How To Read Literature Like A Professor Quest

• “Every trip is a quest.”
In the book How to Read Literature like a Professor it states in every novel “every trip is a quest” and consists of so many things such as a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trails en route, and a real reason to go there. In the book The Fault in Our Stars there is a scene that goes perfectly with this, when Augustus takes Hazel to meet her beloved author Van Houten. In the book they have a quester which is Hazel. They have a place to go which is Amsterdam and a stated reason to go there which is for Hazel to find her unanswered questions about Imperial Affliction. Also they have challenges along the way such as she has cancer so it’s risky for her to be on a plan and millions of miles away from her doctors and Van Houten turns out to be a horrible drunk and doesn’t even answer Hazel dying to be answered questions. But sadly the real reason to go there was to find out Augustus has cancer. The real reason for every quest is self-knowledge, Hazel had no idea Augustus has cancer until he had told her.
• “It’s more than just rain or snow.”
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor he states that each element of weather in a novel stands for something. That fog stands for mental, ethical, or physical that you can’t see clearly. Snow stands for clean, severe, playful, or even suffocating. Rain literally associates with: chills, cold, and death. In The Fault in Our Stars when Hazel and Augustus are at a fancy dinner in Amsterdam the trees are releasing seeds everywhere which Hazel refers to as a petal rain. Even the waiter says it’s the most the trees have let go in years. Later that evening Augustus tells Hazel about his cancer he has all over his body, which later killed him. Like Foster said rain associates with death, chills, and cold. In this situation it associates with death.
• “A Christ figure”
Foster states that every novel has a Christ figure someone who is in agony, good with children, self-sacrificing, and came to redeem a very unworthy world. Even though it is not a perfect match I think Augustus is the Christ figure in this book because he has many of the qualities as Foster stated. In the end when he is dealing with the last stretch of cancer he is in excruciating pain. When he plays video games with Isaac he always saves the children in the game instead of winning, which is self-sacrificing. He also always told Hazel he wanted to be remember for something, wanted to do something big, which is metaphorically speaking coming to redeem a very unworthy world. These qualities seem to match him up with the Christ figure in this novel.
• “Geography matters”
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor Foster states geography is the setting but it can be psychology, attitude, finance, and industry.
It can also define or develop character/characters. In The Fault in Our Stars the setting is in Indianapolis but it’s not like everyday tourist town it is Indianapolis of the sick. For Hazel her home is basically just around things that involve cancerz. The setting is really claustrophobic. Hazel spends most of her time in her room reading the same book over and over again and watches America’s Next Top Model, one of her favorite shows. Hazel describes where she lives as a place that she’s trapped in "It was a cloudy day, typical Indiana: the kind of weather that boxes you in" (pg 48) This affects her attitude towards the town and all the people who live there, it’s basically a town filled with sick people trying to help each
other.
• “Seasons”
Each season means something different says Foster. Spring mean rebirth, childhood, youth. Summer means love, adulthood, romance, fulfillment, passion.
Fall means change, middle age, decline, tiredness, harvest. Winter means old age, anger, resentment, hatred, death. In The Fault in Our Stars when they are in Amsterdam the trees are all falling with seeds and a man says to Hazel and Augustus “Amsterdam’s spring snow. The iepen throw confetti to greet the spring.” (pg 161) This indicated it is spring, this season is mean to have rebirth, childhood, and youth. The whole time Hazel has known Augustus she just wanted them to be just friends because she said she is a ticking time bomb, but that night she is kind of reborn in a sense. She gives into her feelings and ends up saying she is in love with Augustus which totally rewrites her life story, which is a sense is being reborn.