Katie Doyle

ENGL 367

Dr. Ashley Cross

08 December 2018

A Psychological and Historical View of ​The Fault in Our Stars

Psychoanalysis, originally a scientific theory founded by Sigmund Freud, can be easily

applied to literature. Using psychological theories, one can explain a character’s desires, wishes,

and motives for their actions, and can give the characters more psychological and mental depth.

Defense mechanisms are explained in Freud’s principles, and are defined as “a tactic developed

by the ego to protect against anxiety.” According to Freud, the human mind is divided into three

levels of consciousness: ego-- the conscious part of the human in which the human is always

aware of, superego-- which is a part of the unconscious, but specifically holds the moral ideas,

and the id-- the deepest part of the unconscious which holds desires and wish fulfillment. By

evaluating one’s defense mechanisms, you can later then identify their id’s deep unconscious

desires. In the ​Fault in Our Stars (TFIOS) ​by John Green, Hazel Grace Lancaster, the main

protagonist, has a very complex mental state to evaluate. She uses defense mechanisms such as

fixation, identification, selective perception, and denial to avoid talking about her fears regarding

her own terminality, and also suffers from a deep melancholia.

Since Hazel is terminally ill, she is constantly pushing her loved ones away. She states

that this is for their own protection, as they are the ones who will have to deal with the aftermath

of her passing. According to Freud’s theory of Mourning and Melancholia, there are two

different responses to death: mourning and melancholia. Mourning, he says, is a healthy way of
dealing with the loss of a loved one, and it is helpful when going through the motions in the

aftermath. Melancholia, on the other hand, is an unhealthy way of coping with death, and can

negatively impact one’s mental health down the line. Freud even goes so far as to describe this

mental state as “pathological.” Hazel Grace Lancaster, while trying to cope with her own

terminality, goes into a state of melancholia. She goes into a deep, depressive state, where she

withdraws from social activities, refuses to go to support groups, and basically sabotages her

own mental health. She isolates herself in an attempt to save her family from their own process

of mourning and melancholia, and even avoids making friends so less people will be hurt when

she goes off like a “grenade.” But at the end of the book, when Augustus dies, she is much more

apt to handle this death. She mourns for him in a much more appropriate way, and even writes

his eulogy. She seems to mourn his death in a more appropriate way-- not in the way she mourns

her own.

But Hazel and Augustus’s relationship was not ordinary for Hazel from the very

beginning. She was much more open to him than she was to anyone else, and she did not push

him away nearly as much as she pushed her family away. Upon meeting him for the first time,

she immediately gave him a chance. Knowing that he has been through something similar to

Hazel’s situation may have been the catalyst for this friendship, or it may have been an incidence

of selective perception. Selective perception is a Freudian principle that states that people will

hear or see only what they want to perceive-- and will selectively ignore or avoid anything they

do not think they can handle. Hazel repeatedly reads the book “An Imperial Affliction,” which is

about a girl who is dying of cancer. In this book, Anna is going through the same things that

Hazel is going through: coming to terms with her terminality, living in pain, and also having to
learn how to cope with the mental pain that having cancer is causing her. This book gives Hazel

comfort within her own Hazel learns how to come to terms with her own terminality by learning

from Anna’s emotional journey. But Hazel Grace fixates on this book-- which is another of

Freud’s principles. Fixation is defined as a persistent focus that comes out of a developmental

gap, or just something missing from the subject’s childhood. Due to Hazel Grace’s ambiguity

regarding her childhood, it is hard for one to interpret the cause of this fixation. The only

mention she really makes of her parents is “my parents were my two best friends.”

