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13. Eighty-Nine Da ys 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 introduces Jake to Miles and Jake jokes that he hopes Miles and Lara get along so that Miles can’t steal Alaska away from him. They all go to the basketball game, and just before the other team’s star player, the Beast, is about to shoot, The Colonel shouts at him that Takumi slept with his girlfriend (which is not at all true). The Beast stops shooting and walks toward Miles and Takumi, who take off running. He throws the ball at them and it hits Miles in the head, knocking him to the ground. Miles says “I am concussed,” and repeats this phrase frequently for the rest of the night. Lara comes out to see if Miles is okay, and he throws up on her pants. The nurse diagnoses Miles with a concussion.
In this scene, Miles literally takes the fall for the Colonel’s prank. No one is particularly concerned about his injury, even though he repeats frequently that he has been hurt. However, his friends’ lack of concern does not stem from not caring about Miles, but rather from the fact that this is just how prank works. Sometimes people get punished for other people’s decisions, but that’s just the way it is. There’s not much sympathy, but there also isn’t any fighting.
Themes
Miles wakes up the next morning and continues to repeat that he is concussed. The Colonel tells Miles that Sara broke up with him because she thought that he had hooked up with Alaska. Alaska heard Sara say this, and became furious with her for breaking “the sacred covenant between women.” Sara broke up with the Colonel after he called her a “crazy bitch.” The Colonel tells Miles that even though he doesn’t like Sara, he is really upset about the breakup.
It is ironic that Alaska is offended that Sara would accuse her of sleeping with the Colonel, when Alaska has cheated on all of her previous boyfriends. She concerns herself with the “sacred covenant between women,” but doesn’t seem to value highly the sacred covenant of a romantic relationship.
Themes
