64 pages • 2 hours read
The Fault in Our Stars
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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Hazel is rushed to the hospital and wakes up in the ICU, where she is told that her lungs had been taking on fluid again, which starved her brain and body of oxygen. The fluid was drained, and the tumors on Hazel’s lungs have not grown, but she will need to sleep with a breathing machine known as a BiPAP. Hazel remains in the hospital for six days, during which she refuses to see Augustus. When he finally makes it in to visit her on the last day, she explains that she didn’t want him to see her disheveled and suffering.
During Hazel’s hospital stay, Augustus receives a letter from Peter Van Houten, who has been informed of their plans to visit him on a Genie-funded trip. Van Houten’s letter is cryptic and densely allusive, preoccupied with literature and death. Van Houten seems, in his letter, to support Hazel’s decision not to embark on a romantic relationship with Augustus because of the inevitable future heartbreak. Hazel is touched that her favorite author has taken an interest in her and Augustus, and pleads with her mother not to cancel the Amsterdam trip.
Chapter 8 Summary
The chapter opens at a conference with Hazel’s oncologists and other doctors. They explain that Phalanxifor, the experimental drug that has stopped her tumor growth, may be causing the fluid buildup in her lungs, but the risks that come with discontinuing the drug are even worse. Hazel remembers the worst episode of her illness, before the “Miracle” of Phalanxifor, when her parents watched their only child dying in the hospital, and wishes she didn’t have to cause them so much worry and pain, thinking, “they might be glad to have me around, but I [am] the alpha and omega of my parents’ suffering” (116). The Amsterdam trip is canceled pending approval from the doctors.
The first day home, Hazel sits in her backyard, looking at her childhood swing set and remembering times with her parents before she got cancer. It fills her with sadness, and she calls Augustus crying. He comes over and decides that the depressing swing set must go, and they sell it on Craigslist. Augustus tells Hazel that he doesn’t want to be protected from the potential heartbreak of losing her one day. She wakes up the next day to an email from Lidewij, Peter Van Houten’s assistant, making plans for the Amsterdam trip; it has been rescheduled, with the doctors’ approval, as a surprise for Hazel. She texts Augustus to tell him the good news, and he replies, “Everything’s coming up Waters” (127).
Chapter 9 Summary
Hazel returns to Support Group the day before leaving for Amsterdam and lashes out uncharacteristically at a girl whose cancer is in remission. After the girl praises Hazel for being “strong,” Hazel replies, “‘I’ll give you my strength if I can have your remission’” (131). This immediately makes everyone in the group pity Hazel, which she hates even more than being called “strong.” Afterward, Hazel goes over to Isaac’s house, and they play video games using voice recognition software meant to assist blind players. Hazel explains that she has feelings for Augustus but doesn’t want him to be forced to take care of her when she becomes really sick.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Hazel’s sudden hospitalization shows her, for the first time, as critically, dangerously sick—sick to a degree she doesn’t want Augustus to see; these scenes in the intensive care unit are also the book’s first unflinching portrayal of the painful, gross, and terrifying nature of cancer. In the subsequent meetings with Hazel’s doctors, their pointedly ambiguous language (page 116: “‘we’ve seen people live with your level of tumor penetration for a long time’”) emphasizes the precarious nature of Hazel’s condition: the experimental drug that is currently holding her tumors at bay could fail at any time, leaving her to sicken and die. This unexpected attack of illness raises the stakes for the Amsterdam trip, which is briefly canceled on account of it . All of this shows that Hazel is morbidly ill.
The episode with the old swingset, in Chapter 8, recalls the scene of Isaac breaking Augustus’s basketball statues in Chapter 4. Just as Augustus encouraged Isaac to take out his anger on the statues, he insists on getting rid of the old swingset that has given Hazel a burst of depressive nostalgia for her healthy, pre-cancer childhood. Instead of passively wallowing in sadness, or allowing it to harden into bitterness and self-pity, Augustus forces his friends to take some decisive action (the egging of Monica’s car, in Chapter 14, follows the same pattern). This approach to dealing with depression by doing something—even something destructive or only temporarily satisfying—is offered as an alternative to the intellectualized, cynical isolation into which Hazel customarily retreats.
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By John Green
