On the Universal and Adult Appeal of The Fault in Our Stars

I've got a laundry list of media I like, but the ones that stand out are the ones that mean something personal to me. In my last post I discussed why The Great Gatsby resonated with me, and now I'm heading to the present to the newest craze: John Green's teen hit The Fault in Our Stars. (By the way, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.)

I'm not that big of a romance, teen fiction, or even John Green. (By that I mean I definitely appreciate what he does for the educational and writing community, and while this is the only book of his I've really loved, I just find it off-putting that someone who is always talking about others' writing and how you should think of people as people has gained a cult following believing he can do no wrong and not venturing to read many other books.) But I loved this book, and it's no surprise to me why this has reached readers beyond its target audience (aka me, a teenage girl), and specifically adults. I'm not going to get into technicality, like that this book is just really good and the teen talk is genuinely funny rather than a bit uncomfortable (part of the reason why I'm not into his other books is that I find "teen talk" a bit off-putting, especially where boys are the ones talking, and probably about girls). No, I want to talk about the universal themes present in the novel that I myself could relate too, but that most certainly are not teen-specific.

The fundamental key to this is that Hazel and Gus are, functionally, adults. On Green's website
 there is the following FAQ:

Q. Are Hazel and Augustus in love like adults can be? How do you view their relationship?
A. I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults.
I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.

Which, aside from generating three cheers for me (I'm of the belief that it's possible if based on mutual feelings and both persons are mature and can communicate), adds to the point. Green's other books tend to focus on teenagers being awkward and learning lessons for the first time, and in that respect The Fault in Our Stars is almost in another genre entirely. It's more universal, and that probably is the reason I enjoyed it more than Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns. I like what those books said about viewing other people and never getting the full story of an event, but I had already learned all of that (so the reveal of Margo and Alaska's troubles has much less of an impact on me as I knew it was coming), and moreover I could not quite relate to the stories in a way that personally resonated with me.

But back to Hazel and Gus being adults. They have much more in common with adults than kids, and in a natural way, rather than teen experimentation. Aside from the often-noted use of heightened speech, both teens are independent (can take care of themselves, drive, and their parents do not pry into their personal affairs). Hazel takes college courses. They watch R-rated movies. In Amsterdam they share champagne and have sex. There's also a telling scene in which they sell Hazel's old broken childhood swing set: a sign of transitioning into adulthood.

The Fault in Our Stars is not a cautionary first-time tale of teenage relationships, nor is it about experimentation, or even about a perfect fairy-tale love. Sure, it's rather poetic and was intended to be an inversion of a romantic epic, but it may be one of the most realistic love stories I've ever read. I mean the meet-cute at the beginning and instant fascination with each others' looks I personally do not find realistic, based on my own experiences, but such is a necessity of a love story that has to get its feet off the ground and take place over a relatively short span--and if anything, that works toward my point No, I mean that Hazel and Gus essentially represent an abbreviated and accelerated relationship: from meeting to death.

They may not go through all the typical stages of a couple's life (marriage, kids, etc), but they still fundamentally represent the whole experience. And there is one particular line I want to talk about, in which Hazel describes the reaction of her parents when they know that Gus has died:

"My parents came in then, looking expectant, and I just nodded and they fell into each other, feeling, I'm sure, the harmonic terror that would in time come for them directly."

There you have it: adults relating to the tale of the two teenagers. Because they know they are going to die, sometime, and one of them will probably go first. It could strike at any moment, sooner than expected--but they always knew that. Every committed couple does, but they've agreed to take that risk. Just as Hazel and Gus did, with Hazel wanting to pull away to hurt as few people as possible when she died (the grenade analogy), and Gus choosing to stay with her because he is willing to take that risk. (And staying by choice is another hallmark of a healthy relationship.)

