I had always thought that someone’s death in our life can make a big difference in our existence. Like every teenager who was mesmerised by love, tragedy and books, I had no less love for John Green and his books. I had read, “Turtles all the Way Down” in the end of last year and it was the best read ever. Somehow in his books you end up falling for the characters more then the plot or even the story. And so happened to me. A week later I took a train and went to this second-hand book store in the end of the city and bought myself a copy of The Fault of the Stars. On my way back I read seventy pages of the book, and at that point I had not thought much about it. That evening before reading the book again I couldn’t bear and wanted to finish the story. Not because I was bored but because somehow I loved it and ended up spoiling that Augustus Waters died in the end. That was it for me, I stopped reading because somehow I was too sensitive to fall in love with another pair of characters and have one of them die. And even though the end of the book was comforting, it wasn’t for me.
This was nine months ago. And back then I Haden’t experienced death in my life, and as my circumstances changed, I picked up the book again. So here I am, to tell you why the book is timeless.
The plot and the story as a whole is a piece of art. like Markus Zusak puts it, “you laugh, you cry and then you come back for more.” In our daily lives we sometimes miss out on cherish life. It is something that we put so much time in living it that we actually forget to put time in thinking about it. But what about the people who know that life is terminal and that theirs is a ticking time-bomb? Dying in general is something that is inevitable and we all know that it going to happen some day. Sone of us even give into things that will take it. Some of us put the cigarette in our mouth and light it but some of us don’t. We have a say in how we live our lives and what we put in our bodies but we don’t have a say in how much time it is taken from us. This is one of the most important messages that the book shares. You can’t die until you light the cigarette, so for some of us we decide whether to light it or not and that we are lucky to even have this choice.
We don’t understand the degree at which some people have to face pain. In the book, the fictional author Peter Van Houten says,” Pain is like fabric, the stronger it is the more it’s worth.” In this particular line he is quoting Antonietta Meo a six year old who died of Osteosarcoma. But to think of it is pain really so valuable and worth? Can stronger pain mean that living becomes more valuable? To think of it from the point of view of a person who hasn’t felt the pain of loosing a leg, I would say yes, maybe when I know how painful it is I might give more thought to how it might feel to loose it. And even though Hazel said it was bullshit, but still maybe experiencing pain to such a degree would change someone as a person. for me, that quote reminds me that I need to think more and be serious enough of life because luckily for me I am not loosing it. And I am going to loose it but for the time being I am not feeling the pain of loosing it. I am not dying.
The book also tells us, that it is hard to loose in this battle to stay with the living and people that are loosing this battle don’t exactly need our pity, because in the end they are the ones who know how valuable it is. And even though we are not going through pain and we are not fighting this battle we will never exactly know the painful it becomes to stay alive. The thing that makes this book a wonder is that it really tells us where we stand in this vast world. The pleasantness of these characters does not come only from the love and the cancer but it comes from the acknowledgment of loosing life because to live in fear of death is to assume that you are immortal.
But the one thing that according to me makes The Fault in our Stars a timeless book is the fact that the book really takes you through the experience of experiencing pain and death and the true value of life without the exception of hope and a miracle. It takes the reader through the reality of life that some novels make it seem fictional. The reality that we live in is so much full of emotions and feeling that we don’t discuss outside but it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. We have this wonderful opportunity to live life, so don’t hold back for a single second. You might not live long like other’s but that doesn’t mean you can’t live a full and beautiful life.
Haven’t Read “The Fault in Our Stars” yet? Get the book here. https://amzn.to/3jUp1KH
