The Fault in Our Stars, The Metatext

The extraction of the metatextual references made in The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Every other week is an exploration of a chapter. Submissions are welcome!

[metatfios]

Crossed Stars

“Were she better, or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves’” (111).

The reference of crossed stars alludes to the familiar prologue of Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

From forth the fatal loins of these two foes

A pair of star-cross’d lovers take  their life;

Whose misadventured piteous overthrows

Do with their death bury their parents’ strife.

The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love,

And the continuance of their parents’ rage,

Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove,

Is not the two hours’ traffic of our stage;

The which if you with patient ears attend,

What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

The term “star crossed” means “fated” or “destined” for people’s stars to cross and their lives to intersect. Van Houten illustrates the contradiction between the idea of star crossed lovers, or, people completely at the whim of a greater power (such as fate), and faults being not in our stars, “but in ourselves.” He argues that Shakespeare was wrong and declares that the injustices of life are not merely human faults but the product of an indifferent universe. The great irony Van Houten emphasizes is the magnitude of Hazel’s illness against Augustus’s health, but rather than express anger or sorrow, he acknowledges that “it is the nature of stars to cross,” and it is as inevitable as oblivion.

[metatfios]

Grenades and Illness

“My healthy self looked very little like her healthy self. But our cancer selves might've been sisters” (96-97).

Though not necessarily metatextual, the idea presented here touches upon another spectrum of illness; companionship. Caroline Mathers and Hazel would have had nothing similar about them were they both healthy, but their illness forged a connection between them. Illness binds the ill together just as much as it isolated them from the ‘healthy’ population. Hazel expresses a desire not to be a “grenade” to the people around her. While her concern may seem relevant to just the sick, it also becomes a concern of the living. Given the inevitability of death, and thereby oblivion, Hazel’s fear of hurting the people she loves touches upon the inevitability that the everyone eventually dies and loving people ends with loss. However, Hazel’s parents address the reality that loving outweighs the pain that comes with it, saying, “You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness” (103). The joy in living and loving keeps Hazel tethered to these pursuits, just as it allows others to live and love despite the accompanying pain.

[metatfios]

Lancaster: An Etymological Breakdown [Submission]

Caveat: Spoilery Post

Lancaster Loncastre (1086) "Roman Fort on the River Lune," a Celtic river name probably meaning "healthy, pure." The Lancastrians in the War of the Roses took their name from their descent from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Lancaster

I was thinking today about how authors often give metaphorical significance to the names of their characters, and how we already know that "Augustus Waters" is chock full of meaning, so of course I just had to look up the etymology of "Lancaster." I found 2 points of interest, the first being "fort on the river." Water, of course is hugely symbolic in this book, (“Conjoiner rejoinder poisoner concealer revelator. Look at it, rising up and rising down, taking everything with it.”) But a fort on the river? A symbol of strength and safety and stability? That seems like no coincidence to me -- Hazel's family is her strength & support system. The Lancasters, her parents, are her fort. And then of course, there is the ironic etymology: "healthy and pure." This makes no sense in Hazel's case, unless you put her into the context of her love for and with Augustus. She is, in comparison to him at least, "healthy." She is, after all, still alive.

Thank you for your submission!

[metatfios]

Waiting for Godot & Sisyphus the Hamster

"But let me submit that the real heroes of the Wish Factory are the young men and women who wait like Vladmir and Estragon wait for Godot and good Christian girls wait for marriage" (88).  The reference here to Samuel Beckett's play, Waiting for Godot, highlights an absudist motif that appears in TFIOS. Recognized as an absudist play, The characters Vladmir and Estragon wait (in vain) for the arrival of Godot, a man they admit they would not even recognize. This is not the only absurdist refence in chapter 5, as Hazel mentions in her letter to Van Houten that she wants to know what happens to "Sisyphus the hamster." The greek legend of Sisyphus, the man who must perpetually roll a rock up a hill only for it to fall back down again, is also an absurdist tale. Absurdist literature focuses on characters who can not find purpose in their existences, and attempt to construct meaning in their lives through their actions and experiences. In this quote, Augustus suggests that the true heroes are the ones who wait for their wish, or sacrifice the potential of their wish for something better. Augustus derives meaning from his idea of heroism. However, as both Hazel and Augustus remark throughout the text, the world 'is not a wish granting factory.' Augustus references a type of heroism that applies to a wish granting factory, but in reality the sacrifical type of heroism is a Romantic ideal or fantasy. Hazel also notices this, saying later of their picnic, "It all felt Romantic, but not romantic" (93). With Augustus's reference, we begin seeing the flaws in the idea of sacrifical heroism.

