Theme in Looking for Alaska

SPOILER ALERT
 
     I think I have a great idea for how Looking for Alaska, by John Green, would start as a movie. Picture this: A shot of a white flower. A shot of a car (Alaska's, although the audience doesn't know that). A shot of a police cruiser on a highway near an overturned truck. The screen goes black.

     CRUNCH. 

      The book starts with the words "a hundred and thirty six days before." Before is before Alaska Young died in a car crash. She was bringing flowers to her mom's grave.

     The theme of Looking for Alaska is that mistakes you make, even ones that aren't really your fault, can haunt you forever. When Alaska was a little girl, her mother died because Alaska didn't know to call 911. Almost ten years after her mother died, Alaska realized she had forgotten to bring flowers to her mother's grave and drove out to buy them at three in the morning, drunk out of her mind. She slammed into a cop car.

     The question left unanswered about Alaska's death was: did she kill herself? She drove straight into the cop car and didn't swerve once. It's possible that she saw the car and, wracked with guilt about not only 'killing' her mom, but forgetting to bring her flowers, thought "screw it, I'm doing this" and didn't try to swerve. It's also possible she was so drunk she thought she could fit next to the car.

     If Alaska did mean to crash, this shows how much she was haunted by the mistake she made when she was little, a mistake that wasn't entirely her fault, how intensely guilty she felt about being responsible, in her eyes at least, for her mother's death. Even a while before she died, she seemed guilty, though she usually tried to make her sadness funny. Take this remark to her friends Chip and Miles: "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die." She's joking. Sort of. Her guilt is always there.
    
     Just before Alaska died, she told Chip and Miles that she had to go somewhere and that she would be back. They did not attempt to stop her or accompany her. Miles will likely get over feeling responsible for her death, but poor Chip will likely spend a long time feeling guilty about not keeping her from her death. His mistake will haunt him too.