THE FAULT IN OUR STARS

The novel, The Fault In Our Stars, is a well-written masterpiece that I believe I've spilled my fair share of tears over. The book written by John Green is not only an award-winning best-seller but also a story promising joy, heartbreaks, and profound impacts that will allow us to see life in the new light.

The tear-jerking tale centers around Hazel Grace, a sensitive sixteen-year girl with effusive love for books and poetry. She is anything but extraordinary except that her life is now slowly withering due to terminal cancer. The worsening condition of her body and her frustration at her miserable life as well as the outside world eventually lead her to depression. At her mother's insistence, Hazel joins a self-help group consisting of ailing patients where she meets Augustus Water, who too suffers from cancer. However, the boy is everything opposite to her : optimistic, charming, and ingenious. Together, the two rejoice in an encounter that will unknowingly change their life for good.

The readers take a journey through Hazel's perspective. In the book, she catches the eye of Augustus, gradually getting to know him better through comical bantering and soft laughter. With time passes, they bond through their mutual love for books and finally bathe in the overwhelming ecstasy of finding love. Nevertheless, later in the story, Hazel also experiences the immense grief of losing love to the inevitable death. The Greek-like heart-wrenching tragedy and the vast difference between Hazel's and Augustus' perception of life and the main reasons why the book oddly reminds me of Illiad, Homer.

Achilles, the swiftest of all Greece. Beautiful and brilliant, he was named the greatest hero the world had ever seen. However, it is said that the warrior we know today as the best of the world had once been offered two choices of significance : one, to live an uneventful but peaceful life in the country side, and the other, to die young but not without eternal glory. Many of us today, like Hazel, try to live and move as unnoticed as possible, so that when we pass away, fewer tears will be shed and fewer hearts will be broken over our deaths. Some others, however, like Great Achillies and Augustus, wield with all their might and love with all their hearts, for their greatest fear is neither pain nor death but not shining brightly enough in life and ending up forgotten in others' memory.

Just as Augustus once says in the book, "You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world. But you get to choose who hurts you." Even though in the end, his death shatters Hazel's heart, the numbered days of infinity they share has already been imprinted on her memories, Fortunate for both of them, their ultimate wishes are eventually fulfilled. Augustus an rest in peace knowing he has lived to the fullest and will never be forsaken, while Hazel continues carrying the memories of the boy she loved and smiles because she has overcome her fear for dying, for Augustus' passing teaches her that life and love have always been stronger than death.

Life has never quite been fair nor long；therefore, we are bound to balance on a wire somewhere between life, death, mirth, and sorrow. On earth, we're only briefly gorgeous. Thus, we have to cherish the little time we have with our beloved ones and live as passionately as possible as well as love, so that we may continue to shine in others' memories even after we pass. It is perhaps like one of the rare moments when another soul crosses path with ours the way a star once a year brushes the earth, painfully vibrant. However, because we know the fire will not last long, the remaining warmth that still lives behind even after the star drifts away becomes yet even lovelier.

To leave a burning legacy, to love fiercely, to laugh with joy till our tears flow and our ribs ache, oh, such constellations may we be to others!