The Fault in Our Stars free essay sample

She is a tall sixteen year old with short cropped auburn hair, a fair complexion, green eyes, and steroidal round face shape. She is often compared to look like Natalie Portman in â€Å"V for Vendetta. † Since Hazel is diagnosed with thyroid cancer, which has ravished her lungs, she is forced to carry an oxygen tank with her wherever she goes. She tends to loop the plastic tubing around her ears, and lugs the oxygen tank around in a small cart. Her hometown is in Indianapolis, Indiana. Despite a miracle experimental treatment called Phalanxifor, she is nothing close to being cured. Hazel does things normal teenagers do: she drives, attends classes, and rolls her eyes at her parents. But she is bound to a portable oxygen tank, she frequents the emergency room, and she has no idea how long her life will last. Her personality is described as sarcastic, intelligent, and a realist. We will write a custom essay sample on The Fault in Our Stars or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Her strongest personality trait is her sarcastic nature. She would live everyday almost mocking and taunting the disease she lives with, â€Å"I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die. † (Green, 84. ) She also is extremely intelligent. â€Å"I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary? † (Green, 168. ) Because of her battle with cancer, she sees the world at face value, never taking anything for granted. â€Å"The world is not a wish-granting factory. (Green, 96. ) In the beginning, Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year old girl with terminal cancer was pulled out of school at the age of thirteen and rarely socializes with people her age. After being diagnosed with clinical depression, she joins a support group for children suffering with cancer where she meets and subsequently falls in love with Augustus Waters, a seventeen-year old boy in remission from osteosarcoma. The y quickly befriend each other and Hazel introduces Augustus to her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction by Van Houten. Hazel’s attempts at contacting Van Houten have been futile, but Augustus manages to receive an email from their beloved author, who invites them to visit his home in Amsterdam. In the middle of the story, Hazel and Augustus fly to Amsterdam, however, Van Houten is not what they expected him to be. He presents himself as a rude alcoholic. The teens find themselves angered by his rude demeanor and leave his home. However, trouble stirs when the couple return to Indianapolis, and Augustus undergoes a PET scan which revealed new tumors. In the remaining weeks of his life back in Indianapolis, Hazel sees Augustus slowly deteriorating and begins to break down mentally-lashing at her parents and avoiding friends. Approximately eight days before his death, Augustus asks to have a funeral that he can attend, so Hazel and a few other cancer patients share their eulogies with Augustus. When Augustus finally dies, Hazel is crushed, but she discovers a secret letter that Augustus had written to her, describing his love for her. Although there are many hidden themes in this novel, however the most apparent one is love. Despite their disease, their relationship and ambitions thrive on. They do not read like terminal patients, but they are characters the reader can relate to – and thus it is impossible not to form an emotional attachment to them. Towards the start of their relationship, Augustus says, â€Å"You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail. † (Green, 42. ) When they were in Amsterdam, Augustus confessed his love to Hazel, â€Å"I’m in love with you, and Im not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. Im in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that were all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth well ever have, and I am in love with you. † (Green, 227) Finally, during Augustus’s pre-funeral, Hazel recites a eulogy, depicting her love for him,† There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. Theres . 1 and . 12 and . 112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than Im likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldnt trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and Im grateful. As tragic as it might sound, my favorite part of the book was when Augustus died. It tied all the loose ends in the novel and made you empathize with Hazel’s loss. The author not only captured the voice of teen culture, but also truly invested in the lives of the two young protagonists. Green’s writing prose literally brought me to tears, leaving me with an unexplainable sense of both emptiness and wholeness. The Fault in Our Stars i s the knd of book that immerses you within its story as soon as you read the first page. This is miles away from any typical teen-fiction novel; no words I could string together could ever do justice to how utterly amazing this book is. 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. The Fault in Our Stars is without a doubt one of those books. Green, John, and Irene Vandervoort. The Fault in Our Stars. New York: Dutton, 2012. Print. The Fault in Our Stars free essay sample The Fault in Our Stars can be interpreted to have many hidden meanings. One of the most overlooked and obscured meanings being unexpected events. More specifically, John Green will lead the reader on to one thing before throwing them a curveball. Green uses his knowledge of symbolism, imagery, diction, and metaphors to build on this idea. To begin, John Green uses what seems to be his favorite writing tool, symbolism, in order to push his overall theme of unexpected events. He often refers to the unlit cigarette between Augustus’s lips (20). This appears, according to Hazel, to be Gus’s hamartia. She thinks he has a fatal flaw until he explains the metaphor behind it. This is the first time the reader witnesses Green’s unexpected events. Hazel Grace first feels â€Å"disappointment and anger† until she gets to know Gus, and she eventually grows to enjoy the symbols. This change of heart is not expected by the reader, and initially creates a sense of failure in Augustus Waters. We will write a custom essay sample on The Fault in Our Stars or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The plot quickly takes a turn in his favor, though, as the reader learns more about him. Green also uses other tools to expand on his overall theme. Another way Green uses symbolism in The Fault in Our Stars is through his constant reference to An Imperial Affliction. Hazel and Gus speak of the novel for a fair portion of the story, making references to the sudden end of the book. They speak about how they would love to know how it ends, but could never find out. Such as their initial conversation