[metatfios]

"In the distance, soaked in the unblemished sunlight so rare and precious in our hometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeleton into a playground, jumping back and forth among the prosthetic bones " (87). Funky Bones, the installation described in this quote, references an idea expressed in a vlogbrothers video of whether the living owe anything to the dead and what that would be. As Augustus remarks, "'First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you're a kid you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from ribcage to skull. Which means that second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones. The symbolic resonanaces are endless, Hazel Grace" (87). Though the idea of playing atop death may seem morbid, it can also be reassuring, suggesting that life continues onward, making the best of what the dead have left behind. The cyclical nature of children playing on bones also has 'symbolic resonance,' in which the very beginning and end of life interact harmoniously.

[metatfios]

Liminality

"I almost felt like he was there in my room with me, but in a way it was better, like I was not in my room and he was not in his, but instead we were together in some invisible and tenuous third space that could only be visited on the phone" (72). What Hazel seems to describe here is a liminal interraction with Augustus,an interraction which mimicks her as a character. Merriam-Webster defines liminal as: "of or relating to a sensory threshold; of, relating to, or being  an intermediate state, phase, or condition (in-between, transitional)" Hazel herself seems to represent liminality, being in a constantly transitional place in her life. She's a teenager who is not entirely sick, not entirely healthy, struggling with being a creature of the land and yet harboring water within her (which we see later when she compares herself to Amsterdam). The liminal space Hazel and Augustus share over the phone seems to suggest companionship in place Hazel had once experienced alone. The connection they forge highlights the isolation that accompanies being trapped between child and adult and between being sick and healthy, but reinforces the idea that love is capable of alleviating this isolation. 

[metatfios]

The Last Good Kiss

             "Then he told me that the sixth Price of Dawn book, The Blood Approves, begins with a quote from a poem. It took him a minute to find the book, but finally he read the quote to me. 'Say your life broke down. The last good kiss/you had was years ago'" (71).

The quote beginning The Blood Approves is taken from the poem, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg by Richard Hugo (a line which later gave title to the detective fiction book, The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley). Hugo’s poem seems to emphasize the passing of time and the corrosion of all that was once familiar and dear, yet it also highlights that which remains inside the soul despite inevitable change and deterioration. Considering the nature of The Price of Dawn series, in its perpetual war and the infinite life span awarded the self-sacrificing, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg is a stark contrast to what The Price of Dawn seems to stand for.  While The Price of Dawn (and, presumably, The Blood Approves) highlight the glory in sacrifice (and therefore the immortalization of the inevitably mortal), Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg instead winds its way through the corrosion of everything humanly created. Hugo’s poem illustrates not only the nostalgic yearning of a time passed, but what was once promised in that time (and in that last good kiss), much like Augustus and Hazel’s yearnings for the promised potential in their time.

[metatfios]

Max Mayhem Never Dies [Submission]

Caveat: Slightly Spoilery Post

Both Hazel and Augustus read the book series based on Counterinsurgence 2: The Price of Dawn, and naturally, since this is John Green we're talking about, there is some sort of metaphorical resonance involved. This series is most intimately described in the scene where Hazel is reading in the mall, and Max Mayhem survives seventeen bullet wounds.

Hazel, however, has confidence in Mayhem in his cohorts, despite his life-threatening wounds. She knows that no matter what grievances fall upon the heroes, the figurative schoolchildren will be saved from the hypothetical terrorists. As Augustus so valiantly cries, "You can't kill Max Mayhem."

Max Mayhem is immortal, and our protagonists like him because they aren't. Hazel and Augustus possess limited infinities, and Max Mayhem's is infinite (pun intended). We always want what we can't have, and our lovely narrator isn't going to get the infinitude that the Sargent has been blessed with, and she knows it. Augustus can throw Mr. Mayhem on top of a grenade as many times as he pleases, because the game always restarts and Max comes back, gritted teeth bared. If you couldn't start over, obviously the pixelated hostages wouldn't be as much of an issue. Max Mayhem doesn't have to choose his battles, doesn't have to decide whether to combat breakfasty conventions or osteosarcoma, because he can do both. 

Thank you for your submission! The quote you're referring to, "Twenty pages from the end of Midnight Dawns, things started to look pretty bleak for Mayhem when he was shot seventeen times while attempting a rescue (blond, American) hostage from the Enemy. But as a reader, I did not despair. The war effort would go on without him. There could—and would—be sequels starring his cohorts: Specialist Manny Loco and Private Jasper Jacks and the rest" (Green 46). And then later, when we begin seeing his infinitude, "I liked being alone with poor Staff Sergeant Max Mayhem, who—oh, come one, he's not going to survive these seventeen bullet wounds, is he? (Spoiler alert: He lives.)"

[metatfios]

Semper Augustus [Submission]

                                             Thank you anon who messaged saying,

"One of those extinct species of tulip that people paid so much for was called 'Semper Augustus', too."

