The Fault in Mortality
Alyse Kaitlyn Norton
Ms. Wright
ENG 113/960
25 April 2013
Biography
John Green was born on August 24th 1977, making him 35. Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana but spent most of his childhood in Orlando, Florida and some of it in Birmingham, Alabama. Green is married to Sarah Urist Green and they have two children, a boy and they are expecting another one very soon. Green went to Kenyon College as a double major in English and Religious Studies, his main focus being Mark Twain and Islam, and received a Bachelor’s degree. Green has received the title of New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Faults. He received 2006 of the Michael L. Printz Award, was a 2009 Edgar Award Winner, and has been entered as a finalist twice for Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Lastufka Bio/Contact) Some of Green’s inspirations are J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Walt Whitman (“John Green Good Reads”). Whitman is actually a main part in his writing of Paper Towns. Green is very popular with the teenage world due to his creation of adventure and how he promotes that intelligence is a very good thing. He once said, “Saying ‘I noticed you’re a nerd’ is like saying, ‘Hey, I noticed that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?’” (vlogbrothers “July 27”). Green is very good at connecting with his audience through his books because he makes them so believable and relatable. He takes on a whole new level of what reading actually is, “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand that author’s intent. The job of reading is to see into other people as we see ourselves” (vlogbrothers “Life is Like”). However, the reader is always analyzing what an author could possibly mean by every word he/she writes. John Green is a very simplistic writer; however, he is very good at being relatable whilst using symbols. He gives his characters hardships that can be related to on the reader’s side.
Introduction
Green uses the sense of loss as a motivation for adventures and that helps molds the foundation of teenagers being exposed to loss, showing how they deal with the loss and how they continue on after losing that someone they care about. Green implements journey into each characters’ lives in order to find out about the other person they care about. In Looking for Alaska, Miles goes on adventures with Alaska and his other friends to grow up and learn more about, not only his friends, but himself as well. In Paper Towns, Quentin goes on a quest in search of his “love” Margo because he believes her to be dead. The Fault in Our Stars shows how Hazel and Augustus go on this journey to Amsterdam in order to find Hazel’s favorite author and learn the mysteries behind his “unfinished” novel. They do find him, but are utterly shocked to realize that he is not the same man they imagined he would be. These examples are what help to sort out some of the themes that Green portrays in his books which are, deception, coming of age, and the importance in friendship. Not only does Green give his characters all of these attributes, he gives them the intelligence to match. Green uses wit, cleverness, and sometimes sarcasm in order to show real, relatable characteristics, whilst also choosing to give the characters a deeper intelligence that shows the comparison between him and his characters. For example, Green gives the love of books and reading to several of his characters along with the help of the character’s friends.
Looking for Alaska
Green uses the main character’s friends as a guidance tool to help in their journey and grow as a person. In Looking for Alaska, Miles, A.K.A Pudge, wants a change of scenery and he goes to a boarding school, Culver Creek Preparatory School, in order to find his “new self.” “‘François Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps’” (Looking Alaska 5). Whilst at Culver Creek, Miles meets Chip, who is more famously known as The Colonel. The Colonel is the one who gives Miles his nickname, Pudge. The Colonel introduces Pudge to Alaska, who becomes Pudge’s fascination and heartache. Alaska is a girl who is very disturbed and therefore Pudge becomes very attached to her as he tries to unravel her like a mystery. As the story progresses and the more Pudge becomes attached to Alaska through their adventures. Tragedy strikes when Alaska breaks and is found dead on the highway. After she dies, Pudge shows how his feelings play against him: “More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can’t due to deadness. … And I cried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain. It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating” (Looking Alaska 151). Her cause of death is not clear and that sends Pudge searching to find answers about whether or not Alaska has committed suicide. As Pudge hunts to find out what happened to her he realizes how much she means to him:
“I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again.
