The Fault in Our Stars Trivia Quiz

Answer: An Imperial Affliction

When Hazel was 13, she was diagnosed with stage four thyroid cancer, which eventually spread to her lungs. Now 17, she is being kept alive by an experimental drug trial that her parents and doctors call "the miracle". Poor Hazel has been through it all - surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy - and has to carry an oxygen tank around everywhere to help her breathe, so no one would blame her for being depressed over her condition. But as Hazel explains, "The booklets and web sites always list depression as a side effect of cancer. Depression's not a side effect of cancer. It's a side effect of dying, which is what was happening to me."

Hazel's had lots of practice dealing with her own mortality, so it isn't surprising that she identifies and becomes fairly obsessed with "An Imperial Affliction" by Peter Van Houten. The novel is about a girl named Anna who, like Hazel, is dying from cancer. Hazel finds great solace in the book's pithy truisms, and describes the author as the only person she knows who "understands what it's like to be dying, but... hasn't actually died".

Her doctor and her mother want her to start going to a cancer support group for people her age, in the hopes that it will get her out the house more. "And so I went," Hazel explains, "Not because I wanted to or because I thought it would help me, but for the same reason I did anything these days... to make my parents happy."

Answer: Oblivion

Hazel first runs into Gus - quite literally - at her cancer support group. Gus is there to support his friend, Isaac, through his upcoming retinoblastoma operation. A cancer survivor himself, Gus lost his right leg to osteosarcoma about a year and a half ago, and has been in remission ever since. He has an impossibly positive outlook on life, and he tells the group that he's on "a roller coaster that only goes up". When Patrick asks him to share his fears with the group, Gus thinks about it for a moment. "Oblivion," he finally says. "You see, I intend to live an extraordinary life; to be remembered. So I'd say if I have any fears, it would be to not do that."

Hazel can't help but smile when she hears this. She points out that "oblivion is inevitable" and that when all of humanity is gone, no one will be around "to remember Cleopatra, or Muhammad Ali, or Mozart, let alone any of us". Gus can't keep his eyes off of Hazel throughout her remarks, which only make him more intrigued. He catches up with her outside the church, and the two teenagers share a moment. When she catches him staring again and asks why he is looking at her like that, he tells her that he enjoys looking at beautiful people. "See, I decided a while back not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence," he explains, "Particularly as you so astutely pointed out, we're all gonna die pretty soon."

Answer: A cigarette

Gus invites Hazel to watch a movie, and just as she is considering it, he takes out a pack of smokes and places a cigarette between his lips. Hazel reacts to this immediately. "Really? That is disgusting," she says. "What, do you think that that's cool, or something? You just ruined the whole thing!" Gus seems amused by Hazel's reaction more than anything. "You were doing really well, too," she says, and goes on to point out Gus's "fatal flaw" - that even though he had cancer, he is "willing to give money to a corporation for the chance to acquire even more cancer". Gus interrupts Hazel's tirade to point out the obvious. "Hazel Grace, they don't actually hurt you unless you light them," he says, enjoying Hazel's confusion. "I've never lit one," he continues. "It's a metaphor, see? You put the thing that does the killing right between your teeth, but you never give it the power to kill you. A metaphor."

Hazel is speechless. And impressed. Just then, her mother pulls up and Hazel tells her that she doesn't need a ride because she has made plans with Augustus Waters.

Answer: The ending

Gus and Hazel are getting to know each other, and when Gus asks her to name something that she loves, Hazel tells him all about "An Imperial Affliction". Gus generously agrees to read "this horrible book with this very boring title that does not include zombies or stormtroopers" if Hazel will read his favorite book - the novelization of his favorite video game called "Counterinsugence". A few days pass, and Hazel keeps waiting for Gus to call or message her, and he finally contacts her one day during dinner. He has finished reading the book, but is less than pleased with its ending, as evidenced by his text messages to her:

"Tell me my copy is missing the last ten pages or something."
"Tell me I have NOT reached the end of this book!"
"A BOOK CAN'T END IN THE MIDDLE OF A SENTENCE?! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS THIS MADNESS! AAAAHHHH!" She laughs out loud at this last message, and has to be excused from the dinner table.

