Elements of young adult literature

Topics and language

John Green’s novel The Fault in Our Stars is considered part of the young adult genre. Typical of young adult novels is the presence of themes that concern young people, described from the perspective of a teenager. Such themes are for example, growing up, friendship and, of course, first love. The novels often deal with questions about a person’s place in the world, about who one is and who one wants to be, what young people want from life, and how they see the world. But the works also deal with serious motifs, such as illness, death, and loss. Young adult literature is often characterized by a special youth language (see analysis "Youth Language").

John Green's young adult novel addresses these issues, as the author explained in a November 2012 interview, "Adolescents not only experience first kiss, first love, first sex, they also experience first death, first loss, and there is a great rawness and directness in that experience" Source. (Zeit Online, "Goddamn Moral" By Christian Staas, November 15, 2012.) The tragic plot focuses mainly on the story of two American teenagers suffering from different forms of cancer. The first-person narrator, 16-year-old Hazel, tells of how she deals with her cancer, what experiences she has with her environment, how she experiences her first love with 17-year...