The Fault in Our Stars

At the very beginning of The Fault in Our Stars, the protagonist, Hazel Grace, makes a metalinguistic comment about her favorite novel: “it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck”. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars indeed is not a book on cancer. It is a romance populated by characters who must face the prospect of death every day. The difference between genres is simple: instead of being dominated by melancholy, the story is primarily touching.

Hazel Grace is a girl with thyroid cancer who during one of her support group meetings encounters a boy who doesn’t hesitate to invite her to watch a movie at his home on the very same day. His name is Augustus Waters, a handsome, cool young man who has lost one leg due to osteosarcoma.

The novel presents a brief critique of the self-inflicted limitations that people have about inviting others to a date, presenting the situation with simple and direct dialogues that, always tending to an atmosphere of humor, even mock the main problem of the immediacy of Augustus’ request: “I hardly know you, Augustus Waters. You could be an ax murderer”. It is a pity, therefore, that the narrative doesn’t explore the subject further, leaving to the reader any additional thought on the matter.

Since death is the novel’s driving force, nothing more natural than a sense of urgency be present in the narrative: the revelations are delivered to the reader suddenly and the events are described quickly. As the book is also focused on young characters, this pacing is even more justified for conveying the worldview typical of their age.

The author, however, doesn’t seem to care too much about the authenticity of the characters’ routines, merely describing them within the archetypes of the genre. The protagonist loves America’s Next Top Model, for example, and usually goes out with her best friend to buy clothes. Meanwhile, Augustus enjoys playing video games with his friend, watching violent movies, and he even played basketball before his illness.

It is undeniable that, in analyzing their routines, the characters in The Fault in Our Stars appear incredibly generic. However, their inner dreams and conflicts are peculiar enough to make the couple stand apart: Hazel is a voracious reader of books who, even though intelligent, still remains naive enough to believe that her favorite author will tell her what happens to the characters of a novel after its ending. Augustus is a boy who likes to believe he lives in a world of metaphors, who likes to equate love with a cry in a vacuum and who is more afraid of being forgotten than dying. So, even though, superficially, they are shallow characters, if you go deeper they have aspirations that are singular enough to make them interesting to the reader.

Hazel and Augusts’ relationship, due to their illnesses, is invariably guided by the prospect of death, with each one facing the imminent event in their own way. While she sees herself as a “grenade” and worries about the damage she will do to other people, preferring to spare them from the pain by staying away from them, he acts in the “before it’s too late” mentality, trying to take advantage of the time he has left in the best way possible.

The counterpoint between these ideas builds the novel’s commendable theme: it is not because a relationship is bound to end that it should not begin. The author uses the fatalism inherent to their condition to criticize concepts similar to the one raised by Hazel’s friend, who ended her relationship with a boy to prevent future pain. Presenting the main characters close to dying, Green questions whether it is not all relationships that will one day end, one way or the other, and, because of that, whether it is not very foolish to try to prevent a relationship from beginning only to prevent the pain resulting from its end, as it will mean missing all the fun in the middle.

At the same time, in order to prevent the subject of the book from turning it too gloomy, Green makes the characters treat their illnesses with an amusing mix of humor and irony. His tactic is to break the melancholy with comic relief so that the romance remains in the spotlight. The protagonist, for example, now and then presents to the reader several episodes of the bad things that have happened to her with some humor: “I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (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.) It was, we were told, incurable” and she even calls her oxygen concentrator Philip “because it just kind of looked like a Philip.”

The author develops the narrative very well, putting a good turning point in the middle of the book – a fateful meeting with Hazel’s favorite author, Peter Van Houten – and making almost all of the characters serve some function within the story. Green’s craft is equally noticeable by observing the various details placed in the midst of dialogues and the action, such as the intermittent presence of death in the various places where the couple dates: they kiss in Anne Frank’s house, for example, which is weird and insensitive, but also thematically fitting. Another element to notice is the transition in the way Hazel calls her boyfriend – after a revelation in the middle of the book she goes on to use his nickname Gus much more than his name Augustus –, and how that change reinforces the extent of the boy’s fragility: if before he was called by the same name of a Roman emperor, later it is his cute nickname that gains prominence. It is true, however, that such elements are not at all subtle in the narrative, to the extent that the characters point out their meaning if the reader fails to perceive them by themselves.

After all, the narrative in The Fault is Our Stars has its share of… faults. The prose, for example, can appear quite pretentious in several moments, as it has many sentences to chock the reader. Some can work – particularly the one that Hazel’s mother whispers to her father – but most cannot outweigh the effect their huge amount causes on the reader: when Hazel’s father teaches her about how the universe wants to be noticed, the term ‘universe’ might well have been replaced by ‘author’, since Green constantly draws attention to himself, ripping the reader out of the story.                         

This leads to another problem in the novel. All characters speak in the same way, make the same jokes, and are obsessed with metaphors. Although they are presented with completely different personalities, there is no individuality in their dialogues. Just notice how everyone jokes about the illness they have – like their friend Isaac –, play with the way people present themselves (“Just Hazel“, “Alison My Nurse“) and have their share of moments as a philosopher, going on and on with long metaphorical analogies and deep insights. The moment that even a waiter approaches the protagonist and asks if she wants to “drink more stars” by offering champagne, the reader will reflect if Augustus really does have a good reason to believe he lives in a world of metaphors. The exception is Peter Van Houten, who, in addition to using an exquisite vocabulary, also sounds more bitter than the others.

The narrative also exaggerates constantly, which is considerably evident during a scene in which the couple is watching the 300 movie on a plane and Augustus is described exclaiming euphorically “Dang!” and “Fatality” whenever any character dies, something that no human being over the age of twelve would do on an airplane.

The Fault in Our Stars is not a book about cancer, because death is only the element that the author uses to form the love story of the characters and make it relevant – no matter how much John Green tries to sabotage the experience with his pretentious prose.

December 06, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on March 15, 2015.