When I first heard about The Fault in Our Stars, I assumed that the story was about two teenagers who fell in love during their independent battles with cancer. This, I believed, was the premise of most books about people fighting the disease. But in the case of John Green’s book, I could not have been more wrong.
Hazel and Gus may have met at a support group for people with cancer, but the basis for their relationship forms more due to their mutual love of literature and metaphors than it does from their diagnoses with cancer. It is this fact that makes the book more than just another cancer book, as the novel features characters, not people defined by their illnesses. In an interview with The Atlantic, Green explained that he wanted the novel to “capture” the essence of the kids he met while working in a children’s hospital that were “just as human as anybody else.” He decided to write a book that demonstrated the humanity of children with cancer and normality of their lives. It is this intent that differentiates his novel from the many other cancer books that have been written, and perhaps forms the reason for why his novel appeals to such a mass audience.
USA Today reported in January of last year that nearly one million copies of The Fault in Our Stars had been printed. The scope of the audience reading this novel is huge, so much that it doesn’t really warrant the classification as a young adult novel since so many adults are reading the book too. So why did this book have more commercial success than other cancer books? I believe that John Green’s intent to write a book with less of a focus on the battle with cancer, but about the lives of the individuals affected by this disease, has contributed greatly to the novels popularity. The book presents characters who egg someone’s car, travel to Amsterdam and play videogames, not ones who describe their visits to and from the hospital each day. By presenting the normality of the lives of cancer patients, John Green separates his novel from other cancer books. He also appeals more to readers, as the book focuses on the humanity of the patients, not their diseases.