You can’t just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably
different, and I’m sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless,
stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don’t even know if you chose the straight and
fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can’t remember,
because I never knew.” (Looking Alaska 172-3)
Pudge finally becomes aware that Alaska’s last words, as he is so fond of, will never be known. He is trying to find closure for Alaska and he forgives her in the end. He believes, “And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have Pudge is terribly depressed about losing Alaska, and he searches a long time to find out what happened to her, to find out what she did to herself. In the end he says, “We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die” (Looking Alaska 220). Even though death stopped Alaska’s adventure, it doesn't stop Pudge’s, “So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful” (Looking Alaska 220). Even though it is not clear what happens to Pudge, it is presumed that his adventures do not end at the end of the novel. The reader decides what happens at the end of a novel in terms of the character’s continuance of human existence. Just because a book ends, does not mean the character’s adventures and journey does.
Paper Towns
Paper Towns is about an adventure to find out what happens to Margo Roth Spiegelman. Did she commit suicide? Did she just drop off the face of the earth? Quentin Jacobsen, Q, is accompanied by his friends Ben and Radar, who are determined to find out the mystery behind who Margo actually is: “Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one” (Paper 8). Q goes on several adventures, finding locations based on various clues Margo leaves for him. Q is very convinced that Margo leaves clues for him only because, as he believes her to be dead, he thinks that she wants him specially to find her because of their encounter with finding a dead man in the park when they were younger, “‘Maybe all the strings inside him broke’” (Paper 8). As Q goes on his quest to find Margo, he creates this imaginary Margo he hopes to find. Paper Towns shows how as a person views something, they tell more about themselves, than the thing they are actually viewing:
“The truth is that whenever I went up to the top of the SunTrust Building – including that last time with you
– I really didn’t look down and think about how everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought
about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else. And here’s the thing
about it. People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it, too. I
cultivated it, you know?”. (Paper 293)
Margo put up a façade of what she is, but in actuality, she is a girl who just wanted to escape. However, she likes the fact that she can create this personality that other people enjoy. Her intelligence shines through as she attracts Q to her by the use of Walt Whitman, and some of his poem, “Song of Myself”, Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, /Missing me one place search another, /I stop some where waiting for you (Paper 117). Margo disappears from Q’s life and he accepts that, he knows that she wants different things; in fact he actually lets Margo go in the end, “‘Margo, I have a whole life there, and I’m not you’” (Paper 303). Even though Margo leaves, there is still that connection and remembrance of what Q has been through because of her help and how he has become different. By trying to find his love, he found himself instead, and Margo helps him with that in his journey.
The Fault in Our Stars
Augustus helps Hazel, in The Fault in Our Stars, with (1.) showing her how to live, (2.) how to love, and (3.) how to battle this disease they have together. Augustus shows Hazel that she has to live now, even though she struggles every day as she battles cancer, “‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease? I know so many people like that. It’s disheartening’” (The Fault 32). After Hazel thinks about how she actually does kind of become her disease, she says, “I am pretty unextraordinary’” (The Fault 33). Which Augustus immediately dismisses the idea because he knows that Hazel has more potential than she is leading on to have (2.) Augustus shows Hazel to love. Even though she loses Augustus in the end, she still learns how important love is, “‘I will not tell you our love story, because – like all real love stories – it will die with us, as it should. … But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful’” (The Fault 259-60). The loss of Augustus, to Hazel, is kind of a breaking point for her and she knows that death for her is still around the corner, even though Green does not disclose if she dies or not, it is assumed because everyone dies. However Hazel knows that she must go on even though a huge part of her life is missing now and her mother reminds her of that, “‘You of all people know it is possible to live with pain’” (The Fault 300). Augustus and Hazel’s journey are so different from the other two books because their journey is interrupted by their disease. After Augustus finds out his cancer is back, he breaks: “‘What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner’” (The Fault 216). Augustus is very into giving his life up for others: “‘All salvation is temporary. I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that’s not nothing’” (The Fault 59). Hazel and Augustus use their intelligence as a way of coping with their cancer, but this becomes a problem as Hazel goes searching for her favorite author’s “sequel” of her favorite book. Hazel is very disappointed to find out that he isn’t everything she dreams he would be.
