Character Analysis TFIOS

Character Analysis: Hazel Grace Imagine waking up and feeling like someone was drowning you, holding your throat so you couldn’t breathe. In the book, “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green, that is a very well-known feeling for 16 year old Hazel Grace. Hazel has Stage 4 Thyroid cancer, incurable and leaving her body to slowly deteriorate. She lives her daily life watching reruns of television shows and not caring if her short pixie cut hair is brushed or if her oversized clothes are dirty. Hazel lets every day slowly pass by, until she meets the witty and smart Augustus Waters, Osteosarcoma survivor. His interest in Hazel leads them on a journey of getting to know each other and falling in love. Before meeting Gus, Hazel isolated herself from everyone and was afraid and helpless but throughout the story she begins to open up and become more optimistic about life and ends being very grateful and at peace with the people she was able to let into her life. Before Hazel met Gus, she was isolated and helpless. She was afraid that if she let anyone in, she would only just hurt them when she died. Her parents thought she was depressed because she didn’t do much of anything except think about dying. “Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death”(7). Her parents encourage her to make friends, but she still isolates herself from getting close to people because she feels like she will hurt them too badly. Hazel’s parents have talked to her about her feelings, but as she tells them she wants them to have a life after her, they are beginning to understand why she has a hard time making friends. “I am a grenade mom. At some point I will blow up and I would like to minimize the casualties. I want to stay away from