paper towns book review essay

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Paper Towns

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on John Green's Paper Towns . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Paper Towns: Introduction

Paper towns: plot summary, paper towns: detailed summary & analysis, paper towns: themes, paper towns: quotes, paper towns: characters, paper towns: symbols, paper towns: theme wheel, brief biography of john green.

Other Books Related to Paper Towns

• Full Title: Paper Towns
• When Published: October 16, 2008
• Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
• Setting: Orlando, Florida
• Climax: Quentin and his friends arrive in Agloe after a frantic twenty-one hour road trip, and find Margo living in an abandoned barn.
• Antagonist: None
• Point of View: First Person (Quentin)

Extra Credit for Paper Towns

Myrna Mountweazel. Though the connection is never mentioned in the novel, the name of Margo’s beloved dog, Myrna Mountweazel, is an oblique reference to one of the most famous copyright traps (a way of determining if other publications had stolen your content without attribution): Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fictional fountain designer and photographer of rural American mailboxes, who was invented by editors of the 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia. This fictitious woman has become so famous since the publication of the encyclopedia that featured her that “Mountweazel” is often used as a synonym for “copyright trap” — another synonym for which is the term “paper town.”

Controversial Language. In June 2015, John Green used Twitter to respond to a reader who criticized his use of the word “retarded” as an insult in Paper Towns . He wrote: “Yeah, I regret it. At the time, I thought an author’s responsibility was to reflect language as I found it, but now, eight years later, I don’t feel like a book about humanizing the other benefitted from dehumanizing language.” Green wrote his response shortly before the release of the film adaptation of Paper Towns , and his apology garnered significant media attention despite the fact that the novel itself was nearly eight years old.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Novel — Summary And Analysis Of John Green’s Book ‘Paper Towns’

Summary and Analysis of John Green's Book 'Paper Towns'

• Categories: Book Review Novel

About this sample

Words: 1686 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1686 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, background of the author, summary of the story, who is the real margo.

• The Strings was the part where Margo visited Q in his room to ask for a favor: joining her as she claims revenge from her ex-boyfriend and best friend. Basically, they spend a whole night playing pranks on certain people and this is the part where Q falls harder for Margo. Being an innate adventurer, Margo made sure to give Q his best night yet. This was also the part where Margo educates Q on paper towns. On paper people. The pair paid a visit to an amusement park near the end of this segment, where they spent their remaining time trying to get to know each other a little better. This must have been my favorite part of all three.
• The Grass started with Margo’s disappearance. The search for the girl with a passion for mysteries went on and on and it got a little dragging for me, given Q’s time spent searching his first hint as to where Margo could find him (or them). As Q and his gang went on to find the next hints about Margo’s whereabouts, forming theories about Margo’s real condition. They thought of her dead, completely isolated, alone and whatnot. They came so close to giving up trying to find Margo, but in the end, it was Quentin who figured out where she was next, and maybe last to find out where she really was. He was ready to miss his own graduation just to finally get to see Margo, given that he was completely certain of his whereabouts. This was the most convincing aspect of the book and there were a few chapters that I consider to be extremely forgettable and unnecessary. It is within these chapters where this book made me feel bored.
• The Vessel, also known as the last part, was the part where everyone was in contemplation waiting to get to see our mysterious girl. Now, unlike the past two parts of the book, the chapters in The Vessel are in hours. These hours signify the remaining hours before they get to see Margo. This third part started with the car ride with Q and the gang. What I loved about this ride to Margo was that every second was needed. Given the deadline they were trying to reach and the distance they were trying to cover in just a short span of time, every second really counted. Strategically prepared, their short stops were planned and everyone had a role to play to keep their time sufficient to meet Margo on time. That was something I enjoyed, and it entertained me enough to finish this novel.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Green_(author)
• https://www.bustle.com/articles/72093-what-does-paper-towns-title-mean-john-green-explains-the-titles-mysterious-meaning
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Towns
• https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/paper-towns/context/
• https://abloggersreviews.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/paper-towns-book-review/
• https://www2.umf.maine.edu/flyer/archives/2015-spring/issue-5-5-7-2015/book-review-paper-towns-by-john-green/

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Paper Towns

By john green.