Expectations that are Not Met in The Fault in Our Stars
Hazel is obsessed with this fictitious book in The Fault in Our Stars called An Imperial Affliction by her favorite author, Peter Van Houten:
Sometimes you read a book and if 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. And then there
are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so and rare and yours
that advertising you affection feels like a betrayal. (The Fault 33)
The only problem with Houten is that he is completely different from what Hazel originally thought when she finally meets him in Amsterdam, “By this measure, Peter Van Houten was possibly the world’s douchiest douche” (The Fault 184). Houten is very rude and comments on Hazel’s disease, “You are a side effect of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation” (The Fault 192-3). Hazel is not fazed by this however, “But I wasn’t angry. He was looking for the most hurtful way to tell the truth, but of course I already knew the truth” (The Fault 193). It is actually found out later that Houten is the way he is because of the death of his daughter, “She was eight. Suffered beautifully. Will never be beatified” (The Fault 285). Death is something that cannot be avoided, but it is not something that changes a person. According to Houten, “‘I was insufferable long before we lost her. Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you’” (The Fault 286).
Hazel expects this man, Houten, to be someone that she looks up to for guidance, and in a way, loses that because he is so different from what she originally thought. Every person has outer and inner shells that are completely different from each other and everyone perceives each other differently. As Lemony Snicket says, “first impressions are often entirely wrong” (Snicket 27). When viewing how a person perceives another shows more about themselves than that other person. It is bad enough that she loses her one true love Augustus, but then she loses respect for the author she considered to be, “My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed” (The Fault 12). She believes this in the beginning of the novel, and as it progresses, she realizes that he is nothing at all what she thought him to be. In the end, it seems as if he, in some way, tries to apologize by trying to explain a sequel of his book to Hazel, “‘Omnis cellula e cellula,’ … ‘All cells come from cells. Every cell is born of a previous cell, which was born of a previous cell. Life comes from life. Life begets life begets life begets life begets life’” (The Fault 276). Hazel is not impressed as Houten asks, “‘You don’t want an explanation’ [talking about the ending of the book AIA]?” (The Fault 276). Hazel responds, “‘No, I’m good. I think you’re a pathetic alcoholic who says fancy things to get attention like a really precocious eleven-year-old and I feel super bad for you. But yeah, no, you’re not the guy who wrote An Imperial Affliction anymore, so you couldn’t sequel it even if you wanted to’” (The Fault 276-7). In the end of the book, after Hazel finds Augustus’s lasts words he wrote, she notices how love and loss really compare. The end of his letter reveals just how much he truly loves Hazel, “You never worry if she [Hazel] is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to her, Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers” (The Fault 313).
A Sense of Loss
Dealing with loss is very prevalent in every work of John Green and it is implemented so well in each novel. Not only is the sense of loss a main focus, but the emotion behind every word in each novel. Lemony Snicket is also very good at this as he describes the feeling of the Baudelaire children losing their parents, “If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it” (Snicket 11). As Green wrote numerous times in The Fault in Our Stars, “‘Pain demands to be felt’” (The Fault 57). All of these novels give relatable instances of losing someone that is very dear to that one character’s heart: Hazel loses Augustus and Houten, Pudge loses Alaska, and Q and Margo go their separate ways. Green not only shows how lose affects a person, he also shows how it can change that person. Augustus shows Hazel what love is and how to continue on after he is gone. Even though Augustus dies, Hazel still lives even though she faces the threat of dying, and she accepts that because she got to experience love just like Isaac, Augustus’s friend talks about, “‘But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does’” (The Fault 75).
Love and Friendship
The love and friendship that the characters show in these stories are part of what help them cope with their hardships. Love is what keeps people together; it is what helps through the good times, and the bad times. Love releases a new kind of knowledge in people; people were born to love. Love is what helps Augustus and Hazel get through all that they went through in their story. Miles and Alaska’s friendship was something very special to Miles and when Alaska dies, he lets her go, but realizes that she is more than just “matter” (Looking Alaska 220). Q goes through all these adventures and trials to look for his “love” and friend, Margo. People usually do stupid things because of love, but actually, people live because of love. All of these adventures that each person went on were because of love and friendship. They were changed people after they find out something to go searching for. Searching through life to escape death is very sad to look at because in the end time does not stop and life continues even after the death of so many people and the heartache that is felt when a loved one dies.