about An Imperial Affliction, Augustus says †I guess Anna died† (53). A guess is all we have to give. Green continues to show this in similar ways, constantly reminding the reader that life, just like a book, can end without any warning. Next, a lot of thought went into the author’s use of imagery. This idea is used several times in the novel to show that things can happen when you least expect them to. For example, Gus and Hazel seem to be having a great time in Amsterdam until out of nowhere, Green exposes the fact that Gus had been diagnosed (again) with cancer (214). Gus tells Hazel, and she is obviously blind-sided. This is one of the most apparent instances where John Green actually shows us the theme of unexpected events. Also, Green uses great diction in order to get his point across. By the middle of the novel the reader feels a connection to both the main characters, and gets a feeling for how they speak. Hazel often uses normal teenage words, like when she says she has â€Å"lungs that suck at being lungs† (29). Augustus usually used more elevated language, until it was time to say something serious. This is one way Green actually hinted at an emotional part of the story. Gus would occasionally calm his ego, slow down, and use normal language. These bursts of mediocrity would usually be followed by bad news, such as his diagnosis on page 214. The uncharacteristic actions of Gus would entice the reader to expect something, but not give away the information. The use of metaphors is also very apparent in the book, but the reader may not always know what they mean. The conclusion of the story is a kind of â€Å"aha† moment where they all seem to come together. The ending of An Imperial Affliction, for example is an extended metaphor for life. Hazel expects she is the â€Å"side effect† of her life (49). Hazel relates to Anna, the main character, and thinks they are one in the same. In the end, Gus ends up being the side effect, making the conclusion of The Fault in Our Stars a main tool for Green. He leads the reader on to think that in the end it will be Hazel who passes, leaving Gus upset. But in the end he reminds the reader that one may not assume anything in life. His theme of unknown phenomena is present throughout the whole story. In conclusion, the novel is very well written, and the use of literary tools assists the reader in finding a theme, whether it is obvious or obscured. Through his use of symbolism, imagery, diction, and metaphors, Green makes his theme of expecting the unexpected very evident. The Fault in our stars free essay sample The fault in our stars is a young adult literature written by John Green. The main characters on this novel is sixteen year old Hazel Grace and a seventeen year old boy named Augustus Waters who fall in love yet are quite aware of the fact that cancer is a part of both their lives. They still go on with their everyday teenage life which includes playing video games, flirting, falling in love, helping friends out with rough patches in their lives. I will be writing about the innocence within the book and how the characters are so young but have been exposed to things that other people their age have not thought about or considered, for example; death, their future, how their family has been affected by the decease that they have to live with. Hazel grace is only sixteen and has cancer. This means that she is exposed to emotions that other people in their entire lives wouldn’t experience. We will write a custom essay sample on The Fault in our stars or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Hazel being so young means that she is still quite innocent. An example from in the book is that shows this is when she looks at the swing set and remembers the day her dad bought the swing set home and sets it up in the back yard but was never quite well enough to play on it properly and that is why she wants to get rid of it. Another example of what shows her innocence and her being young is when Augustus dies and she was sitting on the couch with her parents and cuddling them, it shows that she is old enough to fall in love but is not quite prepared to deal with it on her own and it is also shown when Augustus is sitting with Hazel and really wishes that they didn’t get rid of the swing set because even though he didn’t have any personal experiences with it he wanted it because of what it symbolizes, children, innocent, fun, laughter, playing and those are the things that we misses in life. Mortality is a big part of Hazel’s life, constantly running through her mind and following her everywhere. It shows this on the first page, second paragraph when she says â€Å"when you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression as a side effect of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. (Cancer is also a side effect of dying. Almost everything is,  really)†. This shows how much thought she has put into the depression and Decease that she lives with. It is also shown when Augustus says â€Å"they don’t kill you unless you light them. And I have never lit one. It’s a metaphor, see: you put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing†, even though he dies of cancer which is the same thing that the cigarette causes. It is again shown when they do the eulogy because Augustus dying is a real factor that needed to be taken into consideration. For Hazel, Augustus and Isaac mortality was going to be a part of their life. Even though cancer is becoming a more common and well known decease, it still doesn’t feel right to mix love and Death together. In the fault in our stars that is exactly what happened. An example of this is when Augustus tells Hazel that he loves her on the flight to Amsterdam, he is well aware of the fact that she has Terminal cancer and his cancer has come back and yet it doesn’t scare him away from expressing his over for her, even though the outcome is not going to be good. Another example is when Augustus Said â€Å"You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you. All efforts to save me from you will fail.† Hazel was trying to keep her distance from Augustus because she did not want to be hurt if anything was to happen but she ended up letting her emotions take control and let herself fall in love with him. The Fault in our stars is a very touching book that plays on many of the readers emotions. The book mixes life, death, fun and heart break. Mortality was a big part of both their live but didn’t stop them from falling in love and sharing experiences so special in the little time that they had. One quote from the book that sums a lot of the book up is â€Å"some infinities are bigger than other infinities† meaning; even though their time together was short it was the little things that that made their experiences so special.