[metatfios]

Tulipomania

"AIA is about this girl names Anna (who narrates the story) and her one-eyed mom, who is a professional gardener obsessed with tulips..." (Green 48)

Tulips are mentioned in a couple other sections of the book, and in this particular circumstance of Anna's mother (and by extension in Hazel's mind, her own mother) being obsessed with tulips. The vlogbrothers video above discusses how the most beautiful and prized tulip above all others was also carried the disease which made it beautiful. This parallels the idea in TFIOS of beauty in disease that began with Thoreau's quote on consumption and the hectic glow. Anna's mother being obsessed with tulips appears to be not just a horticultural disposition, but a mother's own obsession with her beautiful and sick child.

[metatfios]

Response to AIA & Finnegans Wake [Submission]

I just wanted to point out that the sentence that Finnegans Wake ends in the middle of is the same sentence that it begins in the middle of (well, not exactly the middle), so unlike the end of AIA, there is a completion to the sentence. AIA just gets cut off, whereas FW continues in a never-ending circle. Perhaps AIA is about life where FW is about history (among other things). tobreakandblossom messaged mentioning this too, saying: "I love the Finnegan's Wake post. You might add that in that case, the ending fragment is the start of a sentence which is finished in the first sentence of the book. The first sentence is "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay"; the last is "A way a lone a last a loved a long the". Cyclical, eternity, and so on..."

[metatfios]

AIA and Finnegan's Wake

                                        “Also, Anna is honest about all of it in a way no one else really is: Throughout the book, she refers to herself as the side effect, which is just totally correct. Cancer kids are essentially side effects of the relentless mutation that made the diversity of life on earth possible. So as the story goes on, she gets sicker, the treatments and disease racing to kill her, and her mom falls in love with this Dutch tulip trader Anna calls the Dutch Tulip Man. The Dutch Tulip Man has lots of money and very eccentric ideas about how to treat cancer, but Anna thinks this guy might be a con man and possibly not even Dutch, and then just as the possible Dutch guy and her mom are about to get married and Anna is about to start this crazy new treatment regimen involving wheatgrass and low doses of arsenic, the book ends right in the middle of a” (Green 49)

An Imperial Affliction is not the only story to end in the middle of a [sentence]. Specifically, James Joyce’s last novel, Finnegan’s Wake, ends in the middle of a sentence and contains themes which parallel themes in TFIOS. In the Reader’s Guide of Finnegan’s Wake, William Tindall writes of the book saying, “Rise and fall and rise again, sleeping and waking, death and resurrection, sin and redemption, conflict and appeasement, and, above all, time itself—saecula saeculorum— are the matter of Joyce's essay on man” (Tindall 4). This focus on duality and time, and the inclusion of the Latin phrase which translates as “the centuries of centuries” from the New Testemant accentuates the idea of infinities within infinities presented in Green’s novel. An Imperial Affliction’s ending and the central themes of TFIOS seem to allude to Finnegan’s Wake and further highlight how characters in TFIOS address eternity.

[metatfios]

1984 and TIFOS [Submission]

(May Contain Spoilers of both books) (Taken from my personal Tumblr)

So I just finished reading 1984 by George Orwell, and besides being a brilliant piece of literature, throughout the book I was reminded at some parts of The Fault in Our Stars.

Now this may be slightly confusing to you, but I will explain how I came to this conclusion.

I’ll start with Green’s book

Now TIFOS is concerned with life and death, and what constitutes a good life. While 1984 seems on the surface to be concerned with humanity, the mind, control, politics…etc. Yet these two seemingly different concerns of both books are intrically linked.

Hazel Grace, the main character of TIFOS, is dying she knows she is dying however she doesn’t know when or where, she will die. She is worried that when she dies she will be a grenade, hurting those around her and wonders what will happen when she eventually does die. It may surprise you that 1984, is also like this. The main character, Winston, once he starts his affair with Julia, knows he is going to die. Like Hazel he doesn’t know when or where, but he knows he has signed his death warrant. An amazing line that Winston stats, that almost immediately reminded of TIFOs is “To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one’s lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”

“Spinning out a present that had no future…” Sounds a lot like infinity doesn’t it? Much like Winston and Julia in the first half or 1984. Hazel and Augustus, try to live a life while their alive. They stop worrying about death for a moment and live. Both books are concerned with humanity; however once they reach their middle they seem to diverge. 1984 concentrating on politics and the horror of the power of the Party and what may happen, while TIFOS continues to explore the questions of life and death. Yet in my belief the books return to a central issue near their end.

