Throughout the The Fault in Our Stars, Hazel just wants to be a normal teenager, one who doesn’t have her mom waiting for her in a parked minivan everywhere she goes. She revels in the moments of freedom she experiences, such as her dinner out with Augustus in Amsterdam. Overall, the main desire of Hazel is just to be a normal teenager.
Cancer Perks - signed basketballs, champagne when under 21, and a magical wish from the “Genies” – are far from the normality that Hazel desires. This fact causes her to ridicule these perks and the magical Genies that provide wishes to cancer patients. After all, she claims, the world isn’t a “wish-granting factory” like the Genies seem to think (110). The cancer perks are supposed to provide joy, but to Hazel they just seem ridiculous because her main desire is just to be a normal teenager, a wish which none of the extravagant perks can provide.
However, Hazel doesn’t ridicule cancer perks the entirety of the book. When she realizes that Augustus can use his wish for a trip to meet Peter Van Houten, she stops mocking the perks and starts to appreciate the Genies. She travels all the way to Amsterdam to fulfill her wish of finding out how the characters in An Imperial Affliction end up. This wish though, ends up not being fully granted since when Hazel arrives in Amsterdam she finds an alcoholic Van Houten who refuses to give her the answers she has been searching for. In the end, the one perk she receives during the novel fails to live up to its name.
In the novel, Hazel describes funerals as more for the living than for the dead, which seems to also apply to Cancer Perks as well. From the outside, the wishes show an act of care, making the donors feel good about themselves for helping a patient’s dreams come true. But in the end they seem to leave the recipient searching for more, just like how Hazel is left still searching for answers about An Imperial Affliction when she returns from the trip. Perhaps this is because the wishes can never give Hazel, or many other cancer patients, the one thing they truly desire – a return to normality.
Cancer Perks - signed basketballs, champagne when under 21, and a magical wish from the “Genies” – are far from the normality that Hazel desires. This fact causes her to ridicule these perks and the magical Genies that provide wishes to cancer patients. After all, she claims, the world isn’t a “wish-granting factory” like the Genies seem to think (110). The cancer perks are supposed to provide joy, but to Hazel they just seem ridiculous because her main desire is just to be a normal teenager, a wish which none of the extravagant perks can provide.
However, Hazel doesn’t ridicule cancer perks the entirety of the book. When she realizes that Augustus can use his wish for a trip to meet Peter Van Houten, she stops mocking the perks and starts to appreciate the Genies. She travels all the way to Amsterdam to fulfill her wish of finding out how the characters in An Imperial Affliction end up. This wish though, ends up not being fully granted since when Hazel arrives in Amsterdam she finds an alcoholic Van Houten who refuses to give her the answers she has been searching for. In the end, the one perk she receives during the novel fails to live up to its name.
In the novel, Hazel describes funerals as more for the living than for the dead, which seems to also apply to Cancer Perks as well. From the outside, the wishes show an act of care, making the donors feel good about themselves for helping a patient’s dreams come true. But in the end they seem to leave the recipient searching for more, just like how Hazel is left still searching for answers about An Imperial Affliction when she returns from the trip. Perhaps this is because the wishes can never give Hazel, or many other cancer patients, the one thing they truly desire – a return to normality.