When I read and watched The Fault in Our Stars, I realized that I had a limited understanding of what it was meant to live with cancer. Before reading the book, I mostly associated cancer with sadness, hospitals, and suffering, so I only saw the illness as something that could define a person’s entire life. What challenged the idea was seeing Hazel and Augustus as complete people rather than simply as people with cancer. They have their own personalities, humorous, friendships, relationships, fears, and dreams, and their illness is only part of who they are. This made me think about the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s idea of a single story, because I realized that I had been looking at people with serious illnesses through one limited narrative instead of recognizing that everyone has a much more complicated story. The story also made me notice how movies and books often represent serious illnesses mainly through tragedy, which can make people seem defined by their suffering. The Fault in Our Stars challenged that idea by showing that someone could be dealing with something extremely difficult while still wanting to laugh, fall in love, make memories, and experience life. Since reading and watching it, I have become more aware of how easily we can reduce people to one part of their identity without knowing the rest of their story. It showed me that understanding someone means looking beyond the most obvious thing about them and recognizing that there is always much more to a person than a single story we may have heard about them.

Garlington, K. (2015, March 8). Review: The Fault in Our Stars. Keith & the Movies.