The Fault In Our Stars Terminal Cancer Theme

According to the Oxford American English Dictionary terminal cancer is defined as “the last stage of a disease… informal extreme usually beyond cure or alteration.” In the books The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Death Be Not Proud by John Gunther the main protagonists confront their own death or watch someone die from terminal cancer. Sometimes reality and fiction can be closer than what we imagine. In The Fault in Our Stars, Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster both suffer from different types of terminal cancer and in Death Be Not Proud, Johnny Gunther undergoes many surgeries to attempt to remove his brain tumor. Despite The Fault in Our Stars being a fiction book and Death Be Not proud a nonfiction book they both share the leading theme of the realities of terminal cancer. Even though The Fault in Our Stars is a fictitious book it really embraces how terminal cancer affects not only the person who suffers from it but also everybody that is close to

Johnny died at the young age of seventeen after a constant struggle to fight his brain tumor. When Johnny was first diagnosed with a brain tumor and Dr. Penfield confirmed it, John narrates that, “with everybody listening Penfield cut through all the euphemisms and said directly, 'Your child has a malignant glioma, and it will kill him.” (Gunther, 55). At this moment is when it is known that the cancer is real and he has a limited time to live. John Gunther said that “Cancer is a rebellion- a gangster outbreak of misplaced cells”(Gunther, 78). Even after all the surgeries Johnny underwent and as much he suffered, “Johnny did not lose function. He lived almost a year [after he was told he was going to die]..., and he did not die like a vegetable. He died like a man with perfect dignity” (Gunther, 56). Johnny fought cancer with strength, dignity and