Reading about Gus's deterioration is so hard, particularly if you are in a relationship, because with those things you are just absolutely powerless. You can't do anything to stop it. If the illness is contagious you can't even hold your partner. You just have to accept it. And that is something everyone in a committed relationship will have to confront eventually, and it's a theme that I believe adults can especially relate to because they are more aware of that reality in their own lives. (Not to say that kids can't, because they are also certainly aware that they could have to deal with the death of their grandparents and/or parents sooner than they would want.)

I also want to make clear that I don't believe that the cancer in The Fault in Our Stars is irrelevant to its overall meaning. The way it deals with cancer is admirable, and Gus's line about how people are always immortalized for dying for things rather than from things is one of my favorite points in the book. Rather, I believe my points here have only enhanced the meaning of the book, which is that someone with a short, doomed life can still live it to the fullest. And because of that, it reminds us of the fundamentals and inevitability of life, and leaves the rest for us to think about.

Why The Great Gatsby is great, to me

The Great Gatsby may be the greatest American novel for its depiction of the American dream, and it's beloved by many for all sorts of other reasons, and famously by those who can overlook how most of the characters are "unlikeable". I read the novel like everyone else in high school (specifically, freshman year) and like all the novels I read that year, I connected with it. But I'm not sure it's in the same way most other people do. See, I like The Great Gatsby because Gatsby is a hopeless failure.

In my class, there was as discussion of whether Gatsby was a good person at all--in the sense that he wanted Daisy to go outside of her marriage--and I didn't have the heart to argue with them. Because I sort of related to Gatsby, and I knew sadly what Nick meant when he said, "You can't repeat the past."

Oh, I didn't have a crazy and immoral plan, really. I just wanted to have a platonic friend (and oh I was aware how ambiguous and fragile that sounded) to trust based on incorrect assumptions of how compatible we seemed (more to others than to ourselves, really), and I was also going through a very stressful part of my life. This isn't the place to talk about it, really. But the past--and childhood innocence--was very key to me, something I wanted to return to, and he was the ultimate symbol of that. I didn't know him as a person, really, just various symbols for stages of my life.

I wanted to return to that past, but at the time of reading it I did begin to feel that it just wasn't possible, that I was only clinging to it in vain hope. And The Great Gatsby knows this too. His vision collapses, and it's delightfully cynical to me. I'm not the one to believe that there is a big plan to the universe, and I do believe we have some agency, but there is a point at which things are way too far past fixing, when it's hopeless. It's not often a message you see either, with the improbably successful "get the girl" (or boy) trope in stories.

Maybe Gatsby is selfish, and Daisy and Tom are definitely, as Nick remarks, careless people. But there's a reason Nick says at the beginning that Gatsby is the only person he finds worth redemption. He had not known Daisy for years; he was only acquainted with the symbol of her in his mind, and he fails to realize it. He was disillusioned. He was wrong, of course, and we all are at some point in our lives. But unlike the rest of us, Gatsby never got the chance to learn from it.

But we can learn from it. We have the book to read.

For All Ages

Recently, I read Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Coraline. My preference was to the former, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I want to talk about something that consistently knocks around in my mind: age genres.

At the beginning of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, there is the usual page of "also by this author," but this one is different. It's no secret that Gaiman has written everywhere from picture books to adult bestsellers (not to mention TV scripts, comic books, and other miscellany not included on the list), but the list is split into two sections only: "For Adults" and "For All Ages." For All Ages!!!

As someone whose own major work is very much on the borderline between children's/middle grade and young adult/teen, this lack of distinction is refreshing. Genre is often fluid, but it's hard to find marketing that realizes this.

After reading both books, it's very apparent that Coraline is written in a children's style while Ocean is more adult in prose, although not in content, and for the most part features a seven-year-old protagonist. Ocean is of course not on that list, and while I did find it shelved in the adult section (although there was an edition of The Graveyard Book on the same shelf), it truly defies age.

We need more of this. Stop worrying if you're too young or too old, or if your readers are too young to understand--just write and read.