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With author John Green and his best seller novel, The Fault In Our Stars, he invokes a different kind of response in his readers. Instead of expecting to read a novel about the horror Ross of cancer and the medical treatments many of its victims are subjected to, Green surprises his readers with a starched love story between two witty teenagers with an early death certifier cater. One of the fascinating themes about Green’s novel is the juxtaposition of the heroic roles in The Fault In Our Stars between those with cancer and those without, who a re trying to provide assistance for the cancer patients.
Although most believe that those burden d with a serious illness are unable to save themselves without the help Of someone, such as a doctor, or a higher ewer, Green shows that in actuality, sometimes the sick are the heroes who help give strength to those of the healthy and even provide help for themselves through the emote Anal experience of being loved, falling in love, and grieving for a lost loved one. To those who are ill, they are constantly told to fight the good fight, where “ho pee was clung to;… Ears were shed; comfort proffered” ( Green 1 1) by those who “just didn’t get it” (11) Murderous 2 like Patrick, the leader of the Support Group. Green exemplifies Patrick as a la Kingstown with his story about having testicular cancer, living at his parent’s home without an friends and leading a group in the church’s basement. Patrick tells the group to rely on Go d and spews countless battle metaphors. Like many Patrick in the world, they tend to place e focus on a higher power, telling the sick that God will come to their rescue and the afterlife is a better alternative than where they are currently.
It is almost as cancer patients are “always a hamster … A fatal flaw” (19) to the human race and needs to be quarantined and passed over to a higher being. They are “a side effect of’ (3) mankind and their perceived savior is the lord. It is this vitrified mix of disappointment and” (20) pity that Green dispels from h is novel. By providing an inside view of a cancer patient, Green shows that they are MO re than just a side effect. Certainly, they are of a doomed breed that technology and medicine AR e there to help but, sometimes they don’t need saving from outside forces.
Their mental anguish, which is sometimes overlooked, is what ought to be saved and in the case of Hazel an d Augustus, they are able to save each other. For example, the romance between Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters unshackled them from a potential life of loneliness and forgetfulness. In Haze Xi’s efforts, she has shown Augustus a second chance of being loved and falling in love. Unlike his last girlfriend, who’s attitude toward him changed completely, “Hazel [was] different… She [w as] funny without being mean” (312) and loved deeply.
She gave Augustus the chance to “leave a mark” (311) on her life. Likewise, Augustus “bought them a minute… That [might] buy them an hour” (59) by making himself Hazel’s knight in shining armor. He spends his last and only W sis on Hazel in order to fulfill her dreams of meeting her favorite author and was there for h re when she had a Murderous 3 Eden trip to the hospital. Together, they had their “little infinity’ (260) in the numbered days they were given “and that’s not nothing’ (59).
When it comes to pain, some may find it is necessary for growth, especially when the form of torment one goes through is because of the loss of a loved one. In light term ms, the existence of death is the one agony that human beings like to try to pretend doesn’t exist, and that it isn’t an eventual outcome for all creatures on Earth. According to Green, “there will co me a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed” 12) but it doesn’t necessarily mean the eventual process of dying should occupy the expanse of someone’s life.
In the dynamics of Hazel and her parents relationship, Hazel fears that the pros pests of her dying might as well be the end to her parents’ lives because she believes she is the c enter of her parents’ world and if she is gone, then what happens to her parents? Will they be able to pick themselves back up and move on with their lives, finding something else to center their w oral around? Her concern lays in the possible aftermath of her death. In spite of her fears, how veers, Hazel is informed by her mother revealing her parents’ involvement in providing hell p to families trying to cope with cancer.
In this moment, the worry and anguish Hazel placed pup n herself is lifted because there would be more to her parents’ life than Hazel’s “cancer story’ ( 32); even if she herself isn’t saving the day, Green reveals that even a cynical, vaguely heroic b Ewing needs saving. Furthermore, following behind the tragedy of their love affair, Hazel managed to ease some of the “harmonic terror” (262) that Augustus brought with it. During hi s funeral, she had changed her eulogy into something more generic but heartfelt instead of sin the one she had written previously.
Why did Hazel decide to change her eulogy instead of tells Eng everyone about Murderous 4 their love story? She came to an understanding that “grief does not change you u… Ltd reveals” (286) the crushing sense of running out of time because she came to the realization n that “funerals… Are for the living” (273) and that it served as a reminder to everyone of what t hey have lost and of how much time is left for them. They remind themselves that even though thesaurus’s parents and family memberships lost a dearly loved one, there’s still a “long lie fee filled with reheat and terrible moments that [they] cannot even imagine yet” (272).