“My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.” (Green, 311)
This line, my personal favorite from the novel, speaks to Augustus’ fears, his hopes, his life, and his disappointment. In sickness and in health, Augustus’ fear remains the steadfast and obscure in that he fears oblivion, seemingly a waste of a fear considering all that he has been through and the weight of potential relapse that I would imagine is his greatest fear of all. Yet, even when Augustus finds himself once again burdened with the weight of cancer, he fears leaving the world without making his mark; he fears dying without having proven that his life was meaningful.
In this sense, the fault in Augustus’ stars is that he cannot put this thought, this perpetual fear of never accomplishing something that matters, to rest because of his sickness. At the same time, Hazel argues that the fault in Augustus’ star is actually within him, as Shakespeare originally wrote. While Augustus blames the stars (his fate) for his fault, Hazel blames Augustus’ star (himself and his thoughts) for the fault. Hazel, in Amsterdam, argues that Augustus’ thought is twisted, and that he does not understand what it means to have led a meaningful life. I think this argument and subsequent dialogue between the two of them prompts an internal discussion for the reader: what is my definition of a meaningful life and how am I achieving it?
While I concede that the point of the novel is not for two sick kids to teach healthy readers a lesson, I do think that this is one of the greater takeaways of the book. Each reader may see this idea differently, after all each individual reader will have different takeaway from a text, that is the significance of reading. This being my third time to have read The Fault in Our Stars, I gleaned something new from the words entirely, and I have been left to wonder whether the fault is in me, or within my stars, and frankly I have no definitive answer.