Tarun Sai Bhadri
1st Hour
10/20/2014
Love and Death; The Connection
“Without love there is no life.” Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had once said. This applies to The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, through the relationship of Hazel and Gus, as Hazel repeated struggles to realize that it is better for someone to have known her and be hurt by her death, then to have not known Hazel at all. Seventeen-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster reluctantly attends a cancer patients' support group at her mother’s request. Because of her cancer, she uses a portable oxygen tank to breathe properly. In one of the meetings she catches the eye of a teenage boy, and through the course of the meeting she learns the boy’s name is Augustus Waters, who was there at his friend, Isaac’s, request. After the meeting Hazel shares her deep affection for her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, with Augustus and encourages Gus (a.k.a Augustus Waters) to read it. Gus later reveals of his electronic communication to the author, Peter Van Houten, which eventually leads to a trip to Amsterdam (to meet the author in person). During the trip Augustus reveals that he still has cancer which leads to Waters’s death. Hazel figures out that Augustus may have sent a letter to Peter Van Houten shortly before he, Augustus, died. In the letter Hazel learned that she doesn’t get to choose whether she gets hurt but she does get the chance to choose who can hurt her. Through the characterization of Hazel’s relationship with Gus, Green communicates that it is better to have loved someone and be hurt by their death, then to have not known the person at all.
In attempting to keep her distance from Gus, Hazel tries to not to come to terms with Augustus about what their relationship is. However it is clear Waters thinks otherwise as he states out his affection for Hazel. He states how he doesn’t care about anything other than his love, Hazel.
“‘I'm in love with you,’ he said quietly.
‘Augustus,’ I said.
‘I am,’ he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling.
‘I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have, and I am in love with you.’(Green, 158)”
Gus explains his love for Hazel is his main priority and how when the inevitable occurs, he wants her to know that he still loves her deeply. He states his love to Hazel because Gus wants her to know that no matter what happens Augustus will still love her. Green creates a passionate tone through repetition ‘I'm in love with you’ to emphasize how much affection Augustus has for Hazel and also how that no matter what the situation is, Gus would still have feelings for Hazel. The author also uses diction referencing ‘business’ to state that Augustus truly loves Hazel. Hazel learns how no matter anything that occurs, Gus’s affection for her will never stop. This helps Hazel realize that she cannot deny Augustus because she also has feelings for him. Hazel realizes that in the time she spent with Gus was something that could never be replaced, but only to be treasured. Hazel explains how her memories with Augustus are infinite because she could remember the memories for the rest of her lifetime. Hazel realizes how the memories she had with Gus will last forever in her memory.
“There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm