Notes on Authors' Notes

     So I finished The Fault In Our Stars by John Green this weekend, which was the second time I read it. It was just as good as it was the first time, if not better, because I am slightly older than I was when I first read it, and I did cry a little, although not, I'm sure, as much as AB does every time she reads it.
     One new thing that I noticed upon rereading this lovely piece of art is that there is a very very heavy motif about God. The entire book, Hazel is insistent that she does not believe in God and that she doesn't think that there is a heaven or a conventional afterlife, yet throughout the entire book, she is constantly surrounded by religious symbols. I don't know how to describe this without you reading it yourself, so I won't even try. I just found it interesting that Hazel states that she finds belief in a greater being "intellectually lazy" yet she is often found in situations that support such a "laziness". I'm not saying that I think Hazel is some hell-bound sin-stricken atheist. I'm just saying that there seemed to be a lot of irony surrounding her beliefs.
     Another really interesting thing about TFiOS that I hadn't noticed before was the author's note at the beginning of the book. Here's what it says:

“Author's Note
This is not so much an author's note as an author's reminder of what was printed in small type a few pages ago: This book is a work of fiction. I made it up.
Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story. Such efforts attack the very idea that made-up stories can matter, which is sort of the foundational assumption of our species.
I appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

     Now I may be reading a bit too much into this, but it somehow reminds me a lot of the author's note from the beginning of Huckleberry Finn, which reads:

                                                                           "NOTICE
PERSONS
attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;
persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
By Order Of The Author,
Per G.G., Chief of Ordnance."


     There does seem to be a strong correlation between the two, as both seek to convince us that there is no further meaning in the book, which obviously serves to make a reader search that much harder to uncover an underlying meaning. For example, John Green tells us that "Neither novels or their readers benefit from attempts to divine whether any facts hide inside a story", but to us, to the reader, the fiction he spins for us SEEMS like fact. His book makes us feel as if the people ARE real, not simply made up figments of his imagination, and we as readers DO in fact benefit from pretending that his made-up characters are real people that we relate to, and I think that that was truly his point.

     As for Huck Finn, there are MANY clear motives within that work, and you don't even have to attempt to find them. There is also a moral, and a very meticulously laid out plot as well. He tells us these things only to make us aware of the opposite. It's like when your Mom says "Whatever you do, do NOT go into my bedroom because the Christmas presents are in there". Well obviously you just want to go look at the Christmas presents! If she'd kept her mouth shut, you might have been truly surprised about your new bike or whatever when Christmas actually came. But since she warned you not to spy, you found out two months early about your bike. Or like when someone is gossiping and they say "And I'm not even going to MENTION the time when she hooked up with so and so". Because in doing so, they obviously DID mention the thing they swore not to mention. You see? Those are some pretty clever rhetorical devices. Reverse Psychology. Ciceronian Oration. Whatever you want to refer to it as. Clever clever Twain and Green. Clever clever.

Movie Recommendation: Pride and Prejudice (2005). Despite ample mention of my love for Jane Austen and any and all adaptations of her work, I never ACTUALLY recommended this movie. I just rewatched it last night and it was just as good as always. I certainly think you would enjoy this movie even if you aren't a fan of Austen, simply because it's just a fundamentally good story. At times hilarious and ironic, at other times serious and sad. It truly transcends the barrier of time, which is why Austen is so highly praised.

                                -VaughnDL