Conclusion
Trying to deal with loss is often very hard for anyone because the human mind cannot comprehend what happens after death or the future. Life is full of uncertainty, however, one thing is for sure, and that is loss. And yet humans still try for more and more as they age, “I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again (The Fault 305). Death is seen very much in the human world, “The world contains a lot of dead people” (The Fault 14), and people imagine it even though there is not death around them, “All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children” (The Fault 308). People are always going to lose others, mostly by death, but it also comes in other forms as well. There is no happiness without the heartbreak of loss. The loss of someone is one of the hardest things humans have to go through because they have to lose others, everyone has to leave eventually, and that is the fault in humanity.
Works Cited
Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York, NY: Dutton, 2005. Print.
---. Paper Towns. New York, NY: Dutton, 2008. Print.
---. The Fault in Our Stars. New York, NY: Dutton, 2012. Print.
“John Green.” Goodreads. Web. 11 April 2013.
Lastufka, Alan. “John Green’s Biography.” John Green. Web. 12 April 2013.
---. “Biographical Questions.” John Green. Web. 12 April 2013.
Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.
Vlogbrothers. “July 27: How Nerdfighters Drop Insults.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 27 July 2007. Web. 4 May 2013.
---. “Life is Like Pizza.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 20 September 2010. Web. 6 May 2013.
Ms. Wright
ENG 113/960
25 April 2013
Biography
John Green was born on August 24th 1977, making him 35. Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana but spent most of his childhood in Orlando, Florida and some of it in Birmingham, Alabama. Green is married to Sarah Urist Green and they have two children, a boy and they are expecting another one very soon. Green went to Kenyon College as a double major in English and Religious Studies, his main focus being Mark Twain and Islam, and received a Bachelor’s degree. Green has received the title of New York Times bestselling author of Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, and The Fault in Our Faults. He received 2006 of the Michael L. Printz Award, was a 2009 Edgar Award Winner, and has been entered as a finalist twice for Los Angeles Times Book Prize (Lastufka Bio/Contact) Some of Green’s inspirations are J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Walt Whitman (“John Green Good Reads”). Whitman is actually a main part in his writing of Paper Towns. Green is very popular with the teenage world due to his creation of adventure and how he promotes that intelligence is a very good thing. He once said, “Saying ‘I noticed you’re a nerd’ is like saying, ‘Hey, I noticed that you’d rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you’d rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?’” (vlogbrothers “July 27”). Green is very good at connecting with his audience through his books because he makes them so believable and relatable. He takes on a whole new level of what reading actually is, “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the author intended a symbol to be there, because the job of reading is not to understand that author’s intent. The job of reading is to see into other people as we see ourselves” (vlogbrothers “Life is Like”). However, the reader is always analyzing what an author could possibly mean by every word he/she writes. John Green is a very simplistic writer; however, he is very good at being relatable whilst using symbols. He gives his characters hardships that can be related to on the reader’s side.
Introduction
Green uses the sense of loss as a motivation for adventures and that helps molds the foundation of teenagers being exposed to loss, showing how they deal with the loss and how they continue on after losing that someone they care about. Green implements journey into each characters’ lives in order to find out about the other person they care about. In Looking for Alaska, Miles goes on adventures with Alaska and his other friends to grow up and learn more about, not only his friends, but himself as well. In Paper Towns, Quentin goes on a quest in search of his “love” Margo because he believes her to be dead. The Fault in Our Stars shows how Hazel and Augustus go on this journey to Amsterdam in order to find Hazel’s favorite author and learn the mysteries behind his “unfinished” novel. They do find him, but are utterly shocked to realize that he is not the same man they imagined he would be. These examples are what help to sort out some of the themes that Green portrays in his books which are, deception, coming of age, and the importance in friendship. Not only does Green give his characters all of these attributes, he gives them the intelligence to match. Green uses wit, cleverness, and sometimes sarcasm in order to show real, relatable characteristics, whilst also choosing to give the characters a deeper intelligence that shows the comparison between him and his characters. For example, Green gives the love of books and reading to several of his characters along with the help of the character’s friends.
Looking for Alaska
Green uses the main character’s friends as a guidance tool to help in their journey and grow as a person. In Looking for Alaska, Miles, A.K.A Pudge, wants a change of scenery and he goes to a boarding school, Culver Creek Preparatory School, in order to find his “new self.” “‘François Rabelais. He was a poet. And his last words were ‘I go to seek a Great Perhaps.’ That’s why I’m going. So I don’t have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps’” (Looking Alaska 5). Whilst at Culver Creek, Miles meets Chip, who is more famously known as The Colonel. The Colonel is the one who gives Miles his nickname, Pudge. The Colonel introduces Pudge to Alaska, who becomes Pudge’s fascination and heartache. Alaska is a girl who is very disturbed and therefore Pudge becomes very attached to her as he tries to unravel her like a mystery. As the story progresses and the more Pudge becomes attached to Alaska through their adventures. Tragedy strikes when Alaska breaks and is found dead on the highway. After she dies, Pudge shows how his feelings play against him: “More than anything, I felt the unfairness of it the inarguable injustice of loving someone who might have loved you back but can’t due to deadness. … And I cried, whimpering, and I didn't even feel sadness so much as pain. It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating” (Looking Alaska 151). Her cause of death is not clear and that sends Pudge searching to find answers about whether or not Alaska has committed suicide. As Pudge hunts to find out what happened to her he realizes how much she means to him:
“I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again.
You can’t just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably
different, and I’m sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless,
stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don’t even know if you chose the straight and
fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can’t remember,
because I never knew.” (Looking Alaska 172-3)
Pudge finally becomes aware that Alaska’s last words, as he is so fond of, will never be known. He is trying to find closure for Alaska and he forgives her in the end. He believes, “And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have Pudge is terribly depressed about losing Alaska, and he searches a long time to find out what happened to her, to find out what she did to herself. In the end he says, “We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die” (Looking Alaska 220). Even though death stopped Alaska’s adventure, it doesn't stop Pudge’s, “So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful” (Looking Alaska 220). Even though it is not clear what happens to Pudge, it is presumed that his adventures do not end at the end of the novel. The reader decides what happens at the end of a novel in terms of the character’s continuance of human existence. Just because a book ends, does not mean the character’s adventures and journey does.
Paper Towns
Paper Towns is about an adventure to find out what happens to Margo Roth Spiegelman. Did she commit suicide? Did she just drop off the face of the earth? Quentin Jacobsen, Q, is accompanied by his friends Ben and Radar, who are determined to find out the mystery behind who Margo actually is: “Margo always loved mysteries. And in everything that came afterward, I could never stop thinking that maybe she loved mysteries so much that she became one” (Paper 8). Q goes on several adventures, finding locations based on various clues Margo leaves for him. Q is very convinced that Margo leaves clues for him only because, as he believes her to be dead, he thinks that she wants him specially to find her because of their encounter with finding a dead man in the park when they were younger, “‘Maybe all the strings inside him broke’” (Paper 8). As Q goes on his quest to find Margo, he creates this imaginary Margo he hopes to find. Paper Towns shows how as a person views something, they tell more about themselves, than the thing they are actually viewing:
“The truth is that whenever I went up to the top of the SunTrust Building – including that last time with you
– I really didn’t look down and think about how everything was made of paper. I looked down and thought
about how I was made of paper. I was the flimsy-foldable person, not everyone else. And here’s the thing
about it. People love the idea of a paper girl. They always have. And the worst thing is that I loved it, too. I
cultivated it, you know?”. (Paper 293)
Margo put up a façade of what she is, but in actuality, she is a girl who just wanted to escape. However, she likes the fact that she can create this personality that other people enjoy. Her intelligence shines through as she attracts Q to her by the use of Walt Whitman, and some of his poem, “Song of Myself”, Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, /Missing me one place search another, /I stop some where waiting for you (Paper 117). Margo disappears from Q’s life and he accepts that, he knows that she wants different things; in fact he actually lets Margo go in the end, “‘Margo, I have a whole life there, and I’m not you’” (Paper 303). Even though Margo leaves, there is still that connection and remembrance of what Q has been through because of her help and how he has become different. By trying to find his love, he found himself instead, and Margo helps him with that in his journey.
