Alaska Young Character Outline

Alaska Young

Personality

Alaska Young is a compulsive, moody and unpredictable friend of Miles and more importantly, his crush that he can’t he ever have. By the time that he admits his love for her, she is asleep and then the next day she is dead. The day before she dies, she finally asks Miles, who just became taken, to hook up while both of them are in relationships: “‘Dare.’ ‘Hook up with me.’... I pulled away again, “What about Lara? Jake?’ Again she shushed me” (Green, 130-1). Her indefiniteness makes her even more mysterious and makes Miles fall for her even more.

Alaska is also mysterious- the audience and her friends don’t know much about her past or her intentions currently. She’s unclear and vague: “‘I forgot! God, how many times can I fuck up?’ she said. I didn’t even have time to wonder what she forgot before she screamed, ‘I JUST HAVE TO GO. HELP ME GET OUT OF HERE!’ ‘Where do you need to go?’ She sat down and put her head between her legs, sobbing” (Green, 132). We and the characters do not know this soon leads to her downfall- letting her drive drunk, intentionally or not, to her death. The last part of the book is all about trying to figure how and why Alaska died but in Miles’ last letter he admits her mysteriousness didn’t matter to him: “I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last few minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But that not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart” (Green, 217-8).

Motivations

Alaska mentions that she just wants to be far away from her home, Vine Station, Alabama and possible become a teacher. She wants to be a teacher for disabled kids and get out of Vine Station.

Miles believes that Alaska is impulsive to not become the scared little girl who watched her mother die: “So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action… She was scared sure. But more importantly maybe she’d been scared of being paralyzed by fear again” (120-1, Green). She’s so scared of staying still and inactive that she practically forced herself to be constantly impulsive.

Album artwork taken from A Day to Remember's album: Homesick. The main concept of the album and the songs are about leaving your hometown for somewhere better- which is what the artwork is showing.
"This town will be the downfall of us all" 

Relationships

Alaska is good friends with Takumi, the Colonel and Miles. Their friend group is solid- they seek comfort and advice in Alaska and she helps them. Miles seems closer to Alaska than he is with Takumi and the Colonel, which is most likely rooted in his crush on her. Alaska has a boyfriend named Jake who plays bass in a band and goes to college in Vine Station. She seems to really love him: “ So she really likes him? ‘I guess. She hasn’t cheated on him, which is a first’” (21, Green). Lastly, Alaska’s connection with her dad seems to be shaky after her mother’s death. From what Alaska says, he blames her for his wife’s death and she avoids her home and family at all costs. However all of the people she knows, they don’t seem to know about her as much as she does.

Alaska as a Tragic Hero

Alaska didn’t do anything truly heroic throughout the book, but neither did Julius Caesar in The Tragedy of Julius Caesar- who can be arguably called one. While she wasn’t identified as particularly rich or royal blood, in Miles’ eyes she could be seen as something to that extent: “but I barely heard him because the hottest girl in all human history was standing before me in cutoff jeans and a peach tank top” (Green,14). In fact the Colonel says she from Vine Station, Alabama- a small irrelevant town. However in Miles eyes she’s interesting and great, just as Caesar was to the plebeians.

Although Vine Station isn't a real place, here's a picture of a small irrelevant equivalent to Vine Station in Alabama.

Another element of a tragic hero is audience pathos. Alaska is blamed by herself and her father for her mother’s death, depressed and believes she messes everything up. While her and her friends are smoking she points out the difference between her and them: “She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, ‘Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die’” (Green, 44). Not only does the audience her questionable motives, but they also fear of what she’ll do to herself. She’s clearly unpredictable and the audience is scared of leaving her alone.

Her huge error in judgement is believing she is responsible that she is responsible for not only her mother’s death but anything that goes wrong in her life.

Her tragic death is that she was extremely drunk and driving while a car was coming at her and also she could’ve taken her life. After her death, Takumi, the Colonel and Miles try to figure out if it was suicide or drunk driving.

Her irreversible mistake was driving drunk which led to her death. She was an emotional wreck, questionably the alcohol, drunk and in no shape to go driving but felt she had to visit her mother.

One of the biggest elements of a tragic hero is their tragic flaw that leads to their downfall. Alaska’s tragic flaw is being unable to forgive herself and constantly blaming herself. Throughout the book, she’s very guarded and only a couple days before her life is over is when she reveals to her friends that she holds responsibility for her mother’s death: “‘Well you were a little kid,’ Takumi argued… ‘Yeah I was a little kid. Little kids can dial 911, the do it all the time’” (119, Green). Everyone but herself knows that her mother’s death wasn’t her fault. Soon after Miles and Alaska cheat on their boy/girl-friends, Alaska starts screaming about how much she messes everything up. The audience later learns that she forgot to visit her mother’s grave and in an attempt to put flowers on it she crashes and dies. She blames everything on herself and can’t see there are some things that cannot be controlled.