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7. One Hundred Nine 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
The next day Dr. Hyde asks Miles to stay behind after class. He knows that Miles likes the class, and he tells Miles that while he was looking out the window and thinking about the Buddhist idea of interconnectedness, he missed hearing about the Buddhist idea of being present in every moment. He suggests to Miles that he be present in the classroom, and then present in his life outside of class too.
Miles’ focus on interconnectedness at the expense of being present foreshadows a moment later in the novel, when he gets so caught up in thinking about the many possibilities in his future that he forgets to think critically about what’s going on around him in the present.
Themes
