The Fault in Our Stars Summary and Analysis PDF

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The Fault in Our Stars Summary and Analysis...

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Overview In writing The Fault in Our Stars, novelist John Green tells a story of young love with no sense of futurity, no belief in a happily ever after. On top of that, Green rejects the sentimental clichés that tend to structure cancer narratives, about the nobility of suffering and struggle, and the redemption that validates pain and loss. The result is a novel where love is inextricably bound up with fear, death, and merciless physical pain—but is still, somehow, worthwhile. Hazel Lancaster, age 16, and Augustus Waters, age 17, meet and fall in love at a support group for teens with cancer. Augustus, once a rising basketball star, has lost a leg to bone cancer, and Hazel carries an oxygen tank everywhere she goes because of thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs. The two are attracted to each other immediately; they share a bright, restless intelligence and a skeptical view of the insipid platitudes that adults use to whitewash the horrible reality of their diseases. Augustus pursues Hazel determinedly from the beginning, but she is hesitant to begin a romantic relationship, despite being deeply attracted to him. Hazel’s cancer is terminal, and she doesn’t want to allow anyone besides her parents to become attached to her, knowing that they will suffer when she dies; “I’m a grenade,” she tells her mother one day (99). Their relationship develops when they take a trip to Amsterdam, funded by the Genie Foundation, a fictional equivalent of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Augustus, who qualifies for a wish through the loss of his leg, has arranged the trip so Hazel can meet her favorite author, Peter Van Houten; Van Houten has agreed by email to discuss his only book, An Imperial Affliction, with them in person. An Imperial Affliction is a sacred book to Hazel; she identifies with the heroine, Anna, who dies of leukemia, and is consumed with the desire to know what happens to the book’s other characters after it ends. In Amsterdam, Hazel and Augustus share a romantic evening together before a crushingly disappointing encounter with their literary idol. Van Houten is drunk and contemptuous; he refuses to answer Hazel’s questions about the characters and mocks her for asking them. They leave his house in disgust, and after a painstaking climb to the top of the Anne Frank House, Hazel impulsively kisses Augustus, and when they get back to the hotel, they have sex for the first time. On their last day in Amsterdam, Augustus gives Hazel terrible news, which he has delayed telling her in order not to ruin their trip. His cancer has returned and spread throughout his

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body: he is not only sicker than she is, he is incurably, mortally ill. Hazel stays by his side as the cancer slowly, then more and more quickly, destroys Augustus physically, emotionally, and mentally. First he can no longer walk, and then he can no longer feed himself or control his bowels; finally he can barely stay awake or hold a conversation. As Hazel watches in despair, his intelligence, optimistic spirit, and eventually his sense of humor fade, too, under the strain of strong medication and stronger pain. He dies in the hospital about a month after they return from the Netherlands. Hazel is overcome by grief but also strengthened by it. She realizes that the pain she once tried to save Augustus from—of loving someone only to lose them to cancer—is worth suffering for the experience of true love, and that their relationship was limited in time but limitless in depth of feeling. She gives a sentimental, hackneyed eulogy at his funeral, not because she believes in the cancer clichés now, but because they comfort his parents, and she faces life after Augustus more openly, eager to observe the universe.

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses Chapters 1-3 Chapter 1 Summary When the book opens, the narrator, 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster, is heading to a weekly support group meeting for teens with cancer. Hazel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 13; it spread to her lungs and nearly killed her, but an experimental drug called Phalanxifor stopped the tumor growth. She now carries an oxygen tank everywhere and has an uncertain, but greatly diminished, life expectancy. Hazel hates going to the group; she finds the discourse of hope, strength, and faith that pervades discussions of cancer—“everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning” (5)—sentimental and fake. She laughs at the group leader, who refers to the church basement where they meet as “the Literal Heart of Jesus.” But her mother wants her to go, so she gets through the meetings by exchanging sarcastic faces with a boy named Isaac, who has lost one of his eyes to cancer. On the day the novel begins, a new person shows up at the group: Isaac’s friend, 17-year-old Augustus Waters, who has lost a leg below the knee to osteosarcoma but is now “NEC” (no evidence of cancer).Augustus is attractive, smart, and charming; he stares at Hazel and even brings her out of her shell during the group discussion when he says that he fears oblivion, being forgotten, above all things. After the session, they meet; Hazel is horrified to see him take out a cigarette, but he explains that he only holds them, unlit, as a metaphor for keeping Death close but not allowing it to harm you. When he invites her over to watch a movie at his house, Hazel impulsively decides to go.