It turns out Gus really liked "An Imperial Affliction", but calls the abrupt ending "evil". Hazel understands what Gus means, but feels that the ending is truthful because "you just die in the middle of life; you die in the middle of a sentence". Still, Hazel admits that she feels haunted by the desire to know what happens to the other characters in the book after it ends. When Gus asks her if she ever tried contacting the author, Hazel says that she had written to him many times, but never received a reply. It seems that he moved to Amsterdam and became a recluse.

Answer: No

Gus cannot stop thinking about the book so he tracks down the author's assistant in a desperate attempt to obtain some form of closure. Van Houten receives Gus's email from his assistant and emails him a response, which Gus reads over the phone to an increasingly excited Hazel, who cannot believe that Van Houten wrote back. "I've been trying to tell you," Gus says to Hazel, "I'm kind of awesome." He forwards Van Houten's reply to Hazel so that she can write to him directly.

Hazel writes to Van Houten to ask all the burning questions she has about what happens after the book ends - "Does Anna's Mom marry the Dutch Tulip Man?", "Is the Dutch Tulip Man up to something, or is he just misunderstood?", and of course, the fate of Sisyphus the Hamster. "I know that these are not important literary questions and that your book is full of important literary questions, but I would just really like to know," she writes in her email.

One morning, Hazel wakes up to find an email in her inbox - Van Houten has written back! While the reclusive author declines to answer her questions in writing - "because to do so would constitute a sequel" - he invites her to pay him a visit if she should ever find herself in Amsterdam.

Answer: "Okay."

Hazel had noticed that Isaac and Monica kept saying "Always" to each other during their very public display of affection after the cancer support group. When she asked Gus about it, he explained, "'Always' is like their thing, like they'll 'always' love each other and whatnot. They probably texted 'Always' to each other, like, 14 million times this year."

One night, Hazel and Gus are talking to each other, but neither one wants to be the first person to hang up the phone even though it was already one in the morning. "I should probably go to sleep," Hazel says, causing Gus to reply, "Okay." Hazel says the word back to Gus, and the pair keep repeating "Okay" to each other in order to prolong the conversation, until Gus finally says, "Perhaps 'Okay' will be our 'Always'." Hazel can't help but smile at this. "Okay," she replies.

Answer: He wants to take her to Amsterdam.

Hazel's parents can't afford to send her to Amsterdam to meet Peter Van Houten, and Hazel had already "wasted" her wish from The Genie Foundation when she was 13 with a trip to Disney World. When Gus shows up to take Hazel on a Dutch-themed picnic out by Joep Van Lieshout's "Funky Bones", a sculpture of a giant black and white skeleton that functions as a children's playground, it is clear that the disparate elements of their picnic are not a coincidence.

"Well, Hazel Grace, like so many before you - and listen, I say this with the utmost of affection - you used your wish moronically," he says. "You were young. Impressionable. The Grim Reaper staring you right in the face. And it led you to rush into making the wish you didn't really want. But how could little Hazel Grace, having never read 'An Imperial Affliction', know that her one true wish was to visit Mr. Peter Van Houten in his Amsterdam exile?" Hazel still has no idea where any of this is going. "But I didn't save it," she says, referring to her wish. "It's a good thing I saved mine," Gus replies. "I'm not gonna give you my wish or anything, Hazel, if that's what you're thinking. However, I too have an interest in meeting this Peter Van Houten and I really think it wouldn't make much sense to meet him without the girl who introduced me to his book in the first place, now would it? So I talked to the Genies and they're all for it. We leave in a month."

Answer: A grenade

Hazel suffers an attack after fluid accumulates in her lungs, and she has to be rushed to the ICU. After getting out of the hospital, she avoids Gus's calls and text messages, believing that this is all for the best. "It's not fair to him," she explains to her dad. "He doesn't need this in his life. Nobody does." Gus keeps texting Hazel and when she finally cannot take it anymore, she gives in and calls him. He comes over, and the two of them sit on her childhood swing set to talk. "Hazel Grace, I hope you realize that you trying to keep your distance from me in no way lessens my affection for you," he says to her. "All your efforts to keep me from you are going to fail." Hazel smiles awkwardly, and tells Gus that she likes him and enjoys hanging out with him, but she "can't let this go on any further" because she doesn't want to hurt him. "I wouldn't mind," Gus replies. "It'd be a privilege to have my heart broken by you, Hazel."

