Close-Reading Analysis

“Just like that. From a hundred miles an hour to asleep in a nanosecond. I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”  (Green, 88)

The whole passage is Miles talking about how out of his league Alaska is. He’s in love with this girl who’s gorgeous, impulsive and confusing. Miles believes she will never love him back in the same way. In addition, part of her impulsiveness is leading him on and him knowing she loves her boyfriend. Throughout the book, Alaska and Miles talk about escaping the labyrinth. A main part of Miles’ labyrinth being trapped in love with a girl who he knows will hurt him, unintentionally: “I wanted so badly to le down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep… But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend…”.

From this point on, Miles talks about how contrasting him and Alaska are- which emphasizes how bad they are together yet he can’t not love her: “But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring  and she was endlessly fascinating.” By the constant repetition of “I” and “she” , Green puts even more emphasis on how different they are.

Lastly, Miles uses rain as a metaphor for people. He calls himself drizzle- the lightest, dullest kind of rain imaginable, while Alaska is called a hurricane. A hurricane is the most destructive type of rain, a storm that destroys almost everything it touches. There’s no way to control a hurricane, you just have to let it pass. But in Miles’ metaphor, each person never stops and more importantly, Alaska’s hurricane can’t be waited out.

Of all the types of metaphors comparable to people, Miles chose rain- which shows more about how he’s feeling. Even though Miles is the narrator, most of the attention is focused on Alaska. Miles chose to compare people to rain because he’s feeling depressed and dispirited because he loves a girl who’s out of his league and will never love him the same way. Rain to most people is seen as a gloomy and dull event, similar to how Miles feels people see him as.

*the attached video is the lyrics to "Hurricane" by Halsey.*