The Fault in Our Stars Paper
The Fault in Our Stars Paper
The Fault in Our Stars Paper
ENGL 367
08 December 2018
applied to literature. Using psychological theories, one can explain a character’s desires, wishes,
and motives for their actions, and can give the characters more psychological and mental depth.
Defense mechanisms are explained in Freud’s principles, and are defined as “a tactic developed
by the ego to protect against anxiety.” According to Freud, the human mind is divided into three
levels of consciousness: ego-- the conscious part of the human in which the human is always
aware of, superego-- which is a part of the unconscious, but specifically holds the moral ideas,
and the id-- the deepest part of the unconscious which holds desires and wish fulfillment. By
evaluating one’s defense mechanisms, you can later then identify their id’s deep unconscious
desires. In the Fault in Our Stars (TFIOS) by John Green, Hazel Grace Lancaster, the main
protagonist, has a very complex mental state to evaluate. She uses defense mechanisms such as
fixation, identification, selective perception, and denial to avoid talking about her fears regarding
Since Hazel is terminally ill, she is constantly pushing her loved ones away. She states
that this is for their own protection, as they are the ones who will have to deal with the aftermath
of her passing. According to Freud’s theory of Mourning and Melancholia, there are two
different responses to death: mourning and melancholia. Mourning, he says, is a healthy way of
dealing with the loss of a loved one, and it is helpful when going through the motions in the
aftermath. Melancholia, on the other hand, is an unhealthy way of coping with death, and can
negatively impact one’s mental health down the line. Freud even goes so far as to describe this
mental state as “pathological.” Hazel Grace Lancaster, while trying to cope with her own
terminality, goes into a state of melancholia. She goes into a deep, depressive state, where she
withdraws from social activities, refuses to go to support groups, and basically sabotages her
own mental health. She isolates herself in an attempt to save her family from their own process
of mourning and melancholia, and even avoids making friends so less people will be hurt when
she goes off like a “grenade.” But at the end of the book, when Augustus dies, she is much more
apt to handle this death. She mourns for him in a much more appropriate way, and even writes
his eulogy. She seems to mourn his death in a more appropriate way-- not in the way she mourns
her own.
But Hazel and Augustus’s relationship was not ordinary for Hazel from the very
beginning. She was much more open to him than she was to anyone else, and she did not push
him away nearly as much as she pushed her family away. Upon meeting him for the first time,
she immediately gave him a chance. Knowing that he has been through something similar to
Hazel’s situation may have been the catalyst for this friendship, or it may have been an incidence
of selective perception. Selective perception is a Freudian principle that states that people will
hear or see only what they want to perceive-- and will selectively ignore or avoid anything they
do not think they can handle. Hazel repeatedly reads the book “An Imperial Affliction,” which is
about a girl who is dying of cancer. In this book, Anna is going through the same things that
Hazel is going through: coming to terms with her terminality, living in pain, and also having to
learn how to cope with the mental pain that having cancer is causing her. This book gives Hazel
comfort within her own Hazel learns how to come to terms with her own terminality by learning
from Anna’s emotional journey. But Hazel Grace fixates on this book-- which is another of
Freud’s principles. Fixation is defined as a persistent focus that comes out of a developmental
gap, or just something missing from the subject’s childhood. Due to Hazel Grace’s ambiguity
regarding her childhood, it is hard for one to interpret the cause of this fixation. The only
mention she really makes of her parents is “my parents were my two best friends.”
Hazel’s fixation on the main character of “An Imperial Affliction” actually becomes so
intense that she starts to identify with the character. Identification is a defense mechanism in
which a person takes characteristics, personality traits, etc. from a person they admire or slightly
identify with to protect their own actual person from being hurt. Hazel can understand Anna’s
struggles with cancer, and since Anna’s story, which literally ends mid-sentence due to Anna’s
passing, gives Hazel more security in the idea that life will simply end after her death. Hazel
obsesses over what will happen after she passes, and the idea that literally nothing will happen
and life will just cease after death is comforting to her. She goes so far as to even dress like her
when she meets “An Imperial Affliction’s” author, Pete van Houten. “I spent like thirty minutes
debating with Mom the various benefits and drawbacks of the available outfits before deciding to
dress as much like Anna in AIA as possible: Chuck Taylors and dark jeans like she always wore,
and a light blue T-shirt.” In this excerpt, she is going so far as to look like Anna, and it is even
possible that this is because when she meets the author, she wants him to even say she looks like
or even is like Anna, thus receiving confirmation that her imitation of Anna is correct. She finds
peace in imitating Anna, and wants desperately for her life to end like Anna’s also.
Hazel also struggles greatly with denial. Denial, according to Freud, is a primitive
defense mechanism in which any threatening information is suppressed and ignored, thus
causing the brain to be unable to process the information, and causing the rise of other mental
issues later on in life. Whenever Hazel is asked to tell her “story” in her support group, she
quickly responds saying “I’m Hazel... Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and
long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I’m doing okay.” In this, she is simply stating her
physical state, and not acknowledging her mental state. She says she is okay, when in reality she
is clinically depressed, which she even clearly states in the beginning of the book: “depression is
not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”This quote shows that Hazel
knows and understands what is happening to her, yet her failure to recognize it and deal with it
even in her support group supports the idea that she is in denial regarding her terminality, But
Hazel is not the only character in the book who struggles with denial-- Augustus Waters also
fails to truly recognize the severity of his state, even after losing a leg to his first round of cancer.
