Paper Towns

The group drives slowly through the streets of Roscoe, taking in the scenery. They find a dirt road at the intersection where the Agloe General Store is supposed to be, but there is only a crumbling barn in a field. They are wondering if the barn might once have been the general store in question when Lacey spots Margo’s car parked outside it. Radar pulls over and Quentin runs over to her car, which is empty.

The four of them then head into the barn to look for Margo. They find an empty suitcase and it is obvious that someone has been staying there. Then, in one of the rooms, they see Margo herself at a makeshift desk, writing in her black notebook. Someone finally calls out her name, and she looks up. Though she notices them, she does not seem surprised or excited. Quentin thinks that he has never seen her eyes look so dead. In fact, she reminds him of Robert Joyner as she stares at him with lifeless eyes. Margo simply asks the group to give her five minutes to finish writing, and then sits back down.

When she finishes, Quentin realizes how dangerous it is to make someone into an idol. He says, “What a treacherous thing it is to believe that a person is more than a person” (282). Margo offers everyone hugs or handshakes, and then the group all sit on the floor. Quentin notes how fleeting the embrace Margo gives him is. He wants there to be an event, for her to be sobbing and hugging him passionately. Instead, Margo seems at a loss for words. Eventually, she coldly asks them what they are doing in Agloe. Lacey is affronted, saying that they were worried about her. Margo dismisses her worries, and Ben remarks that she could have at least called someone. When Margo responds by calling him “Bloody Ben,” Lacey takes offense. She says Margo is acting horribly given the fact that they were all so worried about her wellbeing. Lacey stomps off angrily, with Ben and Radar following close behind.

Quentin wants to leave as well, but he has questions for Margo. He confronts her about her attitude, and the two get into a fight about him showing up unannounced. Quentin replies that there was no way to reach her as she left everyone behind without a word. In her defense, Margo says that the only way to leave is to leave suddenly, to “pull your life off like a Band-Aid” (284). In this way, her friends could go on living and she could be herself as well. Quentin tells her that her method did not work, because he had been worried that she had killed herself. Margo retorts that Quentin only wanted to play the hero by finding her, and thought that she would have given herself to him as a reward. Quentin in turn accuses her of being selfish, telling her that she had not even thought about how the people who cared for her would feel, especially her little sister, Ruthie.

Margo continues yelling, and then goes into her makeshift office and kicks over the desk. Arguing with her has actually calmed Quentin, however. Margo finally calms down as well, and asks Quentin how he found her. He then tells her about all of the clues, how he followed each one and how they eventually led him to Agloe. He really thought that she wanted to be found. Margo finally apologizes for being so angry, but tells Quentin that they surprised her by showing up. She says she has thought about him a lot, as well as her family, but that she did not want to maintain ties with anyone because it might compel her to return to Orlando. She says that she knows she hurt everyone but that she “needed” to leave.

Lacey calls Quentin’s cellphone and asks to speak with Margo. They eventually begin chatting amicably, and Quentin leaves them alone. He begins looking around the barn, and finds where Margo has been sleeping, along with copies of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Margo hangs up and tells Quentin that his friends are staying at a nearby motel and that they are leaving in the morning, with or without him. She has plans to leave for New York City that day as well, hence the comment she left on Omnictionary. She tells Quentin that her original plan was to leave on graduation night, but that due to the incident with Jase, she simply could not stay any longer.

Quentin asks her to tell him about it all, about what was planned and what was just left to chance, and Margo agrees to reveal everything. She shows him the black notebook and tells him that she had started writing a detective story when she was ten-years-old. In the story, she and Quentin, along with a talking Myrna Mountweazel, investigate the death of Robert Joyner, who has been murdered, rather than having committed suicide. Her story casts Quentin as a heroic character and her love interest, and her parents love her unconditionally. After finishing the story, however, she began using the notebook to plan pranks and schemes, writing her new ideas on top of the old story.

Margo tells Quentin that she actually began planning her final night in Orlando in her junior year of high school, and that she had always intended for him to be her partner. She had hoped that the night of adventure with her would free him from the “paper town,” and inspire him to become the hero of the story. When they were together on the night before she left, she was actually surprised by how much she liked being with Quentin. She had always seen him as two-dimensional, but by the time she crawled back through her window after their adventure, she really missed him. She had committed herself to leaving, however, so she had to go, despite her feelings. She then decided to “will” him The Osprey (the strip mall) as a gift. She had hoped that it would help to liberate Quentin in her absence. The rest of the clues were hastily thrown together. She had even painted over the graffiti in the strip mall, not wanting Quentin to worry.

