LouJaneMcK
New Member
I have just finished 'the fault in our stars' my first by John Green (although i have noticed his amazingness through social media) this was the second time I attempted the novel, the first I was simply too put off by the whole 'cancer kid' genre to get more than a few pages into the story.
I can't say I was blown away by the story here nor was I put off especially. I found it to be a relatively unremarkable story with characters which reflect many other characters in young adult fiction these days without features that make them truly engaging, while they had all of the making of engaging characters they have still somehow fell a little flat. Which is such a disappointment.
The only thing I found enthralling about the novel are the interesting conclusions which can be drawn about Hazel the protagonist. Even in her take away her cancer and she is seemingly uninteresting it took me until the very end of the novel to realise that she is both fearless and selfless and the flatness of her character exemplifies these qualities. Although Gus is so very average (special to Hazel I understand) and as the story is told by Hazel he is given more credit for being interesting then is due. Even as he weakened and grew closer to the fold he needed his funeral to be for him hence the pre-death-funeral to hear all of the nice things people say about you when you are gone. While Hazel stated that she understood that even as a person is dying and contemplating their own demise all you really have is thinking about what others will think or feel when your are gone, as that is all that our experience on earth and within this reality can allow, but of course a funeral is really in essence for the living and not at all for the dead who have gone onto the next reality or not that is now theirs.
In the end Gus knew that what he left behind was her pain she ensured that his memory lived, as he wished, through her grief and agony in what she had left in her own limited time. He knew of course that this would occur when he persuade her to trust in him. While she wanted to protect someone she didn't really know save him the pain of her loss, not when she loved him but when she just knew him to be a person who could feel, she wanted to spare at her own cost the pain she could cause. That I think makes her someone worthy of being remembered and treasured while Gus only serves as a plot device to further illustrate her selflessness.
I can't say I was blown away by the story here nor was I put off especially. I found it to be a relatively unremarkable story with characters which reflect many other characters in young adult fiction these days without features that make them truly engaging, while they had all of the making of engaging characters they have still somehow fell a little flat. Which is such a disappointment.
The only thing I found enthralling about the novel are the interesting conclusions which can be drawn about Hazel the protagonist. Even in her take away her cancer and she is seemingly uninteresting it took me until the very end of the novel to realise that she is both fearless and selfless and the flatness of her character exemplifies these qualities. Although Gus is so very average (special to Hazel I understand) and as the story is told by Hazel he is given more credit for being interesting then is due. Even as he weakened and grew closer to the fold he needed his funeral to be for him hence the pre-death-funeral to hear all of the nice things people say about you when you are gone. While Hazel stated that she understood that even as a person is dying and contemplating their own demise all you really have is thinking about what others will think or feel when your are gone, as that is all that our experience on earth and within this reality can allow, but of course a funeral is really in essence for the living and not at all for the dead who have gone onto the next reality or not that is now theirs.
In the end Gus knew that what he left behind was her pain she ensured that his memory lived, as he wished, through her grief and agony in what she had left in her own limited time. He knew of course that this would occur when he persuade her to trust in him. While she wanted to protect someone she didn't really know save him the pain of her loss, not when she loved him but when she just knew him to be a person who could feel, she wanted to spare at her own cost the pain she could cause. That I think makes her someone worthy of being remembered and treasured while Gus only serves as a plot device to further illustrate her selflessness.
