The Fault in Our Stars is a more thought-provoking YA novel than most. Its author avoids many of the primary pitfalls of his genre by offering real emotion: the anger, affection, and despair expressed are not of a sappy, saccharine quality. The book’s questions of meaning, significance, and loss in a broken world are poignant for many teens, and Hazel Grace’s feelings and fears are relevant to most people, regardless of their age or life circumstances.
This Friday, the book’s film adaptation is coming out, much to the joy of the book’s avid fans, who will probably flock to the theaters with tissues in tow. This isn’t a lighthearted book, and from the reviews I’ve read, it isn’t a lighthearted film, either.
The book follows two cancer-stricken teenagers who fall in love: their meeting is very reminiscent of Twilight, with a handsome Gus staring blatantly at Hazel, who finds herself disconcerted by this handsome boy’s unexpected attention. There are a lot of factors in their romance that remind me of Twilight, actually: the star-crossed lovers, trying to fight against their fate. The romantic passages share a similar emotional magnetism. Gus, like Twilight’s “Edward,” seems a bit less relatable, a bit too perfect. We understand Hazel—we’re inside her head. But Gus is a bit harder (for me, at least) to understand. There are things about the couple, however, that are very relatable to most teens: their love of the book An Imperial Affliction, the way they pour themselves into it and its author, is understandable to many young adults—indeed, many teens have treated “TFiOS,” as it’s fondly paraphrased, in this exact manner.
But the books’ philosophical roots are more interesting to me: Hazel and Gus’s favorite book is a bleak one (to put it lightly). It posits the claim that human beings and relationships don’t matter in any lasting sense—because the end of all life is oblivion. This is reflected at the beginning of the book, in Hazel’s own words:
“There will come a time,” I said, “when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no more human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this”—I gestured encompassingly—“will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was a time before organisms could experience consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
Rather morose for a 16-year-old—but then, Hazel is no ordinary 16-year-old. TFiOS enforces the idea that momentary emotional relief is all we get out of life, and that ultimately, longing ends in disappointment. This is only confirmed when Hazel and Gus finally meet Van Houten, the author of An Imperial Affliction, in all his mean-spirited glory. And then, in case we missed it, this message is confirmed again near the end of the book, when Gus reveals his cancer’s lethal return.
This is the primary means by which TFiOS differs from other YA romances out there. It purposefully packs disappointment into its pages. It has some sappy sweetness, but this sappiness is a needed relief from the overarching death and disappointment.
Why are so many teens attracted to this sad novel? I think it speaks to their collective search for meaning in the seemingly empty, disappointing patterns of life. TFiOS attempts to put meaning within oblivion—to legitimize a relationship that was predicated on the idea that life is poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Though Hazel and Gus’s relationship has a painful ending, we are meant to find comfort in the memories and characters left alive. The novel’s definition of love forms a sappy yet depressing negative—love (at least, according to Gus) is choosing who we let hurt us, and being happy with that choice.
There’s a seed of truth here: love does involve hurt, self-sacrifice, and vulnerability. But love isn’t just a negative: it ought to be a full, warming positive. It ought to fill voids and chasms in the human heart. Love has always been like a kiss of eternity in a hurting, mortal world. Green seems to capture the importance of the kiss—but it’s cheated out of its eternal impact.
TFiOS makes us question the meaning and purpose behind life. If we’re not here for any reason, if we know that oblivion awaits us and our loved ones, how do we survive the pangs of loss? If we are living out a dreary cycle that only ends in forgetfulness and death, how do we continue living and loving?
Perhaps the book will offer answers to some people. Sadly, for many teens, I fear the love story portrayed here will only reinforce an idea of love that is both self-serving and utilitarian: if oblivion is our reality, then all emotional and romantic attachments must be taken with a grain of self-preserving salt.
But the fact that this book does raise such questions makes it worthwhile to read—and makes the film worthwhile, as well, I think. Despite its more sappy and youthful elements, this story is both thought-provoking and poignant.
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