Chapter 2 Summary Augustus, who drives terribly with his prosthetic leg, takes Hazel to his house, where she meets his parents. The Waters house is full of what his parents call “Encouragements,” or positive, inspiring messages like “Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?” printed and crocheted on various knickknacks and decorations in every room (34). Hazel and Augustus talk about their lives and their experiences with cancer and then watch the movie V for Vendetta; Augustus says Hazel is as beautiful as Natalie Portman. Hazel tells Augustus about her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. This novel means so much to Hazel that she hesitates to recommend it: “there are books [...] you can’t tell people about,

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books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal” (33). But she tells Augustus about it anyway, and he promises to read it, facetiously insisting that she promise to read a favorite book of his—a video-game novelization called The Price of Dawn—in exchange. She takes the book and finds his number written on the inside cover.

Chapter 3 Summary Hazel reads The Price of Dawn in one night and reflects on the appeal of a fictional series where the hero faces extreme danger but always survives. The next day, her mother wants to celebrate Hazel’s thirty-third “half-birthday”—because of Hazel’s illness, her mom tries to celebrate every possible occasion and even create new ones, something Hazel calls “celebration maximization” (39). Hazel celebrates by going to the mall with Kaitlyn, a friend from before Hazel became too sick to attend school. (She has since gotten her GED and attends community college classes). They meet at the food court and go shoe shopping, with Kaitlyn talking about her boyfriends and the people at school. Kaitlyn is sophisticated and popular, but Hazel finds “it [can] never again feel natural to talk to her. Any attempts to feign normal social interactions [are] just depressing because it [is] so glaringly obvious that everyone I [speak] to for the rest of my life [will] feel awkward and self-conscious around me” (47). Hazel excuses herself after a while and finds a quiet corner of the mall to read by herself. A young girl approaches Hazel and asks about the tubes in her nose; Hazel lets her try them on briefly, wishing more people would be as direct and unafraid of her condition.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis ’Hazel’s world is very small: too ill to attend school, she fills her days with books and TV, interacting with nobody but her parents. But the novel’s first-person narrative gives us access to Hazel’s thoughts, and her inner life is as rich as her outer world is restricted. The narrative is set up, in these early chapters, to emphasize this disparity between Hazel’s inner and outer worlds: a brief event —like Patrick, the leader of the Support Group, introducing himself by talking about his own experiences with cancer and survival—will be followed by a lengthy, scathing critique, directed by Hazel to the reader, of the insipid, delusive culture of cancer survivorship to which this seemingly innocuous occasion belongs. She is undoubtedly intelligent, but she uses this intelligence only to point out what’s wrong with everything. Augustus Waters enters the narrative as a challenge and a threat to Hazel’s cynical worldview; he is facetious and outgoing, and his intelligence equals hers. The action of the plot in this section repeatedly places her in new surroundings or unfamiliar circumstances: in Augustus’s car or at his house, absorbed in his favorite movies and books, as the object of a

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boy’s flirtatious advances. By taking Hazel out of her cloistered routine, Augustus chips away at the bitter alienation that structures her point of view.

Chapters 4-6 Chapter 4 Summary Hazel tells a bit more about her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction. The novel centers on a girl named Anna, who suffers from a rare form of blood cancer and decides to make the world a better place by starting The Anna Foundation for People with Cancer Who Want to Cure Cholera. Anna lives with her mother, a gardener with a passion for tulips who falls in love with a mysterious and eccentric trader known only as the Dutch Tulip Man. Anna wonders whether he is a con man, but when he and her mother are about to marry, the book suddenly ends, midsentence. As much as Hazel loves the book, the unfinished ending drives her crazy:

I [understand] the story ended because Anna died or got too sick to write and this midsentence thing [is] supposed to reflect how life really ends and whatever […] but there [are] characters other than Anna in the story, and it [seems] unfair that I [will] never find out what happened to them (49).

