SuitabookThe Fault in Our Stars
John Green
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the young person rather than presenting it as a lesson about illness. Pause after medically intense scenes or major losses, check how the reader is finding the balance of humour and sadness, and return to the Shakespeare reference when discussing fate.
- Themes
- Love alongside mortality: Hazel and Augustus form a romantic relationship while living with cancer and awareness of mortality. The relationship is presented as a way of exploring whether love remains meaningful when loss is possible, rather than as a simple escape from illness.
- Stories, memory and legacy: The novel refers to Shakespeare and includes a fictional book that prompts reflection on stories about dying people and what they owe their subjects. Literature functions as a route into questions about fate, oblivion, memory and whether a life needs lasting recognition to have value.
- Living with serious illness: The characters’ lives are shaped by serious illness, relationships, treatment and questions of identity. The illness storyline is connected to relationships and identity, while the characters remain intellectually complex rather than being reduced to diagnoses.
- Worth knowing
- Pay particular attention to cancer’s physical deterioration, near-death experiences, vomiting, seizures and loss of bodily abilities. The novel also includes a significant death, brief non-graphic sex, mature language and alcohol use.