Hazel Lancaster attends a support group for cancer patients to please her mother and ends up meeting the boy she will fall in love with. Issac, the only person she likes in the support group, brings his friend Augustus Waters for support. Hazel and Augustus have a disagreement over Augustus’s fear of oblivion which Hazel explains that everyone will die eventually. After the session ends, Augustus approaches her and the two end up flirting, mocking the rug at the support group, and watching Issac and his girlfriend Monica make out.
When Augustus places a cigarette between his lips and invites Hazel to his house to atch a movie, she is disgusted and rejects him. After Augustus explains his metaphor, she reconsiders and agrees to watch V for Vendetta with him. On their way to Gus’s house, Hazel experiences Gus’s horrific driving and learns that he only has his licence as a cancer perk. The two share their story about dealing with cancer while they hang out. After agreeing to read each others favorite books, Gus; The Prince of Dawn and Hazel; An Imperial Affliction, Gus drives Hazel home.
Hazel receives a series of texts referring to the end of An Imperial Afflication from a very anxious Augustus; e had reached the end of the book. A week later Hazel and Augustus find themselves engrossed in a conversation about An Imperial Affliction. Soon after, Gus finds himself to be in contact with Peter Van Houten’s assistant, Lidewij Vliegenthart. Gus shares the email and the email address with Hazel, who sets straight to work preparing an email worthy enough to be read by Peter Van Houten, the author of An Imperial Affliction.
Hazel is informed that Issac, who had gone in for surgery, is now cancer free, but also completely eyeless, had a successful surgery and she could visit him in the hospital. The morning after visiting Issac, Hazel is surprised with a response from Van Houten. Although Van Houten hadn’t answered any of the questions she had asked, he did offer to disscuss An Imperial Affliction in person. The only problem with Van Houten’s invitation was that they would have to meet in Amsterdam and the Lancaster’s were not financially able for a trip to Amsterdam.
When Hazel shared the knowledge of the invitation offered by Van Houten with Augustus, he asked if she had used her wish from The Genie Foundation, which she had. Augustus plans a picnic in Funky Bones park, where he presents he news: The Genie Foundation granted his wish and both of them were flying to Amsterdam to meet up with Van Houten. A serious episode of Hazel’s lungs filling with fluid puts her in the ICU for a few days. After receiving another letter from Van Houten, Hazel is determined to get to Amsterdam; however, Hazel’s doctors and parents are a skeptical about her strength.
Dr. Maria convinces Hazel’s parents to let her go and live her life, so plans are made for Hazel, her mom, and Gus to travel to meet Peter Van Houten. When they finally meet Van Houten, he is nothing like what they expected and leave quite disappointed n what they have discovered. Lidewij follows Hazel and Gus out the door and takes them to a tour of Anne Frank’s house to compensate for their awful encounter with Van Houten. Hazel was having a hard time traveling up the narrow, steep steps, but when she reached the top and end of the tour, she was pulled in for a kiss that took her breath away.
The next day Augustus informs her of the recurrence in his cancer and it had spread throughout his body. When the three return home, Augustus’s health tumbles down hill. Knowing his death will be soon, he asks Hazel and Issac to attend and speak at his prefuneral, hich is where Hazel confesses her love for Augustus. Eight days later and Augustus is dead. At Gus’s funeral Hazel learns of his commanded compensation from Van Houten, who had shown up at Gus’s funeral unexpectedly. Before Gus died, he had sent Van Houten notes so Peter could write Hazel a eulogy.
Van Houten is told by Hazel to get himself together and write the second book. Soon after Lidewij demands that Peter reads the letters from Augustus which get sent straight to Hazel afterwards. Hazel reads to letters and decides she is happy with her decisions too. Characters: Hazel Grace Lancaster is a seventeen-year-old girl with stage our thyriod cancer from Indianapolis. Hazel is a smart, diligant, and motivated young woman. She is determined to lighten the impact of her death and refuses to allow anyone to get close, knowing her death will soon occur and will bring pain with.
Her mission to lighten her exsistence is thrown of track when she meets and falls in love with Augustus Waters. Augustus Waters (Gus) is a seventeen-year-old-boy with osteosarcoma. In the beginning he is portrayed as a loving, funny, and confident teenager from Indianapolis, but by the end of the novel he has shown the traits of a scared, tired boy. Gus had been a star athlete until he lost a leg to the cancer, but was determined to do something extraordinary with his exsistence until he was dying.
He was undeniably in love with Hazel since the beginning. Explain the Title: The title, “The Fault in Our Stars” relates to the quote “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves” (Green 111) by William Shakespeare. When Peter Van Houten responds to Gus via email, he explains how Shakespeare is wrong when he said the faults are in ourselves. Van Houten explains “Everyone in this tale has a rock-solid hamartia: hers, that she is o sick; yours, that you are so well. (Green 111)
He continues on, saying that if roles were reversed then the stars wouldn’t be as crossed; however, the nature of a star is to cross so the faults are not just within ourselves, but all around us. You have to read the book to understand what the title is referring to in the novel. The title is eye-catching because “The Fault in Our Stars” makes you wonder what faults are they talking about. Critique: I personally did not particularly enjoy the book; however, my reasoning for not liking the novel was strictly because of the plot content. Overall the novel was well-written and well-organized.
The novel was written in Hazel’s point of view, which dramatized Augustus’s death. She described her pain after his death as a ten, which she had been saving throughout her journey of cancer. Flashbacks are not present all but one time throughout the novel. Everytime an episode where Hazel may feel like she is close to death, she remembers her mom saying that once Hazel dies, she will no longer be a mom. There is foreshadowing in the pain Gus feels in his arm but brushes it off as nothing to Hazel. This incident foreshadows the recurring cancer that spread hrough his body.
Irony is used quite a few times in the novel. The major ironic situation in the novel is how Hazel refers to herself as the “gernade” of the relationship, but in the end Augustus is the one who blew up and hurt her, the gernade. The vivid descriptions were not used to create imaginary pictures, but to help you feel the emotions. There wasn’t anything unique about the language or anything that helped me understand the book better, except for that the novel was written in English. The book targets tweens and teenagers, but also people who like sappy love stories.
