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19. Fifty-Two Days Before
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Looking for Alaska, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
How to Live and Die
Mystery and the Unknown
Loyalty and Forgiveness
Memory and Memorial
Identity
Mischief
Summary
Analysis
Alaska wakes Miles up the next morning so that he can accompany her in going into other students’ rooms. She wants to learn things about them that she might be able to exploit for her next prank. Miles doesn’t totally understand how to determine what people love based on what’s in their room, but Alaska helps him figure out that Kevin has tons of shampoos and gels, so he must love his hair. She asks Miles where he thinks she might be able to buy blue dye.
Alaska tends to gets annoyed at her friends when they ask her why she’s upset, yet she has no reservations about snooping in other people’s rooms. She has incredibly high, and often inconsistent, expectations of others, but she doesn’t hold herself to these same expectations.
Themes