Quentin then asks her why she chose Agloe of all places, and she explains that the place is “a paper town for a paper girl” (293), and that in reality, she was more flimsy than the people and the town she ran away from. She was the flimsy object, and yet people loved her. In turn, Margo loved the idea of being loved, and yet knew that she had to force herself to become a real person. In coming to Agloe—a fictitious town that became real—Margo thought perhaps that she might also become real. Quentin tells her again that he thought she was dead. Margo then reads Quentin a passage from The Bell Jar, where Plath mentions how pointless it would be to kill oneself as the thing needing to be excised is much deeper down.

Quentin takes a chance and tries to convince Margo to return home, at least for the summer, telling her that his parents have even agreed to let her stay with them. Margo says she cannot go back because she will begin to believe in superficial things, like college and planning a future. Quentin again tries to convince her to at least go to college, as he believes in the value of things like college and, one day, a family. However, Margo will not relent, although says that she is glad he likes The Osprey. She admits that she did—and still does—get bored, and at one point wondered if she might go back, but that she can never return. When Quentin asks her what she is going to do for “forever,” she quotes Emily Dickinson and says that “Forever is composed of nows.”

Using Quentin’s phone, Margo calls her family. She has a tense conversation with her mother, and then talks with Ruthie, promising to call her every Tuesday. After hanging up, she screams, telling Quentin that her mother told her that they changed the locks. Though Margo did run away, she is nonetheless hurt by the news.

Margo and Quentin walk through the fields outside the barn for a while, and Quentin tells Margo about everything that has taken place since her disappearance. When their hands brush against each other, he takes her hand in his, feeling that there is nothing to ruin now if she draws her hand away. They lie down in the field and Margo tells Quentin how surprising it is to find him acting like the hero of her story. She then says that nothing ever truly happens like you imagine it will, to which Quentin replies that, if you never imagine, nothing ever happens. He then says that it is impossible to fully get inside the mind of another person. He never imagined, for instance, Margo’s anger at being found. However, the very act of imagination is what allows people to reach outside of themselves. Margo then rests her head on his shoulder and they fall asleep together.

Quentin wakes up at sunset, and sees Margo digging in the ground. He kneels down next to her and begins digging as well, asking her what they are digging for. She tells Quentin that they are digging graves for “Little Margo and Little Quentin and puppy Myrna Mountweazel and poor dead Robert Joyner” (300). As they dig, Quentin notes that Margo smells the same as she did the night they broke into SeaWorld.

Margo tells Quentin that she had never really thought of Robert Joyner as a real person. Quentin realizes that he has done the same thing, and then goes on to talk about Margo’s metaphor of the strings that broke inside of Robert Joyner. Though compelling, Quentin says the metaphor is too harsh and does not allow for the complexity of human lives. Strings seem to imply that people are beyond repair. Developing his thought, he says that Whitman’s grass is also intriguing, and that though it implies that everyone is connected, it also suggests, rather optimistically, that everyone can live through one another. Instead, Quentin argues, people are vessels that start our perfect. Due to loss and pain, they become cracked over time. It is only by looking through the cracks that people can see each other clearly.

Margo is moved by Quentin’s honesty, and he kisses her. She asks him to go to New York with her, but the two understand that it cannot be. Margo stops Quentin’s explanations with another kiss, and then they bury the notebook. They say goodbye to their childhood selves, and to Robert Joyner, and then they return to the barn to pack Margo’s belongings, holding hands along the way.

Margo drives Quentin to the motel where his friends are staying. They both promise to call and to write to one another and Quentin says he will try to visit her during the summer. He does not know if they plan on keeping any of these promises, but he does know that they have to imagine they will, to keep themselves from cracking any further and falling apart. Quentin admits to himself that leaving Margo is the hardest thing he has ever done. Margo turns to Quentin before getting back into her car, and her eyes are wet with tears. Quentin embraces her, and they kiss. Quentin notes that, finally, he thinks he can “see her almost perfectly in this cracked darkness” (305).