The Fault in Our Stars
Augustus helps Hazel, in The Fault in Our Stars, with (1.) showing her how to live, (2.) how to love, and (3.) how to battle this disease they have together. Augustus shows Hazel that she has to live now, even though she struggles every day as she battles cancer, “‘Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who becomes their disease? I know so many people like that. It’s disheartening’” (The Fault 32). After Hazel thinks about how she actually does kind of become her disease, she says, “I am pretty unextraordinary’” (The Fault 33). Which Augustus immediately dismisses the idea because he knows that Hazel has more potential than she is leading on to have (2.) Augustus shows Hazel to love. Even though she loses Augustus in the end, she still learns how important love is, “‘I will not tell you our love story, because – like all real love stories – it will die with us, as it should. … But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful’” (The Fault 259-60). The loss of Augustus, to Hazel, is kind of a breaking point for her and she knows that death for her is still around the corner, even though Green does not disclose if she dies or not, it is assumed because everyone dies. However Hazel knows that she must go on even though a huge part of her life is missing now and her mother reminds her of that, “‘You of all people know it is possible to live with pain’” (The Fault 300). Augustus and Hazel’s journey are so different from the other two books because their journey is interrupted by their disease. After Augustus finds out his cancer is back, he breaks: “‘What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner’” (The Fault 216). Augustus is very into giving his life up for others: “‘All salvation is temporary. I bought them a minute. Maybe that’s the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one’s gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that’s not nothing’” (The Fault 59). Hazel and Augustus use their intelligence as a way of coping with their cancer, but this becomes a problem as Hazel goes searching for her favorite author’s “sequel” of her favorite book. Hazel is very disappointed to find out that he isn’t everything she dreams he would be.
Expectations that are Not Met in The Fault in Our Stars
Hazel is obsessed with this fictitious book in The Fault in Our Stars called An Imperial Affliction by her favorite author, Peter Van Houten:
Sometimes you read a book and if 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. And then there
are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so and rare and yours
that advertising you affection feels like a betrayal. (The Fault 33)
The only problem with Houten is that he is completely different from what Hazel originally thought when she finally meets him in Amsterdam, “By this measure, Peter Van Houten was possibly the world’s douchiest douche” (The Fault 184). Houten is very rude and comments on Hazel’s disease, “You are a side effect of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives. You are a failed experiment in mutation” (The Fault 192-3). Hazel is not fazed by this however, “But I wasn’t angry. He was looking for the most hurtful way to tell the truth, but of course I already knew the truth” (The Fault 193). It is actually found out later that Houten is the way he is because of the death of his daughter, “She was eight. Suffered beautifully. Will never be beatified” (The Fault 285). Death is something that cannot be avoided, but it is not something that changes a person. According to Houten, “‘I was insufferable long before we lost her. Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you’” (The Fault 286).
