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and behavior that people possess in their life. In its simple explanation, it is the sum of life experiences of people have in their life.
Individual Psychology is a science that attempts to understand the experiences and behavior of each person as an organized entity. Adler in Ryckman, 1985:95
believes that all actions are guided by a person’s fundamental attitudes toward life. The major purpose of a personality theory is to serve as an efficient guide to
explaining people’s life perfection based on their experiences and behavior. Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is a novel that shows the life of a girl who
suffers from the physical illness. With Adler’s individual psychological theory, the
researcher explored the novel and he found that the character struggle of seeking her life perfection is varied in many ways. There are four kinds of life perfection that
giving meaning to Hazel found in the novel.
1. Knowing the ending of An Imperial Affliction
In The Fault in Our Stars novel, Hazel is the major character that represents the life of a teen girl who lives with thyroid cancer in her body. Every human has their
own goal, so was Hazel. She is an ordinary girl who has her own goal in life. Unfortunately, her physical condition makes her life goal seems unreachable for her.
In the story, Hazel mentioned her several fictional goals which reflect her wish in a different timeline. The first is implied by these lines:
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“...and then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can’t tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that
advertising your affection feels like a betrayal .
Green, 2012:2
...seemed to understand me in weird and impossible ways. An Imperial Affliction was my book, in the way my body was my
body and my thoughts were my thoughts .”
Green, 2012:2 This quote describes her favorite novel entitled An Imperial Affliction. It is a
novel about a girl named Anna who has cancer, and its the only book shes read of living with cancer ties with her experience. Hazel’s bound to the novel offers a sort of
companionship, which comforts her. The novel represents Hazel’s experience the battles for her illness and she obsesses over the fates of the character in the novel
because they function as her representations for her own parents. Id learned this from my aforementioned third best friend, Peter Van Houten,
the reclusive author of An Imperial Affliction, the book that was as close a thing as I had to a Bible
. Green, 2012:1
This line of quotation expressing Hazel feelings towards An Imperial Affliction where she considered that novel is a sort of religion for her. The novel is the only
thing that understands her in every aspect of life, even her parents cannot be like that. Hazel found this book as a marvel, where her thoughts were accommodated and her
needs are fulfilled by the story. She wants her life to be like Anna, the character in the
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novel, where she can start a charity foundation for cancer and die as a heroine who tries to reduce the effects of cancer.
Hazel is pessimistic in her existence with the world, she feels that the world is not fair with her. She did not have a chance to live like other girls or die gorgeously
like what Anna does in An Imperial