The Fault in Our Stars

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars"

When you teach English Language Arts to high school students, you become accustomed to the fact that your audience is not always as enthusiastic about books and language as you are.  Therefore, when even non-readers are enthused about a book, you take notice.  Such was the case for me with the much-maligned and praised Twilight series, The Hunger Games and Divergent series, and this recent novel, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  I make it a point to read these books, because if my students are interested in something, I want to know why.

My first summer adventure in reading did not disappoint.  The above quotation from the novel sums up a reader's dilemma.  A true reader will encounter books that move them to that point of "evangelical zeal", but what to do with that zeal?  A reader who encounters such a book runs the risk of recommending the book to someone who does not eventually share that enthusiasm, which then disappoints the reader.

The Fault in our Stars is such a book for me.  It has been a long time since I have found a book that I could easily have stayed up all night to finish. 

A teenage romance whose principal characters are cancer patients.  A novel about cancer patients that presents the feelings of cancer patients in a realistic manner.  A novel about teenagers that captures their insecurities, mannerisms, and strengths.

Hazel often comments about the "typical" cancer kid story: the child battles bravely, never complaining in spite of the suffering the treatments cause, and so on.  But neither Hazel, Augustus, nor Isaac (all members of the Cancer Kid Support Group) can always be described this way.  Hazel does not seem to want to be viewed this way.  She says to her parents, “I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties, okay?” 

Augustus is similarly realistic about his diagnosis: '“Some wars," he said dismissively. "What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart is made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner."'  The honesty with which Hazel and Augustus's romance is portrayed makes the overall story that much more poignant.  Having watched someone die of cancer, I could appreciate more what he went through.

It is tragic when someone suffers from a terminal disease, and the tragedy is magnified when that someone is young.  It is obvious that young people like Hazel and Augustus can't experience life in the same way that those without terminal illness can.  The most striking element of this novel was that Augustus, Hazel, and Isaac were "regular" teenagers, with one minor difference: they had cancer.  Hazel and Augustus experience a "typical" high school romance with the added complication of cancer. Isaac experiences a horrible breakup in light of a second surgery for his recurrence of cancer.  He's broken by his girlfriend leaving him AND by the recurrence of his cancer (which has made him completely blind).

On the back of my copy of the novel, the novel is described as "insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw".  Whether you have lived with childhood (or any kind) cancer or not, you will gain an understanding of the disease and how it affects everyone involved in the "fight."

Finally, a significant insight I gained from this novel, in the words of Hazel:

"According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul."

But this is the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept him alive, but not alive enough."