Metaphors In Paper Towns

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” - George Orwell. In the novel Paper Towns by John Green, Margo Roth Spiegelman describes how Orlando is a fake city and how it is made out of “paper”. Not many people really understand her except for Quentin Jacobsen, who goes out of his way to decipher what she means. John Green uses the phrase “paper towns” as a metaphor in the novel. As the story progresses, the meaning does as well, it evolves, which helps Quentin find Margo. In the beginning of the novel, “paper towns” is just a concept, an abstract idea that Margo expresses to Quentin as they are on top of the Suntrust Building looking over the city. “It’s a paper town... look at all those cul-de-sacs, those houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses burning the future to stay warm... All the things paper thin and paper frail” (Green, 57). Margo states. Her depiction of the town is just a notion. She feels this way because she finds out that her boyfriend, Jase Worthington is cheating on her and now perceives everything and everyone as fake. “They

Quentin is determined to find her, and he figures out the new meaning of “paper towns”. “...Leaves of Grass. I read a little from the introduction and then paged through the book. There were several quotes highlighted in blue... And there were two lines from the poem highlighted in green” (Green, 116). “Grass” is another major symbol in the novel because it refers to Leaves of Grass which helps Quentin find a starting point in his journey to locate Margo. Quentin finds the book that Margo leaves for him as a clue, and it leads to him discovering that “paper towns” can mean pseudovisions. “...a pseudovision‒a subdivision abandoned before it could be completed” (Green, 138). There are an abundance of them in Florida, but unfortunately, he can not find her in any of