The Fault In Our Stars by John Green is an amazing tear jerker of a book. It expands on the ideas of adolescence while communicating the hardships of illness. Hazel Grace Lancaster, the main character in this book, suffers from lung cancer. Through her struggles, she meets the charming and handsome Augustus Waters. Like any story, these two fall madly into love, but there’s a twist. They are both very logical and thoughtful teens who struggle with cancer and the reasons of life. In the end they find comfort in the time they spend together, their little infinity.
This little infinity is filled with plentiful life lessons and themes. Two specifically are that people should be thankful for what they have instead of angry for not having more, and that love wins over hardship. These themes show up throughout the whole text and keep developing.
To start, the theme that people should be thankful for what they have is highly prominent in The Fault in Our Stars. In the beginning Hazel is a very depressed person who only sees the harm in her situation. Hazels says “I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.” She had begun to live in a perpetual world of nothingness, then she met Agustus. Augustus was like Hazel in the sense that he saw the world for what it was and looked nothing more into it.
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Them meeting causes a reaction inside both of them. Hazel realizes, sooner than Gus, that life is more than just death. She begins to live, they hang out, they egg peoples cars, and they even go to Amsterdam. Hazel dwells not on death, but the now. There is even an instant where Hazel and Gus are speaking and Gus drones on saying, “You know,’ he said after a while, ‘it’s kids’ stuff, but I always thought my obituary would be in all the newspapers, that I’d have a story
worth telling. I always had this secret suspicion that I was special.” After hearing enough Hazel explodes on Augustus responding with, “But this is all you get. You get me, and your family, and this world. This is your life. I’m sorry if it sucks.” This is a good example showing that Hazel accepts her life, she knows that what she has is what she gets, therefore, showing the theme. Not only does the book show Hazel accepting her life but also Hazel’s mom. Her mom mentions that she is going back to school because she knows there has to be life after her daughter’s death. She knows the reality of the situation, but makes the best out of it.
Almost going along with the theme before there is also the theme that love wins over hardship. This book does a great job of portraying love overall. In the start, Hazel and Gus are completely infatuated with each other. This passion slowly turns to love in its purest form. There is many instances where they are at the hospital supporting each other and caring for one another, both trying to overcome hardship. Not only this but when they go to Amsterdam together this theme is represented. Gus puts aside his cancer treatment in order to fulfill Hazel’s dream of meeting Peter Van Houten and acquiring the ever sought answers to An Imperial Affliction. They both put their health at risk in order to travel there together.
Overcoming the literal issues was only a small portion, they also overcame emotional problems through their love. When Hazel spends nearly every day with Gus whenever he gets severely sick shows them overcoming hard times because of their affection. The moment when all of Gus’s family is surrounding him trying to make him feel better but the only person that can help is Hazel. She ends up making him joke with her and them both laughing about it. This shows how they used their connection to make life better.
In the end, Hazel speaks not only Gus’s fake funeral, but his actual one too. She says, “You gave me forever within the number of days and for that I am thankful.” She also talks about infinities, and how “Some infinities are bigger than others.” Even knowing Gus was gone Hazel is saying that his love gave her an infinity, a forever, because it was so strong.
All in all the themes that people should be thankful, and that love wins over hardship are huge contributors in The Fault in Our Stars. They are shown by the lessons being taught, the situations being dealt with, and the outcome of every single character in the book. These themes have not only impacted how the characters dealt with their struggles but also what the reader takes from the book.
