Margo Roth Spiegelman, the antagonist of the book Paper Towns by John Green, isn’t a typical girl at her age: now and back then. She is brave, out-going and a toughie, almost like a boy… except for her looks.
From the day Quentin Jacobsen and Margo Spiegelman were 9 years old and found the dead body in Jefferson Park, Margo had always been the more adventurous one of the two. “As I took those two steps back, Margo took two equally small and quiet steps forward,” (Green, Pg. 5). Being young kids, the typical reaction to finding a dead body would be screaming, crying and running away. Like Quentin whose immediate reaction might have been to run home and tell his parents; Margo goes ahead towards the dead man. This suggests that maybe Margo isn’t an average shy girl after all.
Once coercing Quentin to sneak out of his house in the middle of the night to help her with the revenge on her friends, Margo takes him to the top of the Suntrust building where they get a bird’s eye view of the city that they’ve been living in for the past 18 years. “It’s a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart,” (Green, Pg. 57). Margo compares Orlando to a paper town, which again shows her unique perspective of the world. When she expresses her thoughts about those dead end lanes, it makes the reader feel as if the roads were trapping her inside, with no vents insight.
“All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And all people too. I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters.” (Green, Pg. 58). When Margo refers Orlando as paper town she feels the people are frail. Her family, for example were over emotional who paid very little attention and also made her feel different due to her odd behaviors. Hence, one reason for her many attempts to run away.
“Clues everywhere. The day she ran away to Mississippi, she ate alphabet soup and left exactly four letters in her soup bowl: An M, an I, an S, and a P,” (Green, Pg. 102). According to her parents, Margo always left ‘clues’, that if anyone figures it out, would ‘reveal’ her location. The cryptic clues that Margo leaves, probably refers to her personality: mysterious and odd as well as her adventurous traits.
Only after her most recent run-away, does Quentin think about the girl he thought he knew. Did he really know Margo Roth Spiegelman?
From the first few chapters of Paper Towns, we know that the antagonist was not an average girl who looks at life as an adventure. There should be a lot more of her adventurous characteristics as the story continues.