I avoided John Green’s The Fault in our Stars for some time. I read the critical acclaim. You couldn’t look at Amazon’s Top 100 without seeing it somewhere on the list. Still I resisted. I sometimes like to pretend to know what my type is — for books at least. I wish I hadn’t waited. I read the book in a 24 hour window. I almost read it in one sitting but I made myself wait. I wanted to savor! If I could recommend any book to you this year, TFIOS would be one of my picks.
It’s a rarity that an author can know his characters so well. It’s a greater rarity that I should feel so connected. I honestly feel as if I have been torn from my dearest friends as I flipped the last page and found no more words. Shailene Woodley (who plays the lead in the film) said spot on in an issue of TIME, “Some say that through his books, John gives a voice to teenagers. I humbly disagree. I think john hears the voices of teenagers.” Yes!
The novel is narrated by Hazel, who has a spectacular voice, but is considered a terminal cancer case. In a cancer support group, she meets two friends, Issac and Augustus, who become her social life outside of her parents. Slowly, her bond with Augustus grows past friendship.
While Hazel and Augustus serve as the lead characters in the novel, Hazel’s favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction (a fictitious book created by Green), steps in as a secondary character. First, it serves as an ice breaker for Hazel and Gus, and they bond over the awesomeness of the book. But the true genius stems from how well AIA parodies TFIOS.
It would be hard to talk about a book that deals with cancer and not talk about death. It lurks within the shadows throughout the novel; however, Hazel’s strength can be felt. Her wit and her drive are so intense. What’s so striking to me, though, is that while death can be so near, there are some things it can’t change — some things it doesn’t have power over. Hazel still has “teenage moments” where she snaps at her parents, where she wants to storm out. Death also can’t change love.
Hazel is also torn when she falls for Augustus. I love the inner struggle she has over whether to admit her feelings to him. She doesn’t want to be close to more people than necessary because she doesn’t want to hurt them when she dies. Her thought process is so noble it’s hard not to side with her, but love has a way of winning. Thankfully! I appreciate that Green acknowledges that we may be terminal but our love isn’t.
Augustus’s fears of dying (or really what becomes of us after death) were so thoughtful and touching. He stands in good contrast to Hazel, who maybe has accepted that she lives on the edge of life. His faulty idea that someone’s death only matters if they lived some extravagant life really captures teenage desires of fame and recognition. What he really hopes is to be seen, to matter to someone. As Hazel continually points out to him, he does matter … to her, to his friends, to his family.
The scenes where Gus is lamenting his lack of fame reminds me of a scene from Tell the Wolves I’m Home (one of my all-time favorite novels). One of the characters, Toby, says, “Because maybe I don’t want to leave the planet invisible. Maybe I need at least one person to remember something about me.” Man I’m tearing up just writing that quote. I think that’s the same place Augustus is coming from. Sometimes that’s really hard to see. It’s hard to recognize how much we matter to other and how many people we actually do impact.
The ending of the novel is, again, a perfect parallel to An Imperial Affliction. It leaves us hanging! What happens? This is so symbolic to true endings (our endings). They sneak up on us, surprise us. We are left with wonder and lingering hope.
Overall, The Fault in our Stars is genuine. That is what makes it so fantastic. Hazel isn’t some kind of philosophical saint in her last moments telling us how to live our lives. But TFIOS does take a look at very powerful themes and questions them in the light of hopelessness, hopefulness, and love. It is a powerful book that deserves to revisited if only to bring back the same laughs and draw the same tears.
Favorite Passages in The Fault in Our Stars
Depression is a side effect of dying. (3)
“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was no time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.” (12-13)
I’ve always liked people with two names, because you get to make up your mind what to call them” (32)
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like /An Imperial Affliction/, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and /yours/ that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal. (33)
“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said. Isaac: “But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love /is./ Love is keeping the promise anyway.”(60-61)
The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people. (144)
I know that love is a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable (153)
“in freedom, most people find sin” (157, cab driver)
“I don’t believe we return to haunt or comfort the living or anything, but I think something becomes of us.” (168)
“this childish notion that the author has some special insight to the characters in the novel … it’s ridiculous. That novel was composed of scratches on a page, dear. The characters inhabiting it have no life outside of those scratches. What happened to them? They all ceased to exist the moment the novel ended.” (191-92, Van Houten)
— So untrue! This is absolutely the complete antithesis of who Green is as a novelist and the characters he developed. I love this
Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don’t. (201)
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories, and we made the funny choice. (209)
— This could be a summation of the novel. This novel could have made a quick right turn any moment and gone completely depressing. But Green navigated us through using moments of tenderness and humor.
The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness. (212-13)
“I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.” (223, Hazel’s father)
— Probably the most profound statement to me in the entire novel. Knocked the wind out of me because I feel much the same way.
You gave me forever within the numbered days (260)
My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations. (311)
You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world … but you do have some say in who hurts you. (313)
