Literature Analysis #3

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Literature Analysis #3

1. Summary: The exposition begins with Hazel Grace. She is a mature seventeen year old with cancer that affects her breathing. Her parents are very supportive and encourage Hazel Grace to take community classes and go to a support group for those who suffer medical conditions. Hazel Grace is comfortable with the fact that she will die soon, but goes to the support group to please her mother. There, she meets Augustus Waters who suffers from osteosarcoma causing him to have a prosthetic leg. Immediately, the two teenagers are attracted to one another and begin spending more time together. In the rising action, the reader goes through the friendship that surely grows into a beautiful relationship that Hazel Grace calls it, “their little infinity.” Hazel Grace recommends Augustus Waters to read her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. It’s a novel about a girl with cancer and her life journey that Hazel automatically relates to. Waters loves the book as well as Hazel Grace. He stands by her through her medical roller-coaster and she does the same. Waters receives an email from Peter Van Houten’s assistant inviting them to consult with Van Housten himself and answer some questions they have about the ending. Augustus Waters spends him cancer “wish” on a trip to Amsterdam to visit Van Houten and vacation together, along with Hazel Grace’s parents. The meeting with Van Housten is very disappointing due to his drunk, indolent, and angry character. Grace and Waters try to enjoy the rest of their time in Amsterdam and become intimate on a new level. To put a slight damper on the trip, Waters announces his cancer has returned and will die in a couple months. The falling action is consumed in Hazel Grace’s attentiveness towards Augustus Waters. They plan his funeral and she writes him a final letter and they reenact his funeral. The resolution concludes the story with Augustus Waters dying and Hazel Grace attending his funeral. She is surprised to see Van Housten there as a surprise from Waters and sends him away. Before he leaves, Housten confesses his true motif for writing the story; his daughter died from cancer.

2. Theme: There are many themes within this novel, yet the one that stood out to me the most was identity. Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters struggle with their identify. When Augustus Waters asked Hazel Grace what her story is, then she replied with her medical story of her suffering from cancer and having terrible lungs. She never saw herself as beautiful, but only as a teenage girl with poor lungs who would eventually die soon. Augustus Waters brought significance into her life and showed her how incredible and unique she was. Augustus Waters, also, struggled with his identity. He wanted to be remembered and leave the Earth with a name of importance. He saw himself as insignificant and that brought him insecurity. Grace taught him to value the people who he loves the most and find importance in being everything to someone. This struggle was significant and interesting because the audience is reading about the struggle for identity before death for teenagers; an internal struggle that normally is reserved for a mature, elder person nearing the inevitable.

3. The author’s tone, I would describe as being very genuine and honest. Hazel Grace’s narration is very open and sincere to the reader. We learn about Hazel’s respect towards her parents through her thought process of whether or not to attend the support group. She relates the circumstance to her experience in the hospital, getting injected with poison from medical staff with only eighteen months of training. Her desire to make her parents happy is inevitable and never-ending. Another example is when Augustus says, “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” This is pure passion and demonstrates the romantic, genuine, raw tone that is displayed throughout the novel. Van Houten is honest in his remark to Hazel and Augustus, “Sick children inevitably become arrested: You are fated to live out your days as the child you were when diagnosed, the adults, we pity this, so we pay for your treatments, for your oxygen machines. We give you food and water though you are unlikely to live long enough--You are a side effect, of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation.” Although this is absolutely harsh, it is honest of his feelings and, as a reader, I respect the opportunity to get to know each character through these honest remarks.

4. Ten literary elements/techniques that I observed that strengthened my understanding of the author's purpose, the text's theme and/or my sense of the tone includes allusions, Bildungsroman, characterization, point of view, euphemisms, tragedy, Epiphanies, and pathos.

Irony: It is ironic that Augustus Waters ends up dying first because, throughout the entire story, the audience is lead to believe that Hazel Grace’s terminal cancer will end her life first. However, Waters dies before Hazel. Augustus’s positive personality and masculine role of taking care of Hazel makes him seem stronger and healthier, but ironically, he is more unhealthy and ends up dying first. “Augustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral, at Memorial, in the UCU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also, made of him.” (p.261)

Personification: hazel Grace’s cancer is seen as a person instead of a disease. It is seen as a murderer instead of some evil mutation without a soul. “It demands to be felt,” on page 63 describes how the cancer is such a significant part of their lives and that demands attentive care or it will act out in rage just like a person would.

Allusion: Hazel Grace alludes to a lot of things throughout the story. For example, “Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers, that she is so sick; yous, that you are so well. Were she better or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of the stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’” Normally Hazel alludes to the bible, but she also alludes to several books because of her love for reading. She is a very education girl for her age so all these references and relationships that she ties her everyday experiences demonstrates this educational character of hers.

Bildungsroman: This talks about Hazel Grace’s development as a character educationally and spiritually. The entire narrative revolves around Hazel’s character development with her and Augustus, her identity before death, and her relationship spiritually that gives her strength and hope through it all. “I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” (p.260) Hazel was a completely different person when she said this at Augustus’s prefuneral. At this time she was confident, strong, special, and felt important.

Characterization: Other characters try to be nice and understand, but never truly understand Augustus and Hazel like they do for each other. It only took a couple of days before they connected on such a personal level. “You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can’t know, sweetie, because you’ve never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows.” (p.103) Hazel’s parents are depicted as caring and love their daughter to pieces, but don’t understand Hazel like Augustus does.

Point of View: This is probably the most important literary element of the novel because, without this, we would never understand Hazel or Augustus on such a personal level which makes the whole novel so significant, interesting, inspiring, and beautiful. “I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and hew as not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space.” (p.72) The audience understands Hazel through her thoughts, stream of conscious, and point of view.

Euphemisms: Hazel likes to be perceived as simple and nothing exaggerated, but the reader catches her exaggerations from time to time. For example, Hazel and Augustus are tiered of life and cannot stand their circumstances. “It was unbearable. The whole thing. Every second worse than the last.” (p.262) This is when Augustus dies and Hazel was devastated, but she was able to make it through even though she said it was “unbearable.”

Tragedy: The story is tragic because Augustus and Hazel and so young and suffer cancer. They find every reason to live with their extreme maturity granting them such strength spiritually. It’s tragic that such intelligent, spirited, mature, beautiful people who found a love so rare have to part due to cancer.. especially at such a young age.

Epiphanies: Hazel’s epiphany in Amsterdam changes the way she views the world after meeting Van Houten. “Something inside me welled up and I reached down and smacked the swollen hand that held the glass of Scotch. What remained of the Scotch splashed across the vast expanse of his face, the glass bouncing off his nose then spinning balletically through the air.” (p.193-194) She built her life off of his book and meeting him in person made her realize that everything she admired and everything she answered to had been a lie. That’s when she understood that life could disappoint and that she was the strength that made it through, not the author that gave her strength. She also realized that there isn’t an answer to everything.

Pathos: This novel’s tragedy of cancer and death appealed to pathos, the emotional side of the audience. “I wrapped my arms all the way around my mom’ smiddle and they held on to me for house while the tide rolled in.” (p.267) This was after Augustus died and Hazel was complexly shattered. Her situation created for an empathetic feel from the reader through pathos.