"Gus, I'm a grenade!" Hazel interrupts. "One day I'm gonna explode, and I'm gonna obliterate everything in my wake and... I don't know. I just, I feel like it's my responsibility to minimize the casualties." Gus gets it, but can't help but say, "A grenade?" A smile starts to form on Hazel's face, as she replies, "I mean, that's why I don't have a hamster."

Answer: False

The trip to Amsterdam starts off well. Hazel and Gus have dinner at Oranjee, courtesy of Peter Van Houten, an occasion that calls for a new dress which Hazel's mother has secretly purchased for her. The pair of teenagers have a truly magical evening, and the next day they set out for Van Houten's house. Hazel is so excited that she finds it even harder than usual to breathe.

To say that Peter Van Houten is a disappointment would be an understatement. He is rude and dismissive of Hazel and Gus, and it seems that the magical evening they had the night before owes more to his assistant than to the obnoxious author. He plays Swedish rap for them, and is purposefully obtuse in answering their questions, befuddling them with talk of math. When Hazel pushes for answers about what happens to the other characters at the end of his book, Van Houten says, "Nothing happens! They're fiction. They cease to exist the moment the novel ends." He tells Hazel that he refuses to pander to her "childish whims" or pity her "in the manner in which [she's] accustomed". Finally, he calls Hazel "a side effect of an evolutionary process that cares little for individual lives" and "a failed experiment in mutation". Hazel and Gus leave Van Houten's house feeling angry and deflated.

Answer: Falling asleep

Gus declares his love for Hazel when they are at the restaurant, just after dessert. "I am in love with you," he says. "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 one day all of our labors will be returned to dust, and I know that the sun will swallow the only earth we will ever have, and I am in love with you. Sorry." Hazel shakes her head and smiles, but says nothing.

The next day, Lidewij feels so bad about their disastrous meeting with Van Houten that she takes Hazel and Gus to the Anne Frank house, where Hazel insists on climbing up the many flights of stairs on her own even after they learn that there is no elevator. Perhaps she cannot stand to have another disappointment that day. They eventually reach the secret attic at the top of the house where Anne Frank and her family hid for two years, Hazel out of breath but glad to have made it. Hazel is feeling all of the emotions of that day, and when she looks over at Gus, she leans in and kisses him. They lose themselves in the kiss and when it is over, it takes them a moment to realize that everyone around them is watching. Their audience starts to applaud, Hazel blushes, and Gus takes a bow. "I fell in love with him the way you fall asleep," Hazel says later. "Slowly, and then all at once."

Answer: His cancer is back.

Gus sits down next to Hazel on the bench and takes her hand in his. He knows what he needs to tell her, but he doesn't know where to begin. "Just before you went into the hospital, there was this... I felt an ache in my head," he finally says. "So I had a PET scan and it lit up like a Christmas tree. The lining of my chest, my liver... just everywhere. I'm sorry. I should have told you." Hazel is crying as she buries her head in Gus's shoulder. "It's so unfair," she says, as Gus starts to cry himself. "Apparently the world is not a wish-granting factory," he says, and wipes the tears from his eyes. "Hey, listen. Don't you worry about me, Hazel Grace," he says. "I'm going to find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time." Hazel lets out a weak laugh at this. "I don't suppose you can just forget about this," Gus says. "You know, just treat me like I'm not dying."

"I don't think you're dying, Augustus," she replies. "You've just got a touch of cancer."

Answer: "That is my biggest fear."

Hazel is arguing with her parents over her wanting to skip dinner in order to meet Gus. When her mom remarks that Hazel needs to "take care of herself" and "stay healthy", it sets her off. "Stay healthy?" she asks. "Do you realize that I'm dying and you're gonna be here, and you're not going to have anyone to look after or hover around, and you're not going to be a mother anymore and I'm sorry but there's nothing I can do about that, so can I please go?" Hazel's mom is shocked by her outburst. "Why would you say that to me?" she asks. Hazel brings up the memory of the time when she was 13 in the ICU and her lungs filled up with water, and her parents thought that she wasn't going to make it. Just as the anesthetic started to work, she remembers her mom telling her, "You can let go, sweetie. Don't be afraid," before turning to her dad and crying, "Oh Michael... I'm not going to be a mom anymore." A look of realization flashes across her mom's face. "Hazel, it's not the truth. I was wrong, all right?" she says. "Even when you die - I'll always be your mother. It's the greatest thing I'll ever be."

