Juxtaposition Between Cancer And Control In Donna's The Fault In Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars is a juxtaposition between cancer and control and how it applies to the life of a teenager. Cancer is defined as a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body. Control is defined as the power to influence or direct people's behavior or the course of events. Most teens want to have control over their lives, they want to choose what happens to them, but in reality they have very little control over the events in their lives. The cancer that the three main characters in the books symbolized the lack of control that most teenagers have over their lives. The story is about how teens try to take control, how they try to keep control, how the only control that believed they had been taken

Having literature that can speak to your situation in life is what young adults need in their books. In Donna’s Norton Through the Eyes of a Child she lists seven characteristics of a good young adult novel and some of them are,“written from the viewpoint of an of young people, main characters must overcome their problem without help from the parent, deal with emotional problem of young adults and have fast paced storyline” (Norton, 2007). The Fault in Our Stars executed theses things perfectly. It is told from the perspective of a sixteen year old girl, living with cancer, but still going through what most sixteen year old’s go through, She has parents who do not understand her life and what she is going through so they cannot actually help her with her problems and she falls in love for the first time and experienced a tragic heartbreak. The story goes on how life does for a teenager, everything is happening fast and very out of their control, and they must live as best as they can with the circumstances of their life. John Green wrote more than just a teen cancer book, he told the experiences of not having any control in your teen years by using

For cancer teens, that adage is true; they are likely to die before they become adults” (Corliss,2014). In young adult life, the teenagers think that adults cannot help them with their problems, that what they are going through is so unique to them and it has never happened to anyone else before. Given that Augustus does die before he becomes an adult shows that for some young adult's life can be so uncontrollable and not end up in a positive manner. They may not become the adults they wish to be or they may be forced to give up on being youthful. That even the brightest stars die out, but that you can still try to enjoy whatever time you have as a young adult and stop trying to control every aspect of your life. Corliss goes on to say that “ It allows Hazel and Augustus to pack the luster of a lifetime -- first love, trip to Europe, meeting a famous author, last love -- into what may be their only summer” (Corliss 2014). Teens experience a lot of things for the first time during their teen years, The Fault in our stars just gives us a glimpse. The cancer in this book may seem drastic because there were so many other things he could have written about that shows just how out of control teens feel. It just shows that people react to life experiences differently, in the