The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The book The Fault in Our Stars depicts the remarkable story of Hazel Grace who was diagnosed with Thyroid cancer in her lungs and her struggle to live life regularly and like any other person. Many conflicts caused by cancer stood in Grace’s way and awaited her to overcome them. This story effectively reflected the troublesome life of cancer patients and their personal battle against both the sickness and the pursuit of a regular life. The realism of this story also conveyed to the reader how Hazel Grace could be just another individual with cancer out of the countless in the world.

With her supportive and willing parents, after Grace was diagnosed with cancer she attended a cancer support group for her to socialize about how to deal with the sickness to hopefully plant a positive attitude in her mind. Surprisingly, Grace met a boy named Augustus Water and gradually fell in love with him. Waters also struggled with a dilemma of his own; he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma and had his right leg amputated. Grace started to introduce Waters into her life while they got to know each other more deeply.

As their relationship rapidly developed, Waters used one of his opportunities from his disability to travel to Amsterdam with Grace to meet their favourite author. Once they arrived in the Netherlands, Grace and Waters ardently traveled to the writer’s home and asked to meet him. After a fallacious encounter, the couple decided to forget about the author and just enjoy the greatness of Amsterdam. Once their trip had ended and they have returned back home, Water’s health condition began to fall dreadfully. Grace’s heart shattered as her boyfriend seemed to have not a long period of time to live. Unfortunately, Waters passed away after weeks of struggle against reformed cancer and left Grace with a meaningful letter, which told her that he couldn’t have controlled the cancer but he would love her forever.

Throughout this book, Grace’s casual personality contrasted with Water’s almost facetious character to create the most thought provoking dialogue that I have ever read. Even though cancer had handicapped a portion of their body, Waters and Grace’s magnanimous sprit brought a new fire to the life of a cancer patient. Ever action, word, and expression that each character made seemed to be coming directly out of the character themselves and not the author. This novel had one of the most inspiring and poignant plots with masterful diction to realistically exhibit the qualities of each character. In my opinion, this book is suitable to people of any age. The theme in this book motivated me to try harder in life as undeserving events may happen to you but you just have to try harder and deal with it. The title The Fault in Our Stars in my understanding meant that some things would occur to you inevitably without you doing anything wrong. However, to the cancer patients, the fault of cancer may be with the stars, but the battle against cancer would be solely upon them.