The Fault in Our Stars' one pivotal hamartia

By Kat


Before I begin, I would just like to state for the record that The Fault in Our Stars was not a bad book. In fact, at many points I genuinely enjoyed the book and overall found that is was generally a good novel. However, in true Hazel Grace Lancaster fashion, it does indeed have one pivotal hamartia.
Which brings me to the issue at hand:
The Fault in Our Stars is pretentious.
There. Pause for a moment to hear the protests of fan-girls.
John Green is a great writer. He is obviously very well read, and obviously knows his stuff after all the successful pieces he's written. However, in The Fault in Our Stars, we find quotes like this:
“It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing.”
"What do you fear? -Oblivion."
And even the book itself admits it! Isaac, at one point, says: "Augustus Waters talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production."
But the thing is, we actually have to sit through hundreds of pages of this. Hundreds of pages of Augustus Waters, a guy with strange philosophical viewpoints that could only belong to teenagers who would be wise enough not to share them with other people. It's almost as if he's inviting people to hate him, and it doesn't make for a character that actually makes sense. You can have a meaningful and layered story without making one of your protagonists go on a soliloquy about every implication of every situation.
And one more point: cancer. Cancer, the central element to the story. But despite how many layers it gives to the story, it must be realised that without the cancer, the story lacks substance. These characters suddenly become quite empty, and the entire story seems to be just another cliched tale of teenage love. I understand what terminal illness brings to this story. I understand how it builds up the story itself. But the core of writing a story involving any sort of medical condition is to convey how your story and subsequent situations and characters actually have a sort of weight that is nothing to do with cancer. Because that's what these people all are- people. And these people shouldn't be defined by a situation that was  brought upon them by chance, which really needs to be shown in every sort of story. Green treads on delicate territory and dangerous thresholds- if we look at Hazel, we see that her life for the first few chapters seem to revolve entirely about her cancer, then she simply allows her happiness to become reliant on Augustus. We want to see a human side, a side away from cliched love and teen romance and away from cancer and unforeseen circumstances.
The Fault in Our Stars is, at its core, a cancer story. It's somewhat pretentious, but it's also brilliant. All we need is for Green to understand this situation without delving into unnecessary dramatics. All we need is for The Fault in Our Stars to grasp what it truly means to grow up, away from any adversity.