]
Genre
Looking for Alaska is classified as "young adult fiction".[12] While Green used his own life as a source of inspiration, the novel itself is entirely fictional. In an interview with Random House Publishing, Green states that the intended audience for the novel is high-school students.[12] In a separate interview, Green comments that he wrote the novel intending it to be young adult fiction because he wished to contribute to the formation of his readers’ values in a meaningful way.[14] Furthermore, themes of sex, drugs, alcohol, first love, and loss classify the book as young adult fiction.[15]
