This is the second of two posts about The Fault in Our Stars. You can find the other one here.
A few days after I re-read The Fault in Our Stars for the second time (my third time reading it), I had already had the idea regarding the metaphorical and literal nature of the names. In addition to what I had thought up, Hazel is explained in the novel as an in-between color, which reflects how Hazel is between life and death or even between health and incapacitating sickness. So this got me thinking about the names, and I realized that one is never really explained: Anna, the girl in An Imperial Affliction.
I figured that if there were metaphorical implications for both Augustus Waters' and Hazel's names, there had to be one for Anna's too. Her context is what led me to figure it out. An Imperial Affliction ends in the middle of a sentence, and, as far as I know, there is only one other book that ends in the middle of a sentence - James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. I've not read Finnegans Wake yet, but we talked about it a little in the class I had on Joyce's Ulysses, so I know that the first and last sentences of the novel are the same sentence, which is just broken between the two ends. Rivers are an important factor in the novel, and the last sentence is meant to flow back into the first one, much like a river. Rivers are also prominent in Ulysses. And I have read Ulysses, which is how I know that the main river in Dublin is sometimes called the Anna Liffey. And one of the characters in Finnegans Wake is named Anna Livia, referring to the river.
So between the name Anna and the broken sentence, I'm pretty sure that the Anna in An Imperial Affliction is meant to have some connection via Finnegans Wake with rivers. What I'm unsure of is what that connection means.
To some degree, it fits with "a desert blessing, and ocean curse." An Imperial Affliction is one of the things that brings Hazel and Augustus closer to-gether, so it shares some responsibility in changing Hazel's view on relationships. There's also the connection between rivers and water, as in Augustus Waters.
But I'm wondering if there isn't also a connection with life in general. At one point, Hazel deconstructs her world and returns to "the beginning when there was the Word, and to live in that vacuous uncreated space alone with the Word." John 1:1 explains that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And in the beginning, "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters" (Genesis 1:2). So God is connected to water. There's also just the fact that water is necessary for life. This works well because of the visual connection between life and Liffey.
I'm not sure what the connection means, but I'm pretty sure that Anna is connected with rivers - both via the interrupted sentence that resembles the interrupted yet flowing sentence of Finnegans Wake and via her nominal connection with the Anna Liffey river.
"Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough / Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades / For ever and for ever when I move."
Showing posts with label John Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Green. Show all posts
Sunday, August 18, 2013
Monday, August 12, 2013
Blessing, Curse, and Metaphor
About a week ago, I finished The Fault in Our Stars for the third time. Over a few days afterwards, I had a few thoughts about it. This is the first of two posts about them.
Near the end of the novel, Augustus Waters comments on the water that fills up in Hazel's lungs because of her cancer. He writes that it's "a desert blessing, an ocean curse." And while he's talking about the "dark cancer water," his phrase also applies to an-other type of water: Augustus Waters himself.
A good portion of the novel deals with the effects of people upon other people. Two different views on this, specifically regarding others' deaths, are presented in the novel. At the beginning, Hazel believes that she's a grenade. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys [her parents] because there's nothing I can do about hurting you; you're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay?" Because she knows that her death is inevitable, she wants to prevent people from becoming invested because that investment will later cause grief upon her death.
But after meeting Augustus Waters and falling in love with him, her position changes. The book ends with her affirming her choice in who hurts her and in whom she is invested, namely: Augustus Waters. She recognizes that death will cause grief but also that that does not invalidate the relationships that people have. The curse does not replace the blessing. And because Augustus Waters is the catalyst for this change in perspective, it's fitting that the blessing/curse description is of water.
What I'm a bit unsure of is whether Augustus Waters realizes how apt this is - the literal description of the water in Hazel's lungs matching the metaphorical water in his own name and self. He's a character who bases his actions of their metaphorical implications, so it seems unlikely (even incongruous) that he would miss something like this, but he never explicitly talks about it.
Near the end of the novel, Augustus Waters comments on the water that fills up in Hazel's lungs because of her cancer. He writes that it's "a desert blessing, an ocean curse." And while he's talking about the "dark cancer water," his phrase also applies to an-other type of water: Augustus Waters himself.
A good portion of the novel deals with the effects of people upon other people. Two different views on this, specifically regarding others' deaths, are presented in the novel. At the beginning, Hazel believes that she's a grenade. "I just want to stay away from people and read books and think and be with you guys [her parents] because there's nothing I can do about hurting you; you're too invested, so just please let me do that, okay?" Because she knows that her death is inevitable, she wants to prevent people from becoming invested because that investment will later cause grief upon her death.
But after meeting Augustus Waters and falling in love with him, her position changes. The book ends with her affirming her choice in who hurts her and in whom she is invested, namely: Augustus Waters. She recognizes that death will cause grief but also that that does not invalidate the relationships that people have. The curse does not replace the blessing. And because Augustus Waters is the catalyst for this change in perspective, it's fitting that the blessing/curse description is of water.
What I'm a bit unsure of is whether Augustus Waters realizes how apt this is - the literal description of the water in Hazel's lungs matching the metaphorical water in his own name and self. He's a character who bases his actions of their metaphorical implications, so it seems unlikely (even incongruous) that he would miss something like this, but he never explicitly talks about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)