The Fault in Our Stars

            The book, The Fault in Our Stars, written by John Green is about a seventeen year old girl named Hazel Grace Lancaster. Unlike most girls her age, Hazel Grace suffers from thyroid cancer, which has spread to her lungs. Hazel attends a cancer patient support group, where at one of her meetings, becomes acquainted with Isaac and Augustus. As Hazel and Augustus’s friendship develops, they start to realize that this world is not a “wish –granting factory.” They also realize how insensitive the world truly is. This is seen when Isaac’s girlfriend dumps him after he becomes completely blind. We can also see the frustration that Augustus feels with the realization that there is no sense of heroism in dying from cancer. John Green describes the young adults in the cancer patient support group to give us an insight into their emotions.

One of the patients in the group is named Isaac, and suffers from eye cancer. He is partially blind in the beginning of the story, and is expected to undergo an operation, which will leave him completely blind. As the story begins Isaac says, “It’s looking like I have to get surgery in a couple of weeks, after which I’ll be blind … being blind does sort of suck. My girlfriend helps, though.” Once Isaacs’s girlfriend, Monica, realizes what is going to happen to Isaac she tells him, “she couldn’t handle it.” Isaac is totally destroyed by her decision, not to live up to their promise to always be there for each other. “I kept saying always to her today, always always always, and she just kept talking over me and not saying back. It was like I was already gone, you know? Always was a promise! How can you just break the promise? “Isaac realizes that sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them. He understands how cruel the world can be at times.

Augustus Waters like most of the characters in Greens the Fault in Our Stars are dying from cancer. For him, the biggest fear he faces is that his seventeen year life span would be wasted if he did not leave a mark. Augustus says, “I fear oblivion.” Hazel tells Augustus about a book called Imperial Affliction, where the main character dies of cancer during the authors account, and in fact in the middle of a sentence. Augustus relates to this because he feels that he will be dying in the middle of his life. Because of this, he tries to track down the author Peter Van Houten and finally succeeds in meeting him with Hazel. Both Hazel and Augustus are looking for comfort and direction from Van Houten. However, when they meet Van Houten he says, “ I regret that I cannot indulge your childish whims, but I refuse to pity you in the matter to which you are well accustomed…Like all sick children you say you don’t want pity, but your very existence depends upon it.” This comment reminds Augustus that from the time he was diagnosed with cancer, most people pitted him. However what he was really looking for were people to understand that he was scared of dying, and not leaving his mark on the world. Augustus doesn’t want people to pity him, but rather to remember him for what he has accomplished up to the middle of his “sentence”.

John Green writes a story based on how insensitive the world truly is. Each of the characters in the book is part of a cancer support group, which is faced with the reality that their young lives will be cut short. They come to realize that the world does not only not understand, but is also cruel and unjust. Isaac realizes this when his girlfriend dumps him, because she cannot handle the fact that he will be totally blind. For Augustus, he struggles with the idea of oblivion and leaving his mark on society. After Augustus does die, Hazel posts a comment that reads, “We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim- as you will be-of the universe’s need to make and unmake all that is possible.” Hazel, Isaac, and Augustus learn that the world is not a, “wish- granting factory,” but they still left an impact on the world around them.