running through the great unknown: coming of the age in john green’s paper towns

Coming of age has been explicated as limitation of synthesized imaginations and reality of an adolescent including overcoming the urge of expecting individuals to seek greatness in certain ways. from this prospect, john green, an influential bildungsroman writer and the edgar award-winning author, offers such implications in his notable work, paper towns. in the book, green denotes the emotions of the protagonist adolescent, quentin jacobsen, who feels like an outcast wherever he goes. the author also targets various human emotions such as nostalgia, awkwardness, love, anxiety and confusion through metaphorical and lyrical statements. as a matter of fact, paper towns targets adolescents’ conflicts of determining the borders between reality and expectations. therefore, the researcher in this study examines the mental conflicts of adolescence through problematizing the concept of coming of age.