That of the mind. Both books are concerned with mind, although it may not be startlingly obvious in TIFOS. Let me explain by reasons for believing TIFOS is about the mind: (We know how 1984 is) There are parts in the book where Green spends time on the diseases that both Augustus and Hazel have, while of course Hazel’s cancer never seems to be forgotten throughout the book. However these scenes highlights one key point to me. Diseases may attack the body violently and painfully, especially cancer as highlighted in the book, but they attack the mind much more viscously. The fact knowing you’re going to die, in a horrible way scares your mind much more than your body. And that’s the most powerful attack any disease can have, on your mind. Hazel and Augustus are not only battling to live an infinity within an infinity, but also battling to stay human, not to survive but to live. You don’t beat cancer by destroying it within your body; you destroy cancer by not letting it destroy your mind, by not letting it take your humanity. Which 1984 is also concerned with. Winston fights for his humanity, fights to keep his thoughts. He is not afraid of dying; he knows he is going to die. He is afraid of dying not human, of dying without his own thoughts, of being tricked to believing the beliefs of the Party, of dying while believing a lie. And if you’ve read 1984, well you know how that ends. While TIFOS ends, with Hazel and Augustus retaining their humanity, of not surviving the cancer, but of defeating the cancer. There is a very important difference between those two words. Ultimately, I believe both books are about our humanity, and I believe both books get their points across in an amazing and brilliant way.   And both are books I will be reading again and again. Roman

In chapter two Augustus tells Hazel, "Like, cancer is in the growth business, right? The taking people over business. But surely you haven't let it succeed prematurely?" (Green 32). I think this is what you’re addressing here, with retaining humanity while grappling with disease. 1984 is on many levels a psychological novel (though perhaps not so much as so as, say, Dostoevsky) and I think the parallel that you’ve drawn here certainly works.

[metatfios]

Encouragements

"Home is where the heart is" — an Encouragement in the Waters household The cross-stitched sentiments scattered throughout the Waters' home offer Mr. and Mrs. Waters comfort and hope. However, one of the Encouragements is actually an age old permutation of another saying. This selected Encouragement was originally, Home is where the hearth is. The origin of this saying stems back to ancient Greek mythology, in which Hestia, goddess of home and hearth, provided the inspiration for hearth houses. Hearth houses in ancient Greece were considered the temples and great halls which symbolized worship, prosperity, and unity. The traditional hearth extend towards smaller establishments, including town halls, and eventually, homes themselves. The fire of a hearth was never allowed to extinguish, as it would then symbolically extinguish the energy of life in wherever the hearth was located. For centuries, architecture revolved around the hearth, as it was considered the integral and core part (the heart) of the home. Eventually, the saying changed from hearth to heart, suggesting that one can carry home within them. The Encouragement here expresses a sentiment that has been altered by time but still resonates with people and gives them hope. Ultimately, that is the purpose of sentimental sayings; to provide comfort.

[metatfios]

Existentialism

“The day of existentially-fraught free throws was coincidentally also my last day of dual leggedness” (Green 31).

Existentialism is a complex and involved philosophy, and it has been the focus of countless works of literature and art (especially in the 20th century). In brief, existentialism entails creating one’s own definition of meaning and constructing meaning through consciousness. Jean-Paul Sartre, the front man of existentialism, decalared, “man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards” in Existentialism is Humanism. Essentially, he asserts that existence precedes essence. One has the choice of who they are, and are not fundamentally ruled by a pre-existing essence that is a byproduct of being human. Augustus struggles with his “existentially-fraught free throws,” thus perhaps he struggles with how he defined meaning when he was healthy, and how it had changed when he became ill. He becomes disgusted with the repetitive and useless nature of tossing free throws, much as Sisyphus struggles with rolling the enormous rock up the hill only for it to roll back down again. Both Augustus and Sisyphus undergo their own redefinition of themselves and the world around them, and introduce the theme of defining meaning in TFIOS.

[metatfios]

Phalanxifor

"The drug was phalanxifor, this molecule designed to attach itself to cancer cells and slow their growth" (Green 25).

Phalanxifor seems to have multiple roots, but Green has confirmed that the fictional drug is based on an actual drug named herceptin (trastuzumab). Phalanx formation, on the other hand, is a battle formation harking back to Ancient Greece. This formation consisted of forming a rectangle of infantry advancing with spears to attack the enemy. Phalanx stems from the Greek word for finger (thus, the phalanx bone), a correlation Green intended, saying, “I was using phalanx in the bone sense; I imagined that the people marketing phalanxifor imagined it as having these little fingers that go in and unlock/kill cancer cells” There appears to be an Ancient Greek motif throughout TFIOS, therefore the battle formation may not be entirely coincidental. Hazel and Augustus discuss how cancer is often described as a war in which battles are won and lost the illness and the afflicted. The phalanx formation may also poke at this commonly expressed metaphor.

[metatfios]

A Quick Note on...

All the Asks metaTFIOS has been receiving RE: the existence of The Hectic Glow.

Asking whether The Hectic Glow is real (and not a joke page on Omnictionary) is like asking whether An Imperial Affliction is real.