61 pages 2 hours read

The Fault in Our Stars

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2012

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Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

When the book opens, the narrator, 16-year-old Hazel Grace Lancaster, is heading to a weekly support group meeting for teens with cancer. Hazel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer at age 13; it spread to her lungs and nearly killed her, but an experimental drug called Phalanxifor stopped the tumor growth. She now carries an oxygen tank everywhere and has an uncertain, but greatly diminished, life expectancy. Hazel hates going to the group; she finds the discourse of hope, strength, and faith that pervades discussions of cancer—“everyone talking about fighting and battling and winning” (5)—sentimental and fake. She laughs at the group leader, who refers to the church basement where they meet as “the Literal Heart of Jesus.” But her mother wants her to go, so she gets through the meetings by exchanging sarcastic faces with a boy named Isaac, who has lost one of his eyes to cancer.

On the day the novel begins, a new person shows up at the group: Isaac’s friend, 17-year-old Augustus Waters, who has lost a leg below the knee to osteosarcoma but is now “NEC” (no evidence of cancer).Augustus is attractive, smart, and charming; he stares at Hazel and even brings her out of her shell during the group discussion when he says that he fears oblivion, being forgotten, above all things. After the session, they meet; Hazel is horrified to see him take out a cigarette, but he explains that he only holds them, unlit, as a metaphor for keeping Death close but not allowing it to harm you. When he invites her over to watch a movie at his house, Hazel impulsively decides to go. 

Chapter 2 Summary

Augustus, who drives terribly with his prosthetic leg, takes Hazel to his house, where she meets his parents. The Waters house is full of what his parents call “Encouragements,” or positive, inspiring messages like “Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?” printed and crocheted on various knickknacks and decorations in every room (34). Hazel and Augustus talk about their lives and their experiences with cancer and then watch the movie V for Vendetta; Augustus says Hazel is as beautiful as Natalie Portman. Hazel tells Augustus about her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten. This novel means so much to Hazel that she hesitates to recommend it: “there are books [...] you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal” (33). But she tells Augustus about it anyway, and he promises to read it, facetiously insisting that she promise to read a favorite book of his—a video-game novelization called The Price of Dawn—in exchange. She takes the book and finds his number written on the inside cover. 

Chapter 3 Summary

Hazel reads The Price of Dawn in one night and reflects on the appeal of a fictional series where the hero faces extreme danger but always survives. The next day, her mother wants to celebrate Hazel’s thirty-third “half-birthday”—because of Hazel’s illness, her mom tries to celebrate every possible occasion and even create new ones, something Hazel calls “celebration maximization” (39). Hazel celebrates by going to the mall with Kaitlyn, a friend from before Hazel became too sick to attend school. (She has since gotten her GED and attends community college classes). They meet at the food court and go shoe shopping, with Kaitlyn talking about her boyfriends and the people at school. Kaitlyn is sophisticated and popular, but Hazel finds “it [can] never again feel natural to talk to her. Any attempts to feign normal social interactions [are] just depressing because it [is] so glaringly obvious that everyone I [speak] to for the rest of my life [will] feel awkward and self-conscious around me” (47). Hazel excuses herself after a while and finds a quiet corner of the mall to read by herself. A young girl approaches Hazel and asks about the tubes in her nose; Hazel lets her try them on briefly, wishing more people would be as direct and unafraid of her condition.  

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

’Hazel’s world is very small: too ill to attend school, she fills her days with books and TV, interacting with nobody but her parents. But the novel’s first-person narrative gives us access to Hazel’s thoughts, and her inner life is as rich as her outer world is restricted. The narrative is set up, in these early chapters, to emphasize this disparity between Hazel’s inner and outer worlds: a brief event —like Patrick, the leader of the Support Group, introducing himself by talking about his own experiences with cancer and survival—will be followed by a lengthy, scathing critique, directed by Hazel to the reader, of the insipid, delusive culture of cancer survivorship to which this seemingly innocuous occasion belongs. She is undoubtedly intelligent, but she uses this intelligence only to point out what’s wrong with everything.

Augustus Waters enters the narrative as a challenge and a threat to Hazel’s cynical worldview; he is facetious and outgoing, and his intelligence equals hers. The action of the plot in this section repeatedly places her in new surroundings or unfamiliar circumstances: in Augustus’s car or at his house, absorbed in his favorite movies and books, as the object of a boy’s flirtatious advances. By taking Hazel out of her cloistered routine, Augustus chips away at the bitter alienation that structures her point of view

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