Reckless Youth

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." ~ Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare.

 

 

The best-selling novel The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is the tale of Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters--two characters whose enemies are their own bodies.

 

The book revolves around Hazel, a girl with stage IV thyroid cancer, and Augustus, a osteosarcoma survivor. Green's story is not about how Hazel battles her cancer and survives because of her admirable merits, nor is it about how Augustus comes up with metaphorical resonances of almost everything.

 

Rather, it is a story of two teenagers who fight against their greatest fears and love each other deeply.

 

It all begins when Hazel attends a session at Support Group for Cancer Kids. Though she does not think the event is relevant to her, she goes anyway, for the sake of her parents; she wants to make them happy. "There is only one thing in this world shittier than biting it from cancer when you’re sixteen, and that’s having a kid who bites it from cancer," she comments later in the book.

In that session she meets Augustus, the boy who feared oblivion. Hazel teaches him that he shouldn't fear the inevitable. Instead, he should just ignore it like most people do.

 

Soon enough the two of them become friends, and later on that friendship turns into something deeper.

 

When Hazel shares her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, with Augustus, he immediately falls in love with it. He ends up using his 'Wish from the Genies' to meet the author together with Hazel. The pair travel to Amsterdam to talk to Peter Van Houten about his book.

 

And this is where everything escalates.

 

John Green's work is a tragedy; a tragedy so beautiful that even Shakespeare would praise it. Green wrote the story in Hazel's point of view in such a way that she stood out as smart, fierce and real. And while the plot itself turned out to be really amazing, though there is one thing that did not seem realistic. Augustus' big words wouldn't be used by a normal seventeen-year-old boy.

 

I am so happy that I picked up The Fault In Our Stars and flipped it open. I did not know what to expect at each turn of the page because I did not have any idea how Green writes and I do not usually read books like this. But I'd recommend this book to every teenager, especially to those who love romance, witty humor and heartbreaking events. This book taught me--a mere teenager who spends a lot of time reading--a lot about the value of life, the weight of loss, and how love can overcome fear.