Thoughts on The Fault in Our Stars

I finished it a few days ago, but I've been digesting it for a while because there's a lot of thought-provoking material in this one single novel.

I always go into reading EXTREMELY POPULAR young adult fiction pretty skeptical. I have this thing about popular fiction that I just don't like jumping on the bandwagon. But I usually will read whatever the new fad is, because, I don't think you can fairly judge or criticize something without having read it for yourself. In fact, before I read Harry Potter, I was kind-of stand-off-ish about him because I was so sick of everyone talking about him non-stop. The same goes for Twilight, and the more-recent Hunger Games. (But those latter two were far more disappointing.)

So, that being said, here are some thoughts on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green:

{For anyone who has not read this literary-nation-sweeping phenomenon, I ask that you please excuse this post as it contains a plethora of spoilers and probably none of it will mean anything to you anyway. If you do, however, choose to proceed, I will, of course, oblige, especially as I really have no control over this matter. Thank you.}

Well, I read it. It took me about 1.5 days, and it's finally been checked off my May (though, really, now June) reading list. And here's an approximate (though not really approximate) summary of my thoughts as I proceeded through the book:

Yup. It's a cancer book. Supporting--oh, big surprise--one of those modern, John-Green-type sarcastic adolescent protagonists who always seem to sport a rebellious Darwinian approach to life, as if the only people (or the only adolescents) in the world with a real sense of depth also have a thoroughly grim outlook on the world, one in which their attitude is always "I don't give a crap,", something which annoys me greatly, because there are a number of us (not everyone, to be sure--yes, there are most certainly the young shallow-minded as much as the old) who are young adults who see the world fairly for all its sh** but whom do not allow that depth of understanding  to keep them from retaining a positivity that allows them to actually give a crap about themselves and others. Also, gee, I hope this girl doesn't go outside to light up a cigarette to be ironically morbid and fate-teasing.

Okay, this protagonist is clever, and well-read, I have to give her that. And she has an excellent vocabulary that she uses to punctuate her thoughts well. I'll give her points for her intellect, despite her persistent modern-adolescent-tragic-hero complex.

THIS AUGUSTUS KID is creepy. Like, total creeper. No one comes onto a girl like that without preamble without being either a mysoginist, or a psycho--to borrow Hazel's words herself--axe-murderer. Or both. Actually, probably both. At the very least, he's out to get laid. The lines coming out of his mouth are ridiculous. "Goddamn. Aren't you something else." Really? That's the first thing you're going to say to a girl? IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE?? And then tell her point-blank she's beautiful? Talk about forward. WHO ARE YOU??

Okay, when I said "gee, I hope this girl doesn't go outside to light up a cigarette to be ironically morbid," I was mostly joking! What an idiot! Now I can really say I firmly dislike this Augustus kid. At least Hazel is in agreement with me here. She gets another point for that.

Oh. He's not really smoking. He's just joining in on the modern-sarcastic-adolescent-protagonist-rebellion by testing fate to be ironically un-morbid by being morbid. I have to say, as much as John Green is writing the typical adolescent male protagonist here, he at least managed to elude predictability. Augustus Waters also earns back a small point for being only a fake-smoker and not a real one.

Wait--he winced? That's weir--OH MY GOODNESS HIS CANCER IS BACK ISN'T IT??

HE WINCED AGAIN OMG I AM SO RIGHT OH NO.

...Yup. Guess who's REALLY GOING TO BE THE ONE TO DIE by the end of the novel??


...Okay, so maybe I had a little too much fun with that partial summary. But for reals:

"depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying"

Overall, I'm still not entirely sure what I think about the book. I think it is brilliant and insightful to be sure, and I like the questions that it raises. It's given me quite a bit to chew on. I like that it doesn't sweep the horrible realities of illness under the rug, and I love that it is brutally honest about cancer and doesn't just try to turn every person who's ever suffered or died from it into a tragic hero who persevered and remained ever kindhearted and blah blah blah. I hate that we--Christians, especially--try to romanticize suffering sometimes, because we aren't doing it real justice when we romanticize things. I think we just want to honor it and throw useless Bible verses at it, patching it up and pasting it over with empty words the way that Augustus' parents pasted over their home in empty promises.

"(Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.) You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect." - Peter Van Houten

I do not like that Christians often use words without weighing them, as if meaningless language can somehow provide comfort. No. Our world is far more broken than we admit, or that we even know, and our language does not have the capacity to prop it up in a sling as if it's going to be okay on its own. John Green is right about one thing, for sure: There is certainly something very, very wrong with parents having to bury their children, and the reality of that needs to be laid bare. That's what I do like about this book--it's totally unapologetic about the bruises, gashes, and scares of illness, and the truth of what it means to deal with illness.

"If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You'd see Jesus on the cross, and you'd see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you'd see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of."

Nevertheless, the book is missing the Christian perspective on cancer, and all other terminal diseases. While I commend its brutal honesty, it still lacks the Christian perspective on the brokenness and suffering--that ultimately, the world will be reborn in New Jerusalem, and its broken people will be resurrected along with Christ into new, entirely whole bodies, and that we don't have to fear oblivion like Augustus Waters because it won't "have all been for naught," as Hazel says. It's almost like The Fault in Our Stars was written with complete honesty about brokenness and reveals the true depth of human depravity on earth, but that it remains ultimately hopeless because it cannot provide answers to those tough questions about humanity's suffering. In other words, it lacks the completeness of Christ, because ultimately that's the only place that offers real answers to those questions--and real hope for redemption from the depravity.

"'All salvation is temporary,' Augustus shot back. 'I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.'"

Not quite, Augustus. Not quite.