The Nature of Stars
John Green’s novel, The Fault in Our Stars, depicts the harsh reality of cancer. Hazel Grace Lancaster is a sixteen year-old self-proclaimed ‘Professional Sick Person’ suffering from terminal illness. Hazel despises the ‘cancer kid’ profile and finds the idea of “fighting” cancer ridiculous since she has no say in the outcome, in any case. She is part of the small group of people that are content with going through life without doing something remarkable to warrant other’s admiration. Even though she thinks of herself as a bomb waiting to go off and she tries her best to minimize the casualties, she embraces the fact that “the world is not a wish-granting factory” and accepts the lot she has drawn in life.
Green derives the title of his novel from the famous line in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." (I,ii,139-140). Shakespeare says in this quote that men control their own destinies. Blame cannot be given to circumstance; instead it is human weakness that controls fate.
However, this cannot be said about Hazel Grace. She cannot control the fact that she has cancer. Further, one cannot blame her for wanting to limit the pain she causes by her death. It is in the nature of the stars to cross, and it is inevitable as oblivion. There is no shortage of fault found in Hazel’s stars.
The Fault in Our Stars contradicts Shakespeare and says that the injustices of life are not caused by human fault but by the product of an indifferent universe. The stars thwarted the love that Hazel and Augustus had for each other and caused it to come to an abrupt end. Unfortunately, that is the nature of the stars.