The fault in our stars The main character in The Fault in our Stars is Hazel Grace Lancaster, who is a seventeen-year-old girl with terminal cancer. Her life is quite dull, everyday repeating same routine. She is home-schooled, so she rarely leaves the house.
She reads a lot, especially this one book called An Imperial Affliction, written by her favorite author Peter van Houten. It isn’t until she meets Augustus Waters that her life changes.It’s when her mom forces her to go to a support group that their worlds collide, and as she gets to know him, she realizes that even though she won’t live to an old age, she’s still alive now and should make the most of it. Augustus is the second main character.
He is an amputee, having to have cut off his leg to survive cancer. He has a very distinctive way of looking at life, always seeing things from another perspective than all the other characters in the book. He notices small details in situations that others have completely missed.As his cancer comes back in the end, he is thankful for having met Hazel Grace, and is glad that he didn’t take life for granted and always did the things that he wanted to do.
One theme of the book is cancer. Not only the dying part of cancer, but furthermore the struggle to live, and what happens to those left behind when a person close to them dies. It’s also about the fear of dying; the fear of oblivion. Another theme is the inevitability of dying, and the tragic of such young people not having time to experience life to its full extent.John Green, the author, also wants to depict the value of life, and that no matter how short or long time you have here on Earth, you should make the most of it. He also mentions leaving a mark and being remembered after you die, and stated that it is better to be loved deeply than to be loved widely.
The novel is told in a first-person view, through the eyes of Hazel Grace. The reader gets to experience her emotions, and see things from her perspective, making it easier to understand the love between the two characters, and the pain and panic of dying.There are virtually no flashbacks, and there are no hints as to what may happen to the characters in the future. The novel basically revolves around the present, which gives a realistic reflection of the characters lives, because their future is uncertain. The characters don’t make any great plans for their future, since they know they most certainly won’t have one. The language in the book is fairly advanced, with words such as promiscuity, fortifying, ailment and bequeathing finding their way into the story.
Since both Augustus and Hazel Grace are intelligent and speak in this manner, it gives the novel a more realistic touch, because the whole book comes alive with the essence of the characters. The whole novel is adjusted to the characters, and it makes the characters included in more than just speech and thoughts. John Green uses a lot of metaphors in his writing, for example “…I fell in love the way you fall asleep; slowly, and then all at once. I thought it was easier to understand exactly what the author wants to describe when using a metaphor, because it incorporates different senses, and also puts abstracts concepts into concrete terms.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes realistic and relatable stories. Although this is an unusually grim one, it is nonetheless a divine love story. Since it doesn’t only revolve around two people falling in love it is not a stereotypical girl-meets-boy-story, but a down-to-earth portrayal of what life really is like.I was hooked from the first page, mostly because I have never encountered a book written in such way. John Green guides the reader from the first word to the last, with a rich vocabulary and an intriguing plot with depth.
He writes about a sensitive subject, without either too much or too little medical information. To sum it all up, if you enjoy reading books that are well written and that are about love, life and unpredictability, then The Fault in our Stars is a book for you.
