Hazel’s annoyance at the clichés and stereotypes regarding kids with cancer is greater than ever in this section. Her first target is the notion of “The Last Good Day.” Though she acknowledges that there is some truth behind this convention, she points out that there’s no way for the person experiencing their Last Good Day to know it. At the time it just seems like any other good day, which suggests in real life The Last Good Day doesn’t have nearly the same significance that it does in the prevailing conventions about cancer. Instead it’s another hollow idea that doesn’t really match reality. Later Hazel is furious at the comments left on Augustus’s online profile about his death. As she sees it, they are pretty much all empty clichés, and to make matters worse, they’re being delivered by people who claim to feel Augustus’s loss but who didn’t make any effort to see him when he was still alive. Part of her anger seems to stem from the feeling that these comments aren’t really for Augustus but for the people leaving them. She is particularly angry about one comment saying Augustus will “live on forever” in the hearts of those still alive because it nonsensically implies the commenter is immortal. Then imagining how Augustus would respond to the comment about him already playing basketball in heaven, she has him conclude that the comment says more about the person who left it than about him. What Hazel suggests is that these sorts of clichés bear little or no relation to the person who actually died, and so they’re not just meaningless but inconsiderate.

Previous page Chapters 19—21 page 1 Next section Chapters 22—23

Popular pages: The Fault in Our Stars

Take a Study Break