The Fault In Our Stars And Paper Towns: Book Analysis

Two of John Green most famous novels, The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns, share a common theme which is 'literature'. The theme of literature and writing, especially in the plot around meeting Peter Van Houten, lends an element of metafiction to the book. One of the poems specifically referenced in Paper Towns, which gives insight into Margo Roth Spiegelman and provides Quentin with plenty to think about, is "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman, which comes from Leaves of Grass.

In The Fault In Our Stars, An Imperial Affliction, a fanciful book by the made-up character Peter Van Houten, is Hazel, and later, Augustus' most loved novel and has a key part in The Fault in Our Stars. Hazel and Augustus' relationship is shaped through sharing of
“I’d learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten, the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible.” [1] Her sharing of these essayists and their contemplations with Augustus, who previously read mostly a gory, action-filled series based on a video game, parallels her desire to share with Augustus a more comforting and realistic way of living life than constantly seeking glory. Hazel is able to connect to the book. Her lungs "suck at being lungs." They are loaded with water, and hence, she needs to bear an oxygen tank to permit her to relax. The Dutchman from An Imperial Affliction, depicts water similar to a "conjoiner, rejoiner, poisoner, concealer, revelator”[2]. The water in Hazel's lungs are these things: a conjoiner, in light of the fact that because of the way that she needs to go to the support group as a consequence of having the fluid in her lungs, she and Augustus meet and add to a relationship. It is a rejoiner in light of the fact that numerous individuals inquire as to why she must convey her oxygen tank, and it is a poisoner on the grounds that without the oxygen tank, it will murder her. The
Quentin spends days poring over the poem, trying to somehow connect it to Margo, because she highlighted sections of the work's most famous poem, ‘Song of Myself’ and Quentin is convinced that this holds significance in explaining her disappearance. "I do think there are some interesting connections between the poet in 'Song of Myself' and Margo Roth Spiegelman—all that wild charisma and wanderlust.”[3] Unfortunately, the ballad was not planned as a trail of breadcrumbs for Quentin to discover her; she had quite recently highlighted the parts that she felt were a moral story for her life. Pretty much as ‘Song of Myself’ is an internal centered piece, Margo's association with the ballad was about her own relationship to her general surroundings – it had nothing to do with Quentin. Margo identified with Whitman's written work on the grounds that she herself felt like a ‘leaf of grass,’ unrooted to the ground and detached to the general population around her regardless of physical vicinity. Quentin is profoundly harmed by this revelation, “He finds things in the poem that change his perception of the world, a shift that coincides nicely with his graduation from high school”[4]. He muses that regardless of the possibility that he never sees his ‘leaf of grass’ (Margo) again, he will stay joined with her by the root. This shows