Fault In Our Stars

Anisha Virmani

I read “The Fault in Our Stars,” a realistic fiction novel by John Green for my book talk assignment. This novel is clearly realistic fiction because of it’s realistic setting, characters and issue. The novel takes place in a present-day time period, located in a suburban area in Indianapolis, Indiana. The main character of this book is Hazel Grace Lancaster. The novel is in first person in her point of view and we see all aspects of her views. The second main character is Augustus Waters, Hazel’s love interest. He isn’t demonstrated in first person, but we do see many aspects of him too. The conflict found in this novel is initially that Hazel felt the need to keep everyone from being heartbroken; she needed to keep herself alive. Diagnosed with cancer at a young age, she fights a tough battle and though she almost bit it, she kept going. Being the selfless person she is, she is worried that if she gets too close to people like Augustus, she will hurt them if anything happens to her. The novel goes through Hazels time learning new things, making decisions and seeing what is best for her, and other people. The theme of this novel is that life is short and it is important to live it to your fullest. Both, Augustus and Hazel face the challenge of dying. They knew that

“Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that’s one in five . . . so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these people” (Green, 5). Author, John Green demonstrated a humorous tone here by using slang and shortened words such as, “gotta,” and he used the word, “like,” in an informal way. This gives the reader an impression of a sarcastic, fun, young adult speaking. This forms a humorous tone and impacts the book in that