Hazel has written numerous letters to Van Houten care of his publisher, asking what happens to Anna’s mother, the Dutch Tulip Man, and the other characters, but has never received a response. Van Houten moved to the Netherlands after publishing An Imperial Affliction and has never written any other books. When Augustus finishes An Imperial Affliction, he texts Hazel to express his own frustration with the book’s nonending and to invite her over. Hazel goes to his house, where Isaac is sitting in Augustus’s room, playing video games and unabashedly crying. His girlfriend, Monica, has dumped him after learning that Isaac will lose his one remaining eye to cancer. She didn’t want to dump a blind guy, so she ended the relationship before his operation. Isaac is inconsolable; the normal angst and melodrama of a teenage breakup is compounded, for him, by the knowledge that he will soon be blind. While Hazel thinks about the impossibility of relationships for cancer kids, Augustus encourages Isaac to express his pain and rage by smashing some of Augustus’s old basketball trophies because, he says—quoting An Imperial Affliction—“pain demands to be felt” (63).

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Chapter 5 Summary After the night when Isaac breaks the trophies, Hazel waits anxiously for Augustus to call. When he does call about a week later, he has incredible news: he has gotten in touch with Peter Van Houten through an email to his Dutch assistant, Lidewij. In his email, Van Houten thanks Augustus for reaching out but says he has no plans to write anything else. Having gotten hold of his email address, Hazel excitedly composes a message to Van Houten, asking once again what happens to the characters in An Imperial Affliction after the novel ends. While waiting for him to respond, Hazel visits Isaac in the hospital, where he has undergone the operation to remove his remaining eye. They trade cynical jokes about nurses on cancer wards and whether his other senses will sharpen to compensate for the lack of sight. When Van Houten finally responds, he refuses to tell Hazel the fates of the characters—but promises to meet and discuss them with her if she should ever make it to Amsterdam. Hazel, wild with hope, calls to her mom and asks if they can take a trip there, but her mom explains that they can’t afford it. On the phone, Hazel laments to Augustus that she’s already used her “wish” from the Genie Foundation (a fictional version of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which provides wishes to sick children) on a trip to Disney World when she was 13. That weekend, Augustus takes Hazel on a surprise picnic to the sculpture garden at a local museum, where they admire a skeleton sculpture called Funky Bones. After giving Hazel tulips, orange juice, and a Dutch cheese sandwich, Augustus announces that he has used his wish—saved up from when he lost his leg—to schedule a trip to Amsterdam with Hazel to meet Peter Van Houten. They almost kiss, but Hazel shrinks away.

Chapter 6 Summary After a consultation with Hazel’s oncologist, the Amsterdam trip is approved, on the condition that Hazel’s mom goes along to monitor her condition. Hazel talks to Kaitlyn about her reluctance to enter into a romantic relationship with Augustus, despite having feelings for him. Out of curiosity, Hazel Goggles his former girlfriend, Caroline Mathers, who passed away from cancer a year ago, and reads the grief messages posted by her friends and family on social media, as well as the notes Caroline’s mother kept about her deteriorating condition. This confirms Hazel’s feeling that it is irresponsible for someone with her disease to fall in love or have a relationship, because her early death will cause only pain to everyone who loves her, as she tells her parents: “‘I’m like a grenade, Mom. I’m a grenade and someday I’m going to blow up and I’d like to minimize the casualties, okay?’” (99).Hazel texts Augustus to

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tell him they can’t be together because she doesn’t want to hurt him one day, and she goes to sleep after her parents reassure her that “the joy you bring us is greater than the sadness we feel about your illness” (102). She wakes in the middle of the night in excruciating pain.

Chapters 4-6 Analysis The incipient romance between Hazel and Augustus is explored, indirectly, through two other stories of relationships between cancer kids: Isaac and his girlfriend Monica, and Augustus and his girlfriend Caroline Mathers. These relationships don’t end well. When Monica dumps Isaac on the eve of the surgery that will take his remaining eye, he is heartbroken, but Hazel sees Monica’s side: it isn’t fair, she reasons, to expect Monica to bear the suffering Isaac’s illness will cause. The story of Caroline Mathers and her agonizing death from brain cancer reinforces Hazel’s idea that to love a cancer kid is, inevitably, to suffer—and, therefore, it is wrong to let anyone love a “grenade” like her (99). This is Hazel’s central moral dilemma, and the novel’s as well: is it worthwhile to love despite the grief and suffering it brings? The other major theme that develops in this section is the value of literature, and literary authority, as a guiding light in life’s struggles. As Hazel comes to the pessimistic decision that she cannot pursue her feelings for Augustus because she’s a “grenade” (99), she is simultaneously buoyed by the prospect of meeting her favorite author, Peter Van Houten. An Imperial Affliction is like a holy book to her, and her burning questions about what happens after the novel ends echo the questions about the afterlife that a Christian, for instance, might seek answers for in the Bible—or from the Bible’s “author.” The juxtaposition of these themes —a turning away from human relationships and an expectation of enlightenment from an otherworldly author—will eventually come to a head.