Hazel’s fixation on the main character of “An Imperial Affliction” actually becomes so

intense that she starts to identify with the character. Identification is a defense mechanism in

which a person takes characteristics, personality traits, etc. from a person they admire or slightly

identify with to protect their own actual person from being hurt. Hazel can understand Anna’s

struggles with cancer, and since Anna’s story, which literally ends mid-sentence due to Anna’s

passing, gives Hazel more security in the idea that life will simply end after her death. Hazel

obsesses over what will happen after she passes, and the idea that literally nothing will happen

and life will just cease after death is comforting to her. She goes so far as to even dress like her

when she meets “An Imperial Affliction’s” author, Pete van Houten. “I spent like thirty minutes

debating with Mom the various benefits and drawbacks of the available outfits before deciding to

dress as much like Anna in AIA as possible: Chuck Taylors and dark jeans like she always wore,

and a light blue T-shirt.” In this excerpt, she is going so far as to look like Anna, and it is even

possible that this is because when she meets the author, she wants him to even say she looks like

or even is like Anna, thus receiving confirmation that her imitation of Anna is correct. She finds

peace in imitating Anna, and wants desperately for her life to end like Anna’s also.
 Hazel also struggles greatly with denial. Denial, according to Freud, is a primitive

defense mechanism in which any threatening information is suppressed and ignored, thus

causing the brain to be unable to process the information, and causing the rise of other mental

issues later on in life. Whenever Hazel is asked to tell her “story” in her support group, she

quickly responds saying “I’m Hazel... Sixteen. Thyroid originally but with an impressive and

long-settled satellite colony in my lungs. And I’m doing okay.” In this, she is simply stating her

physical state, and not acknowledging her mental state. She says she is okay, when in reality she

is clinically depressed, which she even clearly states in the beginning of the book: “depression is

not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.”This quote shows that Hazel

knows and understands what is happening to her, yet her failure to recognize it and deal with it

even in her support group supports the idea that she is in denial regarding her terminality, But

Hazel is not the only character in the book who struggles with denial-- Augustus Waters also

fails to truly recognize the severity of his state, even after losing a leg to his first round of cancer.

He uses comedy to deny his state, though, which is different from Hazel’s blatant ignorance of

the situation. One of Augustus’s friends, Isaac, who is also in Hazel’s support group, is about to

lose his eyes to cancer, therefore lose his sight. But when Augustus is asked about what he fears

in life when he went to the support group with Isaac, he says “I fear oblivion...I fear it like the

proverbial blind man who’s afraid of the dark.” Isaac scoffs at this comment, but Augustus is

truly using denial so he does not have to focus on his own fears of the future, and the focus goes

back to Isaac and his own struggles. Isaac is set to live, willing that his surgery is successful thus

proving that Augustus’s comment was not to move focus to someone who needed more support--
it was solely to move the focus off of him and his own crippling fear of being forgotten after

death.

But both Hazel and Augustus show positive improvement regarding their mental states in

their time together. Hazel learns how to mourn correctly, considering she is able to handle

Augustus’s death more healthily than she was able to handle the inevitability of her own,

especially since she even writes Augustus’s eulogy for him to hear before he passed. She is able

to attend his funeral, and then later receives a letter from him, which further helps her healing

and coping process. Augustus is also able to face his phobia of oblivion, and even comes to

terms with it. When professing his love for Hazel, he says “I’m in love with you, and I know that

love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and

that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will

swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” Though hyperbolic, this

statement goes to show how his relationship with Hazel has helped him to improve his attitude

regarding his morality and what comes after death, more for the people left on Earth than for his

own consciousness.

One can also ask why an author would want to write a story about such a deeply mentally

troubled person, and this can be evaluated through a New Historic literary view. This criticism of

literature allows the reader to understand more about the culture surrounding the writing of the

book and then also understand the culture mentioned in the book. According to this ideology, all

life can be evaluated as a text, and that actual literature is a cultural artifact. By looking at the

context of literature and understanding the culture surrounding the time of its writing and its
setting, you can understand not only the references it makes but also comprehend a deeper

meaning of the work.

​ as written by John Green and was published on January 10th,

The Fault in Our Stars w

2012. It was set in the present while it was being written, and most of its cultural references still

make sense nowadays-- being the year 2018. According to New Historicism, one can look at the

author’s biography as its own text, thus open to interpretation as all literature is.

John Green was born in Indianapolis, Indiana on August 24th, 1977. He has a brother

named Hank, with whom he is very close. As a young adult, he volunteered periodically in

hospitals, specifically spending time with terminally ill youth. He went to Kenyon College and

majored in both Religious Studies and English, and he planned on becoming an Episcopalian

Minister. He ended up pursuing English, though, as he found that writing was his true passion.