He uses comedy to deny his state, though, which is different from Hazel’s blatant ignorance of
the situation. One of Augustus’s friends, Isaac, who is also in Hazel’s support group, is about to
lose his eyes to cancer, therefore lose his sight. But when Augustus is asked about what he fears
in life when he went to the support group with Isaac, he says “I fear oblivion...I fear it like the
proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.” Isaac scoffs at this comment, but Augustus is
truly using denial so he does not have to focus on his own fears of the future, and the focus goes
back to Isaac and his own struggles. Isaac is set to live, willing that his surgery is successful thus
proving that Augustus’s comment was not to move focus to someone who needed more support--
it was solely to move the focus off of him and his own crippling fear of being forgotten after
death.
But both Hazel and Augustus show positive improvement regarding their mental states in
their time together. Hazel learns how to mourn correctly, considering she is able to handle
Augustus’s death more healthily than she was able to handle the inevitability of her own,
especially since she even writes Augustus’s eulogy for him to hear before he passed. She is able
to attend his funeral, and then later receives a letter from him, which further helps her healing
and coping process. Augustus is also able to face his phobia of oblivion, and even comes to
terms with it. When professing his love for Hazel, he says “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.” Though hyperbolic, this
statement goes to show how his relationship with Hazel has helped him to improve his attitude
regarding his morality and what comes after death, more for the people left on Earth than for his
own consciousness.
One can also ask why an author would want to write a story about such a deeply mentally
troubled person, and this can be evaluated through a New Historic literary view. This criticism of
literature allows the reader to understand more about the culture surrounding the writing of the
book and then also understand the culture mentioned in the book. According to this ideology, all
life can be evaluated as a text, and that actual literature is a cultural artifact. By looking at the
context of literature and understanding the culture surrounding the time of its writing and its
setting, you can understand not only the references it makes but also comprehend a deeper
2012. It was set in the present while it was being written, and most of its cultural references still
make sense nowadays-- being the year 2018. According to New Historicism, one can look at the
author’s biography as its own text, thus open to interpretation as all literature is.
John Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 24th, 1977. He has a brother
named Hank, with whom he is very close. As a young adult, he volunteered periodically in
hospitals, specifically spending time with terminally ill youth. He went to Kenyon College and
majored in both Religious Studies and English, and he planned on becoming an Episcopalian
Minister. He ended up pursuing English, though, as he found that writing was his true passion.
Later on, he became an internet personality. He and his brother made vlogs together under the
name VlogBrothers-- specifically series of intellectual YouTube videos about different books,
historical events, etc. and became internet famous, and soon a fan base formed known as the
“Nerdfighters.” The Greens were very involved with their fan base, and actually came to know a
Esther Earl was not only a Nerdfighter, but was also a YouTuber and internet personality.
At just twelve years old in 2006, Esther was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After the following
Thanksgiving, doctors from Boston Children’s Hospital informed Esther’s parents that her
cancer was terminal. This was also around the time that she connected with John Green-- and she
was, in fact, one of the earliest Nerdfighters. The two curated an online friendship for about two
years, then they were able to actually meet at LeakyCon in 2009, which is a Harry Potter
conference. She became a part of the online community known as Nerdfighteria, a forum
dedicated to the VlogBrothers’ fans. She was also involved with the Harry Potter Alliance, with
John Green personally egging other fans on to “vote with Esther.” She continued to build an
online presence on sites such as Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter until her passing on August 25th,
2010. After her passing, John Green posted a video eulogy for her, entitled “Rest in Awesome,
In this video, John Green talks about how he met her and what a positive influence she
was not only on his life, but those of many different communities. But he also makes a point of
saying that while Esther passed away at just age sixteen of cancer, she was in no way an image
of holiness or a perfect angel-- she was just like any other teenager of an internet age. He also
makes a point in talking about the last time he saw Esther, and a specific conversation they had
about death. He says that Esther believed that people would live on after their death: through
love, stories, and legacies. In other words, the dead do not experience oblivion-- not immediately
after death, that is. John Green later dedicated The Fault in Our Stars t o Esther, but specifically
stated that Hazel Grace Lancaster was not based on Esther’s real life character-- at most, she
But, when reading John Green’s biography and a bit of Esther Earl’s biography as a text,
it is hard to deny the similarities between Esther’s words and the words of The Fault in Our
Stars, and Green’s own connection to the subject matter. Published just two years after Esther’s
death, TFIOS specifically talks about oblivion, and it also strives to ensure that people know that
both Hazel and Augustus were not perfect angels. Esther and the main characters share many
qualities and ideals, despite John Green repeatedly saying that Hazel’s character is not based on
Esther, and that he didn’t want to tell or rewrite Esther’s story. But, he does not say anything
about whether or not Augustus’s character is inspired by Esther or not. Augustus, the “swooning
bad boy” of the book, thus is illustrated as anything but a perfect little angel, even though he is a
young cancer patient. He was also the character most fixated on oblivion after death, which he
did not want to face or have happen. He was very focused on making his life not only memorable
for himself, but for others. He stated toward the beginning of the book that he was scared of
oblivion, but later on in the book his phobia dissipates, as mentioned earlier.
Since New Historics believe that the author’s life can be read as its own text, one can also
apply other literary theory to said text. If one were to psychoanalyze John Green’s life as a text
(not the actual author himself, but the text) a fixation on the subject of cancer would become
apparent. Not only through his work as a chaplain with terminally ill youth, but he continued to
stay connected with the cancer community by befriending Esther, and then later writing a book
exclusively featuring young cancer patients. This fixation may not specifically be about cancer,
but it may reflect a fear of dying young and oblivious. By trying to canonize the characters in the
book, he is giving those who died young a proper ending, regardless of whether or not they
actually got their own peaceful ending. His own work to give those who face an early death may
By understanding not only the psychology of the characters but also the history and
context of The Fault in Our Stars, one can more easily comprehend the book in its totality. These
two views, used in tandem, can give the reader a deeper view of the characters in the book and to
the author too. It can redefine how the characters and book are viewed, and give a more three
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete
the
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance.” The
Bedford