The Fault in Our Stars essays PDF

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The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) ‘… courage [is] not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.’ Nelson Mandela. In an essay of 350 to 400 words evaluate the extent to which the characters in The Fault in our Stars overcome their fears. 2019 Courage is a central theme of the novel as the characters confront the painful realities of life threatened by cancer. It is the extent to which they are each able to overcome their fears that becomes the measure of their character. When we first meet Hazel, we realise she has withdrawn from the world. She knows her thyroid cancer, while being managed temporarily, will ultimately prevail. Hazel faces her condition full-on, without avoidance and complaining. She labels severe pain as a ‘9’ in hospital. She never allows her parents to refer to her death as an ‘if’, insisting they know it is a ‘when’. Her coping mechanism has been a brutal confrontation of the realities of her situation. This is a mark of her courage; an unflinching recognition of her premature end. Then she meets Augustus Waters, a cancer survivor who makes her realise she has been hiding from life. Hazel has not allowed herself to hope. Augustus shows her that life can be lived fully right up to the last. Where Hazel’s courage has been passive, Augustus presents her with active courage. His talent as a childhood basketball star has been cruelly terminated with the amputation of a leg due to osteosarcoma and he yearns to be someone famous or heroic, to serve others so his life will have mattered. He loves films and computer games which feature selfless heroes, The 300, V for Vendetta and Max Mayhem. It is up to Hazel to show him that just being, and loving are enough. Augustus has a quirky sense of humour which includes dark comedic references like his fake smoking. This connects him to Hazel who also uses irony extensively to shield herself from feeling fear. While Hazel has tried to protect people from the ‘grenade’ effect her illness has on them as one side of the coin of courage, Augustus has done exactly the opposite. He has not flinched from embracing the pain of others. His previous girlfriend, Caroline Mathers underwent a hideous personality change while in the thrall of brain cancer and treated him and everyone around her dreadfully but, while he felt he could help her, he remained a friend. He is selflessly there for Isaac; he gives Isaac the space to grieve when his second eye is removed, and his blindness brings about the end of his love affair with Monica. Isaac believes in love and promises – he expects his courage to be matched in his partner. It is significant that Hazel does not entirely blame Monica for succumbing to her fears. This is why she is so hesitant to take on a romantic relationship with Gus. She will feel responsible for his suffering when she dies. The devastating irony of the novel is that Hazel will be the one who watches as the boy she loves comes to terms with his early demise. When Hazel and Gus meet Van Houten, the author of the book An Imperial Affliction, they are given a speaking example of someone who has taken the coward’s way out under the strain of a life lived in the shadow of cancer. He is drowning in self-pity and self-blame. At the time of their first meeting in Amsterdam, the lovers are shocked and disappointed that their hero has turned out to be an angry and drunken lout. However, Hazel’s honesty and fearlessness prevail when she acknowledges the

truths hidden in the author’s verbal tirade – that her need to find out the ending of the book which she loves so much is just a disguise. What she really needs is to be certain that her ‘book’ will end with a sense of closure for her parents, that their marriage will survive, that they will move on and still live meaningful lives. In all Hazel’s courage, her concern is less for herself and more for those around her, affected by her impending death. It is characteristic of Gus that in his final days he organises his own ‘funeral’ and asks his closest friends to present their eulogy for him. Here his courage is not so much in accepting his situation as in confronting the grief of others at his passing. This is Hazel’s worst fear and Augustus shows her how to overcome it. Then his last heroic act is in the steps he takes to ensure he returns the favour to Hazel. He would have wanted to be there for her, to comfort and support her in her last days. He reaches out after death and provides a eulogy for her. In the end, Gus teaches Hazel to have the courage to love. While losing Gus has been devastating for her, they are each the richer for the experience. He saves her by providing an example of how to go on living after suffering a terrible loss. She overcomes her fears for her parents as they reassure her of the strength of their relationship. Their courage is proved by the future they are planning without her and she is satisfied.

The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) In the novel we find that cancer not only destroys lives, it destroys love. In an essay of 350 – 400 words, critically discuss the validity of this statement . 2018

In the novel we see the devastating effect cancer has on the lives of the people who are afflicted by it and everyone close to them. But the message that comes through is that love does triumph over pain. Hazel Lancaster and her family are profoundly affected by the fact that she has thyroid cancer. It is terminal but under control and the family lives in the shadow of her inevitable death. But she is doing her best to live a ‘normal’ life. She attends college and does things that most teens enjoy – shopping, spending time with friends, reading and watching her favourite TV shows. Hazel is very conscious of the effect that her situation has on others. She refers to herself as a ‘grenade’, an agent of destruction to everyone who cares about her and as a result, she is very wary of getting too close to anyone. To her, cancer and love are mutually exclusive. Hazel has a cynical acceptance of the reality of her disease and the question mark that hovers over her future. She watches the tragedy of Isaac’s love affair and is more understanding of Monica’s choice to opt out. She thinks it is too much to expect a girl to manage a relationship with a blind boy. Her main concern is also that her disease will drive her parents apart as it has been recorded in many other instances. In fact, this is her biggest fear and launches her on a quest for understanding symbolised by her need to discover what becomes of the people at the end of the novel An Imperial Affliction. When we get to know Peter Van Houten we learn that he too is a casualty of cancer. His daughter’s death has left him riddled with guilt and despair. As a result, he has become a recluse, addicted to alcohol and unable to write. In his pain, he has distanced himself from love and lives a bitter and angry existence. When Hazel and Augustus interrupt his life of self-pity, he is given an opportunity to choose love and we are never quite sure whether he will have the courage to reach out for it in the end. It is when Augustus meets Hazel that the balance seems to shift in favour of love. At the beginning of the novel, he is in remission after an operation in which he lost his leg to osteosarcoma. Of all the characters, Gus seems to be the most open to love in the face of the destruction induced by cancer. He has come out of a relationship with Caroline Mathers who died from a brain tumour and yet, somehow, he seems to be untainted by it. If anything, Gus seeks out love as a way of defying death. He is open and accepting in character and of love. His friendship with Isaac is unaffected by his blindness and he falls in love with Hazel even though she is terminally ill. When the tables are turned and it emerges that it is Augustus who must die, Hazel learns how love can be even more intense when it occurs in the face of death. She tells Gus that he gave her ‘a forever in the numbered days’. She finds that love has given her life meaning even though that life might be very short. Augustus’s parents are devastated at their loss, but the whole family comes together and is possibly even closer, having shared this suffering. Hazel’s parents also demonstrate the strength of their relationship and lean towards each other, sharing the hardships involved and the sacrifices that they must make to navigate this difficult path.

It is probably a mark of the courage of the main characters that they do not permit cancer to take away their humanity. In the end, the novel shows us that we can choose love, even in the face of tragedy.

The Fault in Our Stars (John Green) ‘John Green’s decision to include a novel within his novel, The Fault in Our Stars is a distracting and unnecessary ploy.’ Write an essay of 350 to 400 words in which you respond critically to this statement. Provide complete motivation/proof for your ideas through extensive reference to the text. 2017 The theme of cancer is extended in this story. It is about a girl who has cancer so Hazel can identify with it and it also links with Gus’s character on this level. The main character Anna is very ‘real’ about her ‘affliction’ which is the same attitude adopted by Hazel about her illness. It is introduced early in the novel, just as Hazel and Gus get to know each other and they each respond to the ending in the same way. The novel ends in mid-sentence and they both want to know what happens to the other characters. In this way, the novel brings them together in a shared concern. It triggers Gus’s decision to give his ‘wish’ to Hazel and so that they can go to Amsterdam and meet the author. It is the vehicle whereby Gus can help Hazel. Through this mechanism Gus’s unselfishness is revealed, his need to be of service to others, to be a hero. He traces the reclusive author and surprises Hazel with his suggestion and their visit to Amsterdam becomes the background to their love affair. The novel also functions as a metaphor for Hazel’s quest in the novel. When they arrive in Amsterdam, Peter Van Houten asks Hazel why she is so obsessed with what becomes of the characters in the book. We begin to see that Hazel is actually looking for answers in her own life. She wants to be sure that her parents are going to be alright when she dies. She mentions a statistic that over half the marriages of parents whose children die of cancer end in divorce. She is also concerned that her mother has made a life out of caring for her and will feel that her life has no purpose without Hazel. Hazel has transferred this anxiety to the characters in the novel. She asks Van Houten in her letter to him what becomes of Anna’s mother, whether she marries the Dutch Tulip Man and whether the two friends in the novel stay together and even what becomes of Sisyphus the hamster. This shows how much this issue matters to her. On another level, through An Imperial Affliction the author, Peter Van Houten’s life becomes intertwined with those of Hazel and Gus. Hazel is not aware that his novel is actually biographical and that the girl in the story was his own daughter who died of cancer. Van Houten becomes an example of what becomes of some parents of cancer victims. He is a drunk who has sunk into a pit of despair and self-pity, tortured by the fact that their efforts to save his daughter simply extended her suffering. Gus’s death brings Van Houten to America. Hazel has looked to him to provide answers to her existential questions, but he is lost himself. He doesn’t want to provide easy answers to her questions because there are no easy answers to the questions of life and death and also because he has failed at life in so many ways himself. Hazel wants him to rescue her but in an ironic twist, she and Gus provide him with the material to save himself. She is an example to him that his work, his art matters. They are also an example to him of how to face this disease with courage. In the end we are not sure that he will be brave enough to accept what has happened and choose to accept his destiny as a gifted writer.

Having not provided solutions for Hazel she is brought to confront her parents with her concerns and this gives her the answers and reassurances that she has been looking for. Her mother reveals that she has been doing a masters degree in social work and intends to work as a counsellor for families in the grip of cancer and her parents promise her that they will not part. So indirectly Van Houten does help Hazel. Just as this connection with Van Houten helps Gus to woo Hazel, he also becomes the mechanism whereby Gus wishes her farewell. Gus reaches out to Van Houten at the very end of his life to help him write Hazel’s eulogy. In this way Gus gives him an opportunity to redeem himself. When he tells Gus that he has nothing to add to his tribute to Hazel, he is acknowledging that Gus is right about what an amazing person she is and he is also showing Hazel that a work created by an artist, even if it is a letter, should be respected – it has its own integrity and should not be tampered with. By including this novel in his novel, John Green is completely consistent with the overall style of The Fault in Our Stars which contains many references to other books and poems. Green has selected material both real and imaginary to reflect the characters of both Hazel and Gus. Hazel loves the philosophical material in An Imperial Affliction and American poets like T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost and Emily Dickenson. This shows how clever and sensitive she is and reflects the way that she feels at different times in the novel. In the same way, Gus’s love of the Max Mayhem books, and the video game Counterintelligence reflect his wish to die gloriously and to help others. As a device, it is very effective....