Rhetorical Analysis of The Fault In Our Stars
The Fault in Our Stars is a very well-known novel written by John Green, a Youtube sensation and common author that enjoys teaching people about history and the world. The Fault in Our Stars is a novel about 2 people who fall in love. Hazel, the girl, has cancer and is bound to die soon and has lungs so week she constantly needs to have oxygen tank helping her and Augustus, the boy, is in the late stages of remission and has a prosthetic leg. The movie and novel are about their journey through love and cancer. Throughout the book The Fault in Our Stars, John Green uses many rhetorical devices to create an emotional impact on the reader through the story such as logos, pathos, and imagery.
The first rhetorical device that Green uses in his book is logos and Green shows this through a very popular quote in the novel, “Pain demands to be felt” (Green 64). This quote is logos or a logical quote because it makes you think about what it means. By saying that pain demands to be felt Green is saying that even though you may want to avoid and block out the pain, eventually it is going to come back and you are going to feel it. This quote is not referring to physical pain but emotional pain. For example, when you get your heartbroken you may distract yourself by having movie marathons and eating buckets of ice cream but eventually you’re going to have to stop having movie marathons and feel the pain and loss that is demanding to be felt.
Along with the rhetorical devices Green uses all throughout the novel, he also uses appeals. John Green uses an emotional appeal throughout this entire book from the moment you meet Hazel to the ending we don’t expect. An example of pathos is a quote from Hazel, “I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it, but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around, but I was the alpha and omega of my parents’ suffering.” (Green 116). This quote shows emotion because it shows part of Hazel’s suffering and it makes you feel bad and want to help.
She tells about how she know she is hurting Augustus by ignoring and pushing him away but she feels that in the long run, she is helping him by not letting him get attached. The last quote that has an emotional appeal to it is a quote from Augustus Waters, “Oh, I wouldn’t mind, Hazel Grace. It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.” (Green 176). This quote shows emotional appeal because this quote shows how much Augustus cares for Hazel.
Augustus tells Hazel this when she explains to him that she doesn’t want him to get attached. Augustus explains that he is already attached and that he would love to get his heartbroken by her because he loves her nut when in reality he does the heartbreaking in the end. This has an emotional appeal because everyone dreams of finding their true love that would love them even if they had to chop off their hair and lug around an oxygen tank and that is the definition of Augustus and Hazel’s relationship. In The Fault in Our Stars John Green uses lots of detail and imagery to make you feel and want what Hazel and Augustus have. Green makes them click instantly and fall in love which is what a lot of people want in life. An example of how he makes people feel like they are falling in love with Augustus as Hazel falls in love is how romantic he is.
An example of how romantic he is is in this quote, “I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you” (Green 128). This quote shows how romantic he is here because he professes his love for Hazel. Inside, every girl wants someone to profess their love for them and they can feel this through Hazel all throughout the book. Another quote that shows how romantic Augustus is and how people fall in love with him through Green’s writing and diction is this quote from Hazel when she realizes that she is falling in love with Augustus, “And only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t un love Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.
” This quote shows that Augustus is romantic because Hazel is falling in love with him very fast. When she realizes this in this quote she knows that she is falling in love but she is eventually going to hurt him in the end when she dies but yet, she doesn’t want to stop falling in love nor continue pushing him away. At this point she realizes that she needs to enjoy the time she has left with him and left him love her as she loves him. This is how John Green makes the reader fall in love with Augustus with Hazel through the diction and imagery in the story. In the end, the story The Fault in Our Stars is jam-packed with emotional appeals, pathos, logos, imagery, and more. The book also has everyone wanting what Hazel and Augustus have, their great relationship, and a soul mate.
The book also has the reader falling in love with Augustus through Hazel. And the book is also known to make everyone cry, laugh, love, and think; those are the reasons and examples that The Fault in Our Stars is full of emotional appeals, imagery, and diction. These are also the reasons on why many people fall in love with this book and Hazel and Augustus’ relationship. John Green does a wonderful job at creating imagery, emotion appeals, and more all throughout the novel to make you emotional and love this book because of it.
