Elizabeth Gaskell once said, “How easy it is to judge rightly after seeing what evil comes from wrong judgment!” » “Paper Towns” by John Green tells the story of an individual's inability to see the truth. Quentin Jacobsen, the main character, sees his neighbor, Margo Roth Spiegelman, from afar as beautiful and adventurous, but when she enters his life, summoning him in a quest for revenge, he follows. Once their night is over and a new day begins, Quentin arrives at school to find that Margo is now gone and there is a mystery. However, Quentin quickly discovers clues left behind, and the closer he gets to solving the mystery, the less he sees the Margo he imagined. The theme of the story is perception and seeing people as they really are. The theme is best expressed with Quentin Jacobsen's obsession with Margo, but is also expressed comically when Quentin and his friends look at various motorists and make snap judgments about their lives. Finally, Quentin's perception of one of his best friends, Ben, makes him feel like he has a friendship out of convenience and selfishness. To begin with, the theme of the story is best represented with Quentin's obsession with Margo Roth Spiegelman. Quentin believes she is something of a miracle in his life, stating: “But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: Of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next to Margo Roth Spiegelman” (Green 3). Quentin put his next-door neighbor on a pedestal by only exploring her outer beauty instead of discovering who she really was. Quentin spent literally nine years of his life obsessing over a girl's appearance, never finding out what was inside her. Meanwhile, this treatment is given...... middle of paper ...... his book Quentin realized that he had forgotten to think about Margo as a person. On the contrary, he believed her to be a perfect human, without flaws, and this ultimately proved false. Margo turned out to be a normal girl who struggles to find her true identity in a harsh societal culture based on snap judgments. Overall, the life lesson learned is that people are not paper, they have added dimensions that constitute endless complexity that we can only partially discover. It is said in the story: “Imagining is not perfect. You can’t get completely inside someone else…But imagining being someone else or the world being something else is the only way in” (Green 299). Sometimes you have to try to put yourself in someone else's shoes to really take a closer look at who they are. Works CitedGreen, John. Paper towns. New York: Dutton, 2008. Print.