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You might be hearing a chorus of farewells if you recommend A Farewell to Arms as the next read for your Fabulously Feisty Feminist Book Club.
Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of one girl who lived during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's kind of a downer—bu...
The Fault in Our Stars 13587 Views
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Description:
Have you ever read a book and thought, "Whoa, this sounds like my life"? If you feel that way about The Fault in Our Stars , you're in for some major bookception: the main character, Hazel, is reading a book whose protagonist's struggles match her own.
Transcript
- 00:05
The Fault In Our Stars a la Shmoop. Imagine reading a book that ends in the middle
- 00:15
of sentence. It would be like your favorite show getting
- 00:23
canceled in the middle of the last episode. That's exactly what happens to Hazel in A
- 00:32
Fault in Our Stars.
- 00:34
When her favorite book, An Imperial Affliction, ends mid-sentence...
Full Transcript
- 00:38
...she's so upset that she takes a transatlantic journey to find the real ending.
- 00:44
Why does she take this trip?
- 00:47
Why doesn't she just move on and read something else that actually has an ending?
- 00:51
Or write some fan-fiction? Maybe it's just plain ol' curiosity.
- 01:01
Wouldn't you want to know how your favorite book ends? You know... before the movie comes
- 01:08
out? Or maybe it's the fact that Hazel is just
- 01:15
sick of uncertainty.
- 01:17
She already has plenty to worry about: Will she die? Will her friend Gus die? Will the
- 01:23
sun go supernova and we all die?
- 01:27
Perhaps her search for the ending to An Imperial Affection is just the search for some certainty
- 01:33
in her life. But then there's the fact that Hazel's story
- 01:40
is basically the same as Anna's, the main character in An Imperial Affliction.
- 01:46
It's almost like the author was watching Hazel and recording her life.
- 01:54
Haven't you ever read a book and thought the main character... was you?
- 02:02
Hazel wants to know what will happen to her family after she dies, and she seems to be
- 02:06
looking for those answers in Anna's story.
- 02:10
She wants to know that Anna's mom will be okay, just like she wants to know that her
- 02:14
own parents and loved ones will be okay. So, what's the real reason Hazel goes on this
- 02:23
epic adventure?
- 02:25
Is it because, like all of us, she's just curious?
- 02:28
Or is she looking for certainty in an uncertain world?
- 02:32
Or does she see her own story in Anna's and wants to discover her own fate?
- 02:43
Or maybe JetBlue just had a killer deal on round-trip tickets to Amsterdam...
- 02:47
Shmoop amongst...
- 02:48
<<pause>>
- 03:00
...yourselves.
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