• Paper Towns Summary

Paper Towns starts with nine-year-olds Quentin “Q” Jacobsen and Margo Roth Spiegelman discover the corpse of Robert Joyner , a soon to be divorced man who committed suicide in the Jefferson Park.

Nine years later, Quentin and Margo grew apart from each other considering that they are neighbors. One night, Margo shows up in Quentin’s window with black paint on her face. She asks Quentin to help her that night with eleven missions to get revenge on the people that have hurt her throughout her high school years. She especially needs Quentin's car and assistance driving. Margo convinces Quentin to take his mother’s minivan, sneak out of his home on a school night, and help her seek revenge.

Margo takes Quentin to an adventure filled with fish, vandalizing, spray-paint, breaking into SeaWorld, and waxing a bully’s eyebrow while sleeping. After her eleven things are completed, Quentin is glad that he is back to being friends with Margo. The next day, Margo never shows up to school or the next three days. Because Margo had already run away from home, her parents are worry-free since they expect her to come back. Quentin was the last person her parents saw her with when her father found her in Quentin house at night. A private investigator asks some question about where Margo could have run away. He notices a poster of Woody Guthrie taped to her bedroom shades. When her parents left home, Quentin bribes Margo’s sister, so they can investigate her room. The poster leads them to a song called “Walt Whitman’s Niece." The song leads them to a poem called “Song of Myself,” by Walt Whitman. In Margo’s room, there is a copy of the poem with highlighted text. One day, Quentin unhinges his door and finds another clue: an address. The next day, Quentin and his friends skip school and drive to the address left by Margo. When they arrive, they find an abandoned mall. Inside Margo left a message painted in the walls that says, “You will go to the paper towns and you will never come back.” Quentin believes that this is Margo’s way of confirming her suicide while his friends believe it means she was tired of her fake life.

Quentin spends a stretch of time looking for more clues with no success. On the day of his graduation, he looks at the map of New York he found in the abandoned mall. The map has pinholes - one of them in a place called Agloe, New York. He looks up Agloe on the Internet and finds that Agloe is a copyright trap, and that its population rose up from zero to one - until of May twenty-ninth. Quentin, Ben, Lacey, and Radar skip their graduation to drive to New York to find Margo. Since he knows Margo changed the population on the site, they have to arrive at Agloe in less than one day.

When the gang arrives in Agloe, New York, they find Margo living in a barn. Margo is shocked to see them since the clues she left weren’t intended to find her. Angry at her reaction, Radar, Lacey, and Ben leave the barn and check into a motel. Quentin learns that his vision of Margo was fake - similar to the one she had been projecting to everyone else she met. Later, Quentin tells Margo that he was mad because she made him waste his time. Margo tells him that he really saved her because he wanted to feel like the superhero saving the girl. He later accepts that it was obvious that he didn’t expect Margo to live the image he had of her. They both say that they love each other and they kiss. Later, Margo tells him to come with her to New York but Quentin tells her that he has a life back in Orlando. Margo and Quentin say their last goodbyes and promise each other to keep in contact.

Paper Towns Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Paper Towns is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

“Nothing really mattered that much, not the good things and not the bad ones. We were in the business of mutual amusement, and we were reasonably prosperous.”

In context, Quentin is alluding to the fact that though his life is comfortable and without any significant trouble... it is also lacking joy. He is somewhere in between.

How mainly do Quentin and Ben’s reactions to Margo’s disappearance differ from one another?

Margo has disappeared before so people, like Ben are not surprised. Quinten is absolutely shaken by it and is obsessed with finding her.

Margo is a high school senior and Quentin's childhood friend. Beautiful but unpredictable, she becomes the object of Quentin's love and admiration. Her flighty nature encapsulates the "manic pixie dream girl" trope; that is, a lovely yet...

Study Guide for Paper Towns

Paper Towns study guide contains a biography of John Green, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Paper Towns
• Character List

Essays for Paper Towns

Paper Towns essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Paper Towns by John Green.

• The Construction of Manic Pixie Dream Girls Through the Male Gaze: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and John Green's Paper Towns

Lesson Plan for Paper Towns

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Paper Towns
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Paper Towns Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Paper Towns

• Introduction