The Fault in Our Stars

                The Fault in Our Stars is a popular young adult novel, and for good reason. It’s the most recent of John Green’s brilliant books to hit the shelves, and even more recently to be made into a movie adaption. The plot is touching and heartfelt, and mixes in humor with the seriousness that cancer brings to a victim’s life. But it’s how the cancer patient handles the impact of illness that really matters, and John Green captures that perfectly.

                Throughout the novel, the big problem (other than cancer) that Hazel faces is trying to change the way Gus thinks about life, and what it means to be remembered. Gus believes that in order to matter you have to be a legend; Hazel reiterates that it’s the people who love you and will remember you that should matter the most. There’s this beautiful quote in the book (I actually have it painted on my bedroom wall) that says, “My thoughts are stars that I cannot fathom into constellations.” That’s where the title comes from: Hazel points out the faults that Gus percieves about dying. It’s the big lesson that the book teaches, and that’s that being loved is enough for a lifetime, and after.

                Now, a close friend of mine recently expressed that the book “isn’t original” and “isn’t as sad because the concept has been done before”. Yes, there are many books that follow a plot that includes a character dying from cancer, but that doesn’t make it any less sad, in my opinion. As for being unoriginal, the book may be fictional but it’s main purpose is to display the horrors of the disease and that love is what gets you through it. There’s not anything “original” about that because it happens everyday in some people’s lives. Cancer is a real struggle.

                I also feel like this book is different from others similar to it because it involves two cancer patients at a young age. A lot of the books I’ve read that deal with cancer (like A Walk to Remember, for example), its usually only one person in the relationship that is infected. But TFIOS follows the struggle of both people, and how it changes the dynamics of the relationship. They both know what they have to lose, and find it difficult to handle the other one dying even though it’s a very real possibility. It’s also set in a younger mind frame, one where the main characters have barely lived long enough to experience life truly, but they find their way along together in the small time that they have left. There’s this part where Hazel talks about how she saved her ten on the pain scale for when something really terrible happens that she can barely live with, and that her ten is when Gus dies. This speaks to me on a deep level because it shows that even though you’re expecting something to happen, it doesn’t make the pain any easier to deal with. I personal find the story beautiful, heartbreaking, and inspiring, and I’m not afraid to admit that I cry every time I read the book or watch the movie, because just imagining going through something like that is horrible. I admire the pain that cancer patients and survivors suffer on a daily basis. It’s incredible, and I find that the book portrays that.