The Fault In Our Stars ~ Thematic Essay (rough draft)
In the book The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, there is a main character named Hazel, who has a type of lung cancer. This cancer has always caused her a lot of pain from the start, but after she lost someone she loved, Hazel felt the most pain she has ever felt before. In this book, there was a common theme throughout the story: “Sometimes, in the real world, there are no happy endings.”
Whether it’s physical or emotional pain, there’s nothing you can do to stop it once it has started. In the beginning of the story, one of Hazel and Gus’s friends had a type of eye cancer, and while he was going through a very tough breakup, Gus said this: “That’s the thing about pain, it demands to be
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In one spot of the book, the author decided to have Gus become sick again. “The world is not a wish-granting factory,” Gus said after he told Hazel his cancer was back. I think quote was a way the author was trying to communicate to the reader the theme that I’ve been writing about. Sometimes, there are no happy endings. There is death. There is pain and hurting. There is sickness, weakness and all things that cause people harm. In one particular part of the book, the John Green really showed us Hazel’s pain of losing Gus by using this specific wording to describe how Hazel felt: “I remember once early on when I couldn’t get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. A nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I held up 9 fingers.” In this quote, the author used things such as personification and descriptive details to really show how much pain Hazel was in. And she only rated this a 9 out of 10. But now, the author says that after losing Gus, Hazel rated her pain a 10/10. This really demonstrates how much pain she was in, especially since this pain is worse than the “flames licking inside of her body” pain. “The waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned,” was one of the many ways John Green described Hazel’s pain of losing Gus. If Hazel could stop this pain, she probably would. But since she can’t she’s forced into living and feeling like this, knowing she’ll never see Gus again. The world is not a wish-granting factory. You can’t just decide what does and does not happen to you, even if it doesn’t seem fair or right. The world goes on, no matter
So the cancer patient’s perspective should be the most interesting. “Depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.(Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is really.)”(Green 3) this means that Hazel believes she is going to die and she doesn’t want to fight the cancer because she has no motivation to do so. Hazel knows that love has a lot to do with this whole situation “ as he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” (Green 125) With Hazel falling in love with Augustus made her forget about the cancer she had at times. As the cancer patient you must find things to do to keep your mind of the cancer. The thing Hazel did most the time was spend time with Augustus. “They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't even be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick.” (Picoult 33) . even though Anna isn’t the cancer patient she is still being treated like one because of her older sister Kate who is the one battling Cancer. “Kate hugs a pillow to her stomach, and tears keep streaming down her face. Her pale hair is stuck to her face in damp streaks; her breathing’s too tight”(Picoult 11). This shows that Kate doesn’t really know how to handle that she has cancer and she thinks no one loves her. Kate is ready to stop fighting and just give up at that
In John Green’s book, The Fault In Our Stars, 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster is diagnosed with thyroid cancer that has since spread to her lungs. One day at her cancer support group, she meets Augustus Waters, a 17-year-old boy with osteosarcoma, which resulted in him losing his right leg. Augustus helps Hazel navigate challenges, bringing light through her closed curtains. During a trip to Amsterdam, their connection grows more vital to the point where nothing can tether their love and friendship. While in Amsterdam, they meet their favorite author, who makes fun of their cancer.
In John Green’s book, The Fault In Our Stars, 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster is diagnosed with thyroid cancer that has since spread to her lungs. One day at her cancer support group, she meets Augustus Waters, a 17-year-old boy with osteosarcoma, which resulted in him losing his right leg. Augustus helps Hazel navigate challenges, bringing light through her closed curtains. During a trip to Amsterdam, their connection grows more vital to the point where nothing can tether their love and friendship. While in Amsterdam, they meet their favorite author, who makes fun of their cancer.
To start off, neuroblastoma has changed the way she views the world. Throughout her story, Lauren endures an immense amount of physical pain, therefore she will never see anything as painful again. For example, in the passage it describes the effects of chemo on Lauren’s body, it states “She persevered even when the chemo made her so sick she couldn’t walk more than a few steps without
Firstly, within the novel, it is clear that Hazel is a caring person and is fully aware of what her body’s condition does to her
The book The Fault In Our Stars by John Green is about a teenage girl named Hazel who has had a type of lung cancer since she was thirteen years old. Hazel had always felt pain throughout her life, weather it was emotional or physical pain because of her cancer, or losing important things to her. After Hazel met Augustus though, her thoughts about life began to change. In this book, the author used a lot of figurative language and some symbolism to show the reader exactly how the Hazel and other characters were feeling, so the reader could almost feel what the character was feeling.
