The Fault in Our Stars
John Green (2012)
“A love story that refuses to lie about dying — and somehow that makes it the most alive book you'll ever read.”
Character Analysis
Sixteen-year-old Hazel has terminal thyroid cancer metastasized to her lungs and has been living with it long enough to have made peace with most of it — except for what she will do to the people who love her. Her self-conception as a 'grenade' is the novel's central metaphor and her central character flaw: she rations love to limit casualties, which is both generous and a way of avoiding the vulnerability that love requires. Augustus refuses her logic. She allows herself to be refused. That allowing is her arc.
Uses technical vocabulary from oncology, philosophy, and literary criticism without self-consciousness. Literary allusions are casual, reflexive.