Hazel expects this man, Houten, to be someone that she looks up to for guidance, and in a way, loses that because he is so different from what she originally thought. Every person has outer and inner shells that are completely different from each other and everyone perceives each other differently. As Lemony Snicket says, “first impressions are often entirely wrong” (Snicket 27). When viewing how a person perceives another shows more about themselves than that other person. It is bad enough that she loses her one true love Augustus, but then she loses respect for the author she considered to be, “My third best friend was an author who did not know I existed” (The Fault 12). She believes this in the beginning of the novel, and as it progresses, she realizes that he is nothing at all what she thought him to be. In the end, it seems as if he, in some way, tries to apologize by trying to explain a sequel of his book to Hazel, “‘Omnis cellula e cellula,’ … ‘All cells come from cells. Every cell is born of a previous cell, which was born of a previous cell. Life comes from life. Life begets life begets life begets life begets life’” (The Fault 276). Hazel is not impressed as Houten asks, “‘You don’t want an explanation’ [talking about the ending of the book AIA]?” (The Fault 276). Hazel responds, “‘No, I’m good. I think you’re a pathetic alcoholic who says fancy things to get attention like a really precocious eleven-year-old and I feel super bad for you. But yeah, no, you’re not the guy who wrote An Imperial Affliction anymore, so you couldn’t sequel it even if you wanted to’” (The Fault 276-7). In the end of the book, after Hazel finds Augustus’s lasts words he wrote, she notices how love and loss really compare. The end of his letter reveals just how much he truly loves Hazel, “You never worry if she [Hazel] is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to her, Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers” (The Fault 313).
A Sense of Loss
Dealing with loss is very prevalent in every work of John Green and it is implemented so well in each novel. Not only is the sense of loss a main focus, but the emotion behind every word in each novel. Lemony Snicket is also very good at this as he describes the feeling of the Baudelaire children losing their parents, “If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it” (Snicket 11). As Green wrote numerous times in The Fault in Our Stars, “‘Pain demands to be felt’” (The Fault 57). All of these novels give relatable instances of losing someone that is very dear to that one character’s heart: Hazel loses Augustus and Houten, Pudge loses Alaska, and Q and Margo go their separate ways. Green not only shows how lose affects a person, he also shows how it can change that person. Augustus shows Hazel what love is and how to continue on after he is gone. Even though Augustus dies, Hazel still lives even though she faces the threat of dying, and she accepts that because she got to experience love just like Isaac, Augustus’s friend talks about, “‘But I believe in true love, you know? I don’t believe that everybody gets to keep their eyes or not get sick or whatever, but everybody should have true love, and it should last at least as long as your life does’” (The Fault 75).
Love and Friendship
The love and friendship that the characters show in these stories are part of what help them cope with their hardships. Love is what keeps people together; it is what helps through the good times, and the bad times. Love releases a new kind of knowledge in people; people were born to love. Love is what helps Augustus and Hazel get through all that they went through in their story. Miles and Alaska’s friendship was something very special to Miles and when Alaska dies, he lets her go, but realizes that she is more than just “matter” (Looking Alaska 220). Q goes through all these adventures and trials to look for his “love” and friend, Margo. People usually do stupid things because of love, but actually, people live because of love. All of these adventures that each person went on were because of love and friendship. They were changed people after they find out something to go searching for. Searching through life to escape death is very sad to look at because in the end time does not stop and life continues even after the death of so many people and the heartache that is felt when a loved one dies.
Conclusion
Trying to deal with loss is often very hard for anyone because the human mind cannot comprehend what happens after death or the future. Life is full of uncertainty, however, one thing is for sure, and that is loss. And yet humans still try for more and more as they age, “I could imagine it. I could remember it. But I couldn’t see it again, and it occurred to me that the voracious ambition of humans is never sated by dreams coming true, because there is always the thought that everything might be done better and again (The Fault 305). Death is seen very much in the human world, “The world contains a lot of dead people” (The Fault 14), and people imagine it even though there is not death around them, “All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children” (The Fault 308). People are always going to lose others, mostly by death, but it also comes in other forms as well. There is no happiness without the heartbreak of loss. The loss of someone is one of the hardest things humans have to go through because they have to lose others, everyone has to leave eventually, and that is the fault in humanity.
Works Cited
Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York, NY: Dutton, 2005. Print.
---. Paper Towns. New York, NY: Dutton, 2008. Print.
---. The Fault in Our Stars. New York, NY: Dutton, 2012. Print.
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Snicket, Lemony. A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999. Print.
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