Spring Literary Analysis: #1

FICTION ANALYSIS

THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

1. The book I read is called The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It is about a 16 year old girl named Hazel Grace who has lung cancer. She's pulled out of schol early because of it (the cancer) but she has her GED. Her parents make her go to support classes because they fear she is depressed. On one of the days she went to the support group she meets a boy named Augustus and they pretty much instantly become friends. Hazel is big into reading and looks at the world in a unique way. The author of her favorite book that she reads over and over is the only person that seems to get her and he doesn't even know she exists. The main conflict in this novel is that she's living with cancer and the boy she loves, Augustus, was cancer free but at the cost of losing his leg. I think the author had many purposes of this book and the narrative fulfilled them. In the book Hazel talks about how certain things are a side effect of dying such as depression and even being heroic and goes on to say that cancer itself is a side effect of living and the human race. I agree with that and it is a sad but true way of looking at things. 

2. The theme of the novel is that the universe wants to be noticed and that we want to be noticed by the universe. Humans are examples of the universe experiencing and noticing itself and cancer is one of the many things the universe does to get noticed. The world wasn't built for us but we were built for the world. Hazel and Augustus and even the author of her favorite book talks about this several times. Even though that's not what the story is about, that is the theme and feel that I got out of it after reading it.

3. The author's tone throughout the story is a mellow kind of sadness that I found unique. "The world is not a wish-granting factory". This quote is said several times in the book and I think it expresses the authors tone nicely. It's sad but also calming in a way knowing that nothing is perfect and you can never have everything you desire. "As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle...". The tone the author was portraying was unique at this point of the book because this is the only time I sensed it and felt different than I did through the rest of the book. As I read it the tone changed and right when the sentence was over I felt it slowly evaporate and it wasn't felt again throughout the whole book. "I could feel everybody watching us, wondering what was wrong with us, and whether it would kill us, and how heroic my mom must be, and everything else." The tone here is pretty much the tone through the whole book. They were at the airport going to Amsterdam and everyone was staring at them and she explained how they must all wonder what's wrong with them and it's something she constantly has to deal with along with the cancer itself. The tone was hopeful because they were going to Amsterdam but also sad because she almost wasn't able to go and the whole time reading it you had an ominous feeling that something bad was going to happen cancelling out the hopefulness. 

4. As I've said before the overall tone of this novel is a unique kind of sad, mellowness but also romantic. "So of course I tensed up when he touched me. To be with him was to hurt him - inevitably... I felt like I was committing an act of violence against him, because I was." (Page 101) This quote from the book is a good example of overall tone of the text and it helped me understand it better. It is sad because she wants to be with him so bad but knows it will only end in sorrow but it is also mellow because she has come to terms with it. John Green, the author, tended to describe things in a way that made sense to me and that I haven't seen before like when he says, "...which made me worry that when I died they'd have nothing to say about me except that I fought heroically, as if the only thing I'd ever done was Have Cancer." (Page 100) I feel like that is so true about everyone who has died who has cancer and no one has admitted it before and it helped me understand one of the author's purposes which is being remembered when you have passed. I felt like the tone changed several times throughout the story but it was mostly sad and mellow but an example of it changing would be, "I nudged my head into his shoulder. "Thanks for offering to come over."' (Page 122) I got a sense of a happy and tranquil tone during this part of the text which is far different from the overall tone. John Green has a way of using a lot of detail to describe what means like most authors but the vocabulary he uses complex but not overwhelming. An example of this would be, "there is no shortage of fault to be found amid our stars". "The weird thing about houses is they almost always look like nothing is happening inside of them, even though they contain most of our lives." This quote may seem like it is just talking about houses and it might be but I think it is also a metaphor for how you can't usually physically see cancer but it dominates the hosts life and it helped me understand that better. The made-up author in the story, Peter Van Houten turns out to be a curmudgeon old man and doesn't do what he says he would for Hazel and Augustus but there's a quote from him that reveals why he was like that, "Writing does not reconstruct. It buries." When he says this he is talking about the daughter he lost to cancer and how the main character of the book he wrote was based off of his daughter and writing that book only made it harder for him, kind of as a "would have been" type scenario. When Hazel shows up to his house dressed like Anna he is somewhat surprised and thrown off by it but also drunk so he was rude about it. The sad tone of the book is emphasized when Hazel says, "You get all these friends just when you don't need them anymore", (Page 266) in regards to Augusts's memorial wall after he passes. She already knows that it will be like that for her when she dies. Throughout this book romantic gestures are made that bring the mood up only to be brought back down again. An example of the cute and romantic tone would be, "I nudged my head into his shoulder. "Thanks for offering to come over.' 'You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you,' he said." (Page 122)

CHARACTERIZATION

1. One example of direct characterization is when Hazel first sees and meets Augustus. She explains his voice as, "low, smoky, and dead sexy". You could tell by just reading it that she liked him from then on. A second example of direct characterization is when she meets Peter Van Houten, the author of her favorite book, for the first time. She explains him as, "a potbellied man with thin hair, sagging jowls, and a week-old beard". The way she described him painted a perfect picture in my head of what he would look like. An example of indirect characterization is in the same part of the book when Peter Van Houten is being extremely rude to them saying how he didn't literally mean he wanted them to fly to Amsterdam to visit him and he wasn't going to tell them what happened to the characters after the book ended like he said he would. It shows that he just a curmudgeon and very rude man without actually saying it. Another example would be Patrick, the support group leader. Every meeting he would talk about how he had testicular cancer and how he was ball-less now and how hard it is for him and it showed that he was repetitive and tiresome even though he had good intentions. The author uses both to describe characters as a way for the reader to create their own understanding of how the characters were without actually saying it but at the same time explaining what they looked like to put a clear picture in the readers mind. It left an impression on me for some of the characters like Augustus who I can picture clearly and I understand how he would act and react and think if he were a real person. It didn't leave a lasting impression for all of the characters but the main ones it did for sure.

2. The authors syntax and diction changes when he talks about characters like Augustus and Peter. The vocabulary becomes a bit more complex and sentences start to be more metaphoric because that's how the characters are. On the same spectrum the vocabulary and sentence structure becomes more simple when he talks about the parents of Augustus and Hazel and characters that don't show up as much like their friend Issac.

3. The protagonist in this story is cancer itself. There isn't a person that the characters have to deal with it is the thing they have to live with and deal with. That being said the protagonist is mostly static but also dynamic. The cancer is in both of the main characters but Hazel has it and Augustus was cancer free for months and later found out the cancer had spread all throughout his body. The cancer symbolizes change and how fast it can occur and alter the way people think. Hazel and Augustus talk about how cancer is a side effect of dying and they are not glad that they have it or had it but they've come to accept that there is virtually nothing they can do about it. Augustus lost his previous girlfriend to brain cancer and (spoiler) Hazel loses Augustus to his cancer. Both of their lives are drastically changed by something that doesn't change throughout the whole book.

4. After finishing the book I strongly feel like I knew the characters. More Hazel than Augustus because sometimes I felt like I was reading a character when it was about Augustus. I really feel like I met and knew Hazel throughout the whole book and it was probably because I could relate to how she looked at the world and I could see what she meant even when I didn't think that way sometimes. For example when she says, "I  nodded. I was crying. I couldn't get over how happy I was, crying genuine tears of actual happiness for the first time in maybe forever, imagining my mom as Patrick. It made me think of Anna's mom. She would have made a good social worker, too." (Page 298) Her thinking that made me think about what I would do in a situation like that and I also would relate it to a book I had read or a TV show I had seen, which Anna and her mother are characters in her favorite book that she was referencing.