Little Boxes All the Same

To start off, this is now officially one of my favorite novels.

In a land where we are often expected to tow the line of the norm and not standout, I understand the need to escape. Like an adolescent filled to the brim with helium dreams, with my eyes set on adventure, I'll float away into the abyss and never come back.

Unless my dreams are popped by those who don't believe in me,
And I fall back to the ground,
And am picked up by a child playing in the park,
And shoved into a trash can,
Where I can't dream
Or escape,
And then I'll never become what I thought I could be,
Or go where I thought I could go.
And my dreams will be dead.

Sometimes I wonder if this is why youthful dreams die. Do we fear too much about what could happen that we never tie ourselves to our getaway string, but instead lie limp and deflated, just hanging back on Earth with the rest of the world? What if things don't work out, what if we just end up failing and everyone knows?

What if we don't really want to escape, but just want people to think that we are bigger than this life? What if we just want someone to care? What if we want to be found but they never find the clues we leave behind?

I think I'm more like Q than I am like Margo, but I get wanting to escape but not wanting to let go...I'm not sure you can completely let go of everything. Even Margo needed to connect, whether or not she actually made the effort to do so.

I think, like Q, I want to be the one to make the connection for people. I read into things too deeply. I do think Margo wanted someone to find her – or at least make the effort – and I think it is in Q’s nature to do that. I may dream of flying to a faraway land to escape the ‘paper towns’ we live in, but I guess I don’t really want to be lost. The moment I want to be lost forever, I hope someone decides to intervene.

When Margo started describing paper towns, I thought of the song Little Boxes:

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university
Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same,
And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers, and business executives
And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry,

And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp and then to the university
Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

Not wanting to be a cookie cutter paper girl in a paper town, or a copy of my neighbor in a land made out of ticky tacky, is the reason people want to escape and never come back.

Luckily, with an emphasis on young adult lit, I think teens understand that they really can be unique in a ticky tacky world. Finally we have a way to “float” away without actually having to be lost forever. Literature can be our escape. I wonder if things had been different if Margo had had a teacher or anyone who told her it was okay to be different or helped her find a way to escape without actually leaving. Would she still have left? I guess even she thought she was a paper girl though, so maybe nothing would have been different. Maybe she always intended to leave, and nothing could stop her.

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While thought exists, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living. - Cyril Connolly