11/8/2022 0 Comments The fault in our stars reviewsWhile Hazel and her folks have their moments of tension, there’s no question about how much they love one another. Unlike most teenage love stories, parents come across pretty well here. “Think of all the beauty in everything around you. “Where there is hope, there is life,” we hear Anne’s words playing in the background. Hazel finds solace while visiting the house of Anne Frank, the diary-writing Jewish girl killed in the Nazi Holocaust. And Gus, through Hazel, comes to understand that it’s not so critical to be loved by throngs, as long as you’ve loved by and have changed the lives of a few. And when she learns that, should she die, her parents won’t die with her, that they’re making plans for a life without her, she treats it as the best of gifts: the idea that she won’t necessarily destroy everyone around her. Hazel moves beyond responsibility and finds joy in her difficult life. But when Gus and Hazel get together, they get a better sense of what the beauty of life is really about. There’s a little merit in both of those strategies. Gus wants to live a life of meaning-one filled with adventure and importance, so that when he does go, he’s known and loved by millions. Hazel’s last few years have been something of a living sacrifice as she tries to cushion the blow of the inevitable pain that’s coming for her parents. They’re both heroic characters in their own ways, facing disease and circumstance with as much grace and courage as they can muster. But no matter what circumstances bring, Gus and Hazel care for each other throughout, often giving something of themselves in the process. Loving someone, truly, through severe sickness, isn’t easy. Even in pain, hope can be found, we’re told. And yet in the midst of mortality we see at least a sliver of something alive. And sometimes even miracles aren’t what we’d like them to be.ĭeath hangs over The Fault in Our Stars like the stars themselves, permeating every character and every interaction. But the world is no less broken, Hazel no less sick. It’s practically a miracle, almost as stunning as Hazel’s remission, a surprise too extraordinary to be believed. Shockingly, the man writes back-insinuating that their answers await in Amsterdam. He does a little sleuthing, finds the author and writes to him. Gus, of course, refuses to accept defeat. The author, Peter Van Houten, is a recluse and never answers fan mail. But the ending’s left Hazel feeling unsettled, wondering, What happens to Anna’s mother? Her friends? What of the Tulip Man? Alas, there are no answers. Those with cancer know that better than most. As a literary device, it works: Life often ends inconveniently with so much undone. So she blurts out her love for the book An Imperial Affliction-a story about cancer that ends in mid-sentence when the narrator, Anna, either dies or grows too sick to write. And when he asks to hear Hazel’s story, he doesn’t want to know about her cancer story, he wants to know about her personal one-what she loves and hates, what she hopes and fears. More importantly, he knows something about life and living. Gus knows something about cancer himself, having lost most of a leg to the disease not long ago. And while Hazel hates the group, she does meet Augustus there. Her parents think Hazel is depressed and send her to a cancer support group, hoping she’ll make some friends. Sometimes she sits and stares at the old, ratty swing set her father built for her in happier times, remembering what it was like to swing and slide and run. Her world has grown small, almost claustrophobic. She’s tethered to an oxygen tank, unable to last for more than a few seconds without it. Yes, Hazel is breathing, but weakly, painfully. And now, four years later, she’s still doing it.īut even miracles in this broken world aren’t always what we’d like them to be. She was put on an experimental drug that, to everyone’s surprise, worked. Her parents and doctors watched helplessly as the girl-bald, bedridden, shackled by tubes-slipped slowly from them.Īnd then she rallied. It came when Hazel Grace was 13, as her young life was being devoured by cancer.
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