Chapters 7-9 Chapter 7 Summary Hazel is rushed to the hospital and wakes up in the ICU, where she is told that her lungs had been taking on fluid again, which starved her brain and body of oxygen. The fluid was drained, and the tumors on Hazel’s lungs have not grown, but she will need to sleep with a breathing machine known as a BiPAP. Hazel remains in the hospital for six days, during which she refuses to see Augustus. When he finally makes it in to visit her on the last day, she explains that she didn’t want him to see her disheveled and suffering. During Hazel’s hospital stay, Augustus receives a letter from Peter Van Houten, who has been

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informed of their plans to visit him on a Genie-funded trip. Van Houten’s letter is cryptic and densely allusive, preoccupied with literature and death. Van Houten seems, in his letter, to support Hazel’s decision not to embark on a romantic relationship with Augustus because of the inevitable future heartbreak. Hazel is touched that her favorite author has taken an interest in her and Augustus, and pleads with her mother not to cancel the Amsterdam trip.

Chapter 8 Summary The chapter opens at a conference with Hazel’s oncologists and other doctors. They explain that Phalanxifor, the experimental drug that has stopped her tumor growth, may be causing the fluid buildup in her lungs, but the risks that come with discontinuing the drug are even worse. Hazel remembers the worst episode of her illness, before the “Miracle” of Phalanxifor, when her parents watched their only child dying in the hospital, and wishes she didn’t have to cause them so much worry and pain, thinking, “they might be glad to have me around, but I [am] the alpha and omega of my parents’ suffering” (116). The Amsterdam trip is canceled pending approval from the doctors. The first day home, Hazel sits in her backyard, looking at her childhood swing set and remembering times with her parents before she got cancer. It fills her with sadness, and she calls Augustus crying. He comes over and decides that the depressing swing set must go, and they sell it on Craigslist. Augustus tells Hazel that he doesn’t want to be protected from the potential heartbreak of losing her one day. She wakes up the next day to an email from Lidewij, Peter Van Houten’s assistant, making plans for the Amsterdam trip; it has been rescheduled, with the doctors’ approval, as a surprise for Hazel. She texts Augustus to tell him the good news, and he replies, “Everything’s coming up Waters” (127).

Chapter 9 Summary Hazel returns to Support Group the day before leaving for Amsterdam and lashes out uncharacteristically at a girl whose cancer is in remission. After the girl praises Hazel for being “strong,” Hazel replies, “‘I’ll give you my strength if I can have your remission’” (131). This immediately makes everyone in the group pity Hazel, which she hates even more than being called “strong.” Afterward, Hazel goes over to Isaac’s house, and they play video games using voice recognition software meant to assist blind players. Hazel explains that she has feelings for Augustus but doesn’t want him to be forced to take care of her when she becomes really sick.

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Chapters 7-9 Analysis Hazel’s sudden hospitalization shows her, for the first time, as critically, dangerously sick— sick to a degree she doesn’t want Augustus to see; these scenes in the intensive care unit are also the book’s first unflinching portrayal of the painful, gross, and terrifying nature of cancer. In the subsequent meetings with Hazel’s doctors, their pointedly ambiguous language (page 116: “‘we’ve seen people live with your level of tumor penetration for a long time’”) emphasizes the precarious nature of Hazel’s condition: the experimental drug that is currently holding her tumors at bay could fail at any time, leaving her to sicken and die. This unexpected attack of illness raises the stakes for the Amsterdam trip, which is briefly canceled on account of it . All of this shows that Hazel is morbidly ill. The episode with the old swingset, in Chapter 8, recalls the scene of Isaac breaking Augustus’s basketball statues in Chapter 4. Just as Augustus encouraged Isaac to take out his ang...