Augustus realizes that a lot of people let their cancer identify them, which it seems at first like Hazel does. Through the novel Augustus mentions multiple times how he wants his life to mean something other than cancer. “I fear that I won’t be able to give anything in exchange for my life. If you don’t live a life in service of a greater good, you’ve gotta
One that won’t give up. She goes through chemo-therapy, and depression without any respite. Through resilience and, some would say, God she survived terminal cancer through all odds and even her,☺ I-will-never-make-it-out-alive attitude, making her “Stronger” because of it. However at the start of the book Hazel was not as interested as fighting as she was when she met Augustus. Hazel needed motivation to bring out her inner champion and he was exactly that. An example of her early pessimistic views on her illness was described “Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.” (Green
Hazel grace was remarkably negative during her cancer battle. A quote from the book is, on page 99, Hazel says “I’m like. Like. I’m like a grenade, Mom. I’m a grenade and at some point I’m going to blow up. I just want to stay away from people… because there’s nothing I can do about hurting you” She was saying that she is going to die and she wants to stay away from people so they don’t end up being hurt.
Hazel had terminal cancer, she was quiet, stayed to herself, read and watched TV a lot and didn’t want to be around people until she met Gus. Gus was a good athlete who
She desperately starts to look for this last testament with hope that she could have changed something. Later comes depression; in the finding and hunting for Gus’s last testament she feels frustrated and slowly starts to depress. Until that spark of flame ignites her and she reaches the last stage of grief, which is acceptance. She finally finds the last testament which ends with this: “You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world but you do have a say in who hurts you, and I like my choices, and I hope she likes hers. Okay, Hazel Grace?”. (Green. 313) With her response being: I do. Peter Van Houten became a monster after he lost his daughter to Leukemia. He is a symbol of what you can become if you do not overcome grief. John Green was wise when incorporating him to the novel because he put him as a species of foreshadowing tool of what could have happened if Hazel would not have accepted Augustus’s death. She saw that and she accepted
For this project, I decided to read “The Fault in Our Stars,” a novel written by John Green. This book is about 16 year old Hazel Grace, who is diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She attends weekly Cancer Support Group, where she meets Augustus Waters, a “very intelligent and hot” boy who is currently in remission. They both take a liking for each other, their relationship growing and developing throughout the book as they fight cancer together. Along the way, Hazel learns many important lessons about life.
Augustus makes an impact on Hazel’s life. Augustus and Hazel meet at Support Group and grow a close bond. Augustus and Hazel fall deeply in love throughout the story. When Augustus’ cancer sprung up again, he asked Hazel to write him an eulogy. In Hazel’s eulogy she says, “My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears”(Green 259). This shows that when Augustus dies he will leave a (mental) scar on Hazel, because Hazel will deeply miss Augustus when he dies. Augustus transformed Hazel
Hazel flawlessly describes her pain at multiple points in the book. One definition is, “Even then, it hurt. The pain was always there, pulling me inside of myself, demanding to be felt” (Green 142). Pain is an underlying condition that damages one from the inside out and hides itself until it’s expressed. Pain can represent itself physically, mentally, or psychologically. In this way, it destroys a person; it doesn’t matter how or where the pain started. All humans experience pain and suffering, creating the concept that pain is humanly impossible to avoid. At some point, people must overcome pain to survive which is what Hazel is trying to do with her cancer. Overcoming suffering is a difficult process, especially when it’s always there, however one must cope with pain to live.
Their relationship drives the plot forward because the story is about how they fall into love and support each other through hardships; it drives them to go see Mr Peter Van Houten together and to care for each other even as Augustus is dying. The story also explores the theme of dying as their relationship struggles to keep afloat with Gus suffering from terminal cancer, and Hazel has to deal with grief as she copes with her partner’s death. Most importantly, their relationship highlights the theme of love. Hazel and Gus are devoted to each other up till the very end of the story, as seen from… Their relationship illustrates the enduring and touching power of love.