Later on, he became an internet personality. He and his brother made vlogs together under the

name VlogBrothers-- specifically series of intellectual YouTube videos about different books,

historical events, etc. and became internet famous, and soon a fan base formed known as the

“Nerdfighters.” The Greens were very involved with their fan base, and actually came to know a

few of their fans very well.

Esther Earl was not only a Nerdfighter, but was also a YouTuber and internet personality.

At just twelve years old in 2006, Esther was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. After the following

Thanksgiving, doctors from Boston Children’s Hospital informed Esther’s parents that her

cancer was terminal. This was also around the time that she connected with John Green-- and she

was, in fact, one of the earliest Nerdfighters. The two curated an online friendship for about two

years, then they were able to actually meet at LeakyCon in 2009, which is a Harry Potter
conference. She became a part of the online community known as Nerdfighteria, a forum

dedicated to the VlogBrothers’ fans. She was also involved with the Harry Potter Alliance, with

John Green personally egging other fans on to “vote with Esther.” She continued to build an

online presence on sites such as Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter until her passing on August 25th,

2010. After her passing, John Green posted a video eulogy for her, entitled “Rest in Awesome,

Esther,” which was posted to YouTube on August 27th, 2010.

In this video, John Green talks about how he met her and what a positive influence she

was not only on his life, but those of many different communities. But he also makes a point of

saying that while Esther passed away at just age sixteen of cancer, she was in no way an image

of holiness or a perfect angel-- she was just like any other teenager of an internet age. He also

makes a point in talking about the last time he saw Esther, and a specific conversation they had

about death. He says that Esther believed that people would live on after their death: through

love, stories, and legacies. In other words, the dead do not experience oblivion-- not immediately

after death, that is. John Green later dedicated ​The Fault in Our Stars t​ o Esther, but specifically

stated that Hazel Grace Lancaster was not based on Esther’s real life character-- at most, she

only served as inspiration for Hazel’s character.

But, when reading John Green’s biography and a bit of Esther Earl’s biography as a text,

it is hard to deny the similarities between Esther’s words and the words of ​The Fault in Our

Stars​, and Green’s own connection to the subject matter. Published just two years after Esther’s

death, ​TFIOS ​specifically talks about oblivion, and it also strives to ensure that people know that

both Hazel and Augustus were not perfect angels. Esther and the main characters share many

qualities and ideals, despite John Green repeatedly saying that Hazel’s character is not based on
Esther, and that he didn’t want to tell or rewrite Esther’s story. But, he does not say anything

about whether or not Augustus’s character is inspired by Esther or not. Augustus, the “swooning

bad boy” of the book, thus is illustrated as anything but a perfect little angel, even though he is a

young cancer patient. He was also the character most fixated on oblivion after death, which he

did not want to face or have happen. He was very focused on making his life not only memorable

for himself, but for others. He stated toward the beginning of the book that he was scared of

oblivion, but later on in the book his phobia dissipates, as mentioned earlier.

Since New Historics believe that the author’s life can be read as its own text, one can also

apply other literary theory to said text. If one were to psychoanalyze John Green’s life as a text

(not the actual author himself, but the text) a fixation on the subject of cancer would become

apparent. Not only through his work as a chaplain with terminally ill youth, but he continued to

stay connected with the cancer community by befriending Esther, and then later writing a book

exclusively featuring young cancer patients. This fixation may not specifically be about cancer,

but it may reflect a fear of dying young and oblivious. By trying to canonize the characters in the

book, he is giving those who died young a proper ending, regardless of whether or not they

actually got their own peaceful ending. His own work to give those who face an early death may

be a reflection of an unconscious or repressed fear of either death or dying young.

By understanding not only the psychology of the characters but also the history and

context of ​The Fault in Our Stars​, one can more easily comprehend the book in its totality. These

two views, used in tandem, can give the reader a deeper view of the characters in the book and to

the author too. It can redefine how the characters and book are viewed, and give a more three

dimensional view to a simple two dimensional words.

 Works Cited

Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete

Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of

the

Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works.

Green, John. ​The Fault in Our Stars.​ Dutton Books, 2018.

Greenblatt, Stephen. “Introduction to The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance.” ​The

Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends,​ by David H. Richter,

Bedford

St Martin's, Macmillan Learning, 2016, pp. 854–857.