Hazel doesn't seem to be comforted by that, for the same reason she obsesses over the fate of Anna's friends and family after "An Imperial Affliction" ends. "That is my biggest fear, mom," she replies. "When I am gone, you're not gonna have a life anymore. You're just gonna sit and you're gonna stare at walls, or you're gonna off yourselves or..." She trails off, unable to complete her sentence. Hazel's dad assures her that they are not going to do that, and her mom reveals that she has been taking classes in social work so that she can use their experiences to help counsel other families. Her parents didn't mention this to Hazel because they didn't want her "to feel abandoned". Hazel is stunned and elated. "This is the best news," she says, as she hugs her mom. "You go," her mom whispers. Hazel leaves overjoyed - at least now she knows what happens after the end of her story.

Answer: "Our little infinity"

Gus calls Hazel one night and asks her to meet him at the church, and to bring the eulogy she has written for him. Hazel enters the sanctuary, which is empty except for Gus and Isaac, and listens as Gus explains why he has brought them all together tonight. Isaac delivers his eulogy first, leaving her speech for last. "It's down to you, Hazel Grace," Gus says.

Hazel steps up to the dais, unfolds a piece of paper, and begins. "Hello. My name is Hazel Grace Lancaster, and Augustus Waters was the star-crossed love of my life," she reads. "Ours was an epic love story, and I probably won't be able to get more than a sentence out without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Like all real love stories, ours will die with us, as it should. You know, I kinda hoped that he would be the one eulogizing me, because there's really no one else." She pauses here, taking a moment to compose herself, and says that she isn't going to talk about their love story, so instead she will talk about math. She makes an attempt at summarizing Cantor's proof that "some infinities are simply bigger than other infinities", and says that a writer they used to like taught them that, before carrying on.

"You know, I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, do I want more days for Augustus Waters than what he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity," she says, fighting back her tears. "You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and for that I am eternally grateful. I love you so much."

Answer: She was saving her '10'.

The phone in Hazel's house rings in the middle of the night, and Hazel knows what it is even before her parents come into her room. Gus's heart had stopped and he had passed away in the ICU, just eight days after his 'pre-funeral'. Hazel is destroyed. She describes the experience of losing the love of her life as "unbearable", with "every second worse than the last".

"One of the first things they ask you in the ER is to rate your pain on a scale from 1 to 10," Hazel recalls. "I'd been asked this question hundreds of times and I remember once when I couldn't catch my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire. The nurse asked me to rate the pain. Though I couldn't speak, I held up nine fingers. Later, when I started feeling better, the nurse came in and she called me a fighter. 'You know how I know,' she said. 'You called a '10' a '9'."

"But that wasn't the truth," Hazel relates, as she looks at herself in her funeral dress in the mirror. "I didn't call it a '9' 'cause I was brave. The reason I called it a '9' was because I was saving my '10'. And this was it. This was the great and terrible '10'."

Answer: "... but you do have a say in who hurts you."

Hazel doesn't expect to see Van Houten at the funeral. "Your boy Waters and I corresponded quite a bit in his last days," he says to Hazel, after he gets into the passenger seat of her car. "He was quite insistent I attend his funeral and tell you what became of Anna and her mother." Hazel isn't in the mood, and isn't interested in Van Houten's explanations. She just wants him to get out of her car and leave her alone so that she can grieve. Van Houten tries to give Hazel something to read, but she grabs it from his hands, crushes it into a ball and throws it at him.

Later, Hazel learns from Isaac that Van Houten wasn't trying to give her something he had written, but that the note was something that Gus had written. Gus had been trying to write an eulogy for Hazel, and he sent what he had written to Van Houten to improve on it. "She asked me to write one and I'm trying. I just, I could use a little flair," Gus writes in his email. "See the thing is... we all want to be remembered. But Hazel's different. Hazel knows the truth. She didn't want a million admirers, she just wanted one. And she got it. Maybe she wasn't loved widely but she was loved deeply. And isn't that more than most of us get?"

"You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have a say in who hurts you," Gus writes. "And I like my choices. I hope she likes hers. Okay, Hazel Grace?" Hazel is lying on the grass behind her house as she reads this, and she looks up into the night sky, and at the universe all around her. "Okay," she says, as she smiles and closes her eyes.