64 pages • 2 hours read
The Fault in Our Stars
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Symbols & Motifs
The Oxygen Tank
Because of the tumors in her lungs, Hazel can’t breathe very well and relies on an oxygen tank connected directly to her nose by a set of tubes called a cannula. Throughout the novel, Hazel refers to the difficulty of carrying it up and down stairs, or in and out of cars. It constantly gets in the way and hampers her motion, and it also marks her as “different,” causing people to treat her with embarrassment or extra caution. The tank symbolizes the burden cancer has placed on her, that she has to carry throughout life, and she takes it off only rarely, in special moments, like when she and Augustus have sex or when she bids him goodbye in his casket.
The Cigarette
When Hazel first talks to Augustus outside the Support Group, she is shocked to see him pull out a cigarette and toy with it, until he explains that it’s a metaphor for looking at Death up close but—by not lighting the cigarette—not giving it the power to harm him. The cigarette symbolizes Augustus’s courageous, even defiant attitude toward his illness: he can’t escape death; it will never be far from him, but he refuses to “give in” to depression or powerlessness.
The End of An Imperial Affliction
Hazel is deeply preoccupied with what happens after the abrupt end of her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction. Questions about how Anna’s mother copes with her daughter’s death, and even what happens to Anna’s hamster, plague her. These questions mirror her anxiety about her own death: How will her parents deal with losing her? Will everyone she loves be OK after she is gone? Hazel’s desire to know what happens after the end of the novel represents the desire to know what happens after death—not just in the world one leaves behind, but in the afterlife (or lack thereof).
The Dutch Tulip Man
The Dutch Tulip Man is an enigmatic character from An Imperial Affliction who proposes alternative treatments for Anna’s cancer and becomes engaged to her mother. In the novel, Anna wonders if he is a con man, and Hazel and Augustus become obsessed with this question themselves. Peter Van Houten tells them directly that he is a metaphorical representation of God, which gives the question of whether he is a con artist a deeper metaphysical significance: Is God, or religion, just a scam? The Dutch Tulip Man’s analogue in the world of the novel is clearly Peter Van Houten himself—a mysterious Dutch figure who seems, on the one hand, to have all the answers but who, on the other hand, is not trustworthy. The ambiguity around Van Houten and the Dutch Tulip Man leaves the question of God, or a Creator, open and unresolvable.
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By John Green
