When Hazel first sees Augustus playing with an unlit cigarette, she becomes angry and exclaims, “Of course there is always a hamartia”(19). What is Augustus’s hamartia, or fatal flaw? What is Hazel’s? 

A literary text or work of art that is referenced in, or woven into, a work of literature is called an intertext. Make an argument about the significance of one of the novel’s intertexts, either fictional (An Imperial Affliction, The Price of Dawn) or real (T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Shakespeare’s “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments,” The Diary of Anne Frank, Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a certain Slant of light,” etc.) Use your analysis to show why literature is so important in a novel about kids with cancer. 

The Fault in Our Stars was adapted into a Hollywood film in 2014, directed by Josh Boone. Choose one or two changes that the film version makes to the book (such as added or deleted scenes, different dialogue, or a different sequence of events) and make an argument about the effect of these changes on the story, character arcs, or message of the work—not about whether the changes are good or bad.