Name
Mrs. Kehres
English 9
15 February 2014
IRP Reading Essay There are some people in the world who hate getting close to people because they are scared or like to be alone. Then there are other people, like Hazel in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, who are scared to become close to people because they don’t want to hurt them. In this book a teenage girl named Hazel has cancer, she goes to a Support Group for kids with cancer and meets a boy named Augustus Waters. Their relationship starts off by just staring at each other, “Look, let me just say it: He was hot. A nonhot boy stares at you relentlessly and it is, at best, awkward, and at worst, a form of assault. But a hot boy... well.”(41) We bet most of the teenagers you know don't have cancer, right? We can thank our lucky stars for that, but for Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac in The Fault in Our Stars, that means a whole lot of isolation. Sure, Hazel hangs out with her friend Kaitlyn, and Isaac starts off the book with a lovey dovey girlfriend, but when the going gets tough, their illnesses separate them from most other people. Add that to their physical limitations, and they find themselves in a world that is oftentimes very, very lonely. “That was the worst part about having cancer, sometimes: The physical evidence of disease separates you from other people.”(58) Not only do people leave when there are some rough patches, but when Hazel goes out in public people stare. When she gets on the airplane to go visit her favorite author everyone on the plane gawks at her and that’s another reason why they don’t want to become close with people; they think they’re weird because they are physically different. “Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten when we die.”(64) Hazel says this at a Support Group meeting and this theme about existence is relevant to what the author was saying about life because you could be an unpopular person with little friends and when you die, everyone will care, but only for a day. Soon they will all forget, they will forget about everything you have said and done and you’ll just be a memory that they rarely think of. Hazel says that “whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”(1) You never realize what someone is going through and you never understand what is killing them; cancer or depression. Hazel was scared to make friends, she had her one friend Kaitlyn and that was enough for her. She got scared to get close to Augustus because she didn’t want to hurt him when she died because she eventually would. Identity is a critical theme and question in this book and also in life, but it's especially important to the narrator, Hazel Lancaster. After all, Hazel has the added complication of cancer—she doesn't have much time left to answer the question. Hazel's self-discovery is helped along by a boy, a book, and ultimately, herself. Everybody is trying figure who they exactly are and during this book Augustus helps Hazel figure that out. By the end of the book Hazel and Augustus fall in love. They travel together, go to Support Group together, they do everything together. Hazel was so scared of dying and hurting Augustus but he died before her. His cancer came back and he didn’t tell her. This book has themes relative to life and the main one is to live every moment like it’s your last. Don’t take anything for granted and leave your mark. Give people something to remember when you leave, even if it’s something little, or something for just one person.