An Abundance of Katherines, by John Green response 10/19/14

          The young adult fiction novel "An Abundance of Katherines", by John Green, tells the story of a child prodigy named Colin who, after getting dumped by a girl named Katherine for the 19th time, decides to embark on a road trip with his friend Hassan. He ends up in a rural town in Tennessee named Gutshot, where he discovers new friends and a new life. It's a novel that teaches a lot about what life should be about, and I felt there were a lot of morals. And although many of the morals were very clichéd, they were truthful and meaningful.
          One of the clichéd morals was the biggest one, and this was that you don't have to be a genius or somebody famous to be important. Throughout the book, Colin repeatedly states that he wants to leave his mark on the world and be remembered by everybody. Colin says "“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”  (page 106, line 8) and this is shown as one of Colin's flaws over and over again. He thinks that solving an algorithm that would predict a relationship will help be remembered, and he spends his time trying to be remembered instead of actually living life. This starts to change once he develops a relationship with his new "family" he starts living with, mainly Lindsey and her mother, since he realizes that being who he is is important enough, and that he needs to start living life instead of trying to be a prodigy. An underlying moral in this main one was also to be who you are and not pretend to be someone else.
          Two characters display changes in behavior that represent this moral that being yourself is the only way you should act, instead of displaying a fake attitude and pretending to be someone else than who you really are. Lindsey and Colin both learn a valuable lesson from this, as Lindsey constantly changes what she acts like around different people because she thinks this will help everybody like her. She acts like a very Southern girl and puts on a thick accent around older people, acts bubbly around her boyfriend, and tries to act like a "nerd" around Colin and Hassan. When Lindsey says"I'm never myself. [...] I'm nothing. The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real. (page 203, line 12)", she has no real identity, but having a relationship with Colin helps her find one and become her own person. Colin, on the other hand, is his own person and has a unique personality, but he only realizes at the end of the novel that being himself is enough to be important and leave a mark on the world and the lives of others.
          These are just two examples of clichéd morals in the book, and there are many more. And though usually a prosaic moral is, well, boring, the ones in this novel are meaningful and really show how they can change a person's life. This book taught me many valuable lessons and altered the stereotype in my head that clichéd morals and lessons would be boring and repetitive, and that they can instead be important themes to the book that shape the plot and define the characters.