Is it just me, or was everybody just a little too grief-struck after Alaska died? I get that her friends would be super-sad, but it seemed as if everybody at the entire school was at least a little sad about it. And thing about that is, I've never been at a school where any one student was even known by the majority of students, let alone liked.
This is addressed, with Miles and co. calling out the majority of the student body for being "fake mourners" who only acted sad because they were expected to.
For some reason, as a child, EVERYONE at my school knew who this Troper was and I'm definitely no Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Not sure why (perhaps I just have a unique name?) but everyone knew me, from elementary school through high school, everyone I knew and grew up with knew me - and not just the people I was friends with, almost everyone in my class(es) and around school. So, believe my, dear Tropers, it can and does happen.
The tone set by the school can count a lot toward how the student body reacts. This troper went to a high school where an attending student's brother (an alumni) died in the Iraq War. The school was in a quasi-official state of mourning for a week, even though the overwhelming majority of us never knew the man in question. The presentation and atmosphere had a definite effect on all of us.
There were a few deaths of high school students that happened one year while I was in middle school. Even though we were in middle school, the deaths still affected us emotionally because everyone knew about it. And when I was in high school, I had a teacher who died suddenly, and when several students organized a tribute to him by insisting on everybody who could to wear a tie to school, even kids who had never had a class with him participated. Sadness from a person dying at your school can hit you, even if only through osmosis.
