Paper Towns Theme of Identity

If you ever played with paper dolls (or your paper doll app) you know how easy it is to change a person's identity. Sometimes it's as easy as just changing an outfit. And things get really wild if you have your Pope John Paul II paper doll clothes to trade with your Nancy Reagan paper doll…

But who are these people without their paper clothes? That's a hard question to answer. In Paper Towns, Margo Roth Spiegelman refers to people she finds flat and boring as paper boys or paper girls. But when she realizes that she's a paper girl, too, she tries to find a way to give herself a third dimension.



Questions About Identity

  1. The back of our book asks, Who is the real Margo? So now we ask you, who is the real Margo Roth Spiegelman? Bust out that textual evidence.
  2. What does Margo mean when calls herself a "paper girl" (3.22.96)? How does she plan on changing that?
  3. Is Margo trying to change Quentin when she takes him on the nighttime adventure, or is she bringing out certain parts of his personality that already exist?