The Fault in Our Stars

My book club and I just finished reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. For those of you who have not joined the growing group of people who have read this book, it centers around Hazel, a 16 year old three year survivor of stage 4 thyroid cancer. For the past three years, her lungs had been alternately filling with and draining out water, causing a slow and inevitable drowning. She had been living a life of watching television, going to a support group, and going to school, in a steady circle. But her life was soon drastically altered by the appearance of the dashingly handsome, charming, witty, and one-legged Augustus Waters. He himself was now FOC (free of cancer) after his leg had been amputated. Upon meeting at support group, Hazel and Gus immediately formed a connection, and the connection brought a whole new phenomenon to Hazel's life: love.

A question my book club brought up prior to reading this book was "what obstacles do the characters face?" I think that the obvious major obstacle Hazel faces, cancer, which holds not only death but the destruction of body and mind, actually aplies to almost everyone in the book. Hazel and her friend Issac, are affected by cancer because it is currently invading and destroying their bodies, leading to the inevitable blindness of Issac and death of Hazel. They have to cope with the facts that their lives and sight are on time limit. Augustus faces cancer in a different way; he sees it as something that has destroyed his physicality, his talent at basketball. what Gus wants most, live the majority of people, is to be special, to leave a mark on the world. But ***SPOILER ALERT*** when his cancer returns, he has to face that he will never be famous, or make a world wide impact, he will just be Augustus. These all examples of the direct affects of cancer and its physical destruction.

Cancer, however, destroys indirectly as well, affecting those who watch it overtake someone—namely, Hazel's parents. While perfectly healthy themselves, they have to overcome the obstacle of cancer affecting their daughter. This is difficult, because they do have to deal with all of the effects of cancer vicariously through someone they love, not able to stop it. Here, the obstacle is not cancer, but helplessness, a side affect of the disease. All of the parents featured in the book must deal with the fact that they can't stop cancer from claiming their children. Even Peter Van Houten, the author, living in Amsterdam, of An Imperial Affliction, who's daughter died at amoung age of the disease.

In conclusion, I think that cancer, with all of the emotional side affects it entails, touches everyone in the book. It shows how interconnected everyone is, both in and out of the book. It shows how if you care about someone, you live with them, not as a bystander. I thought that this was an amazing book, and while I don't recommend this to those who dislike sad endings, I do to those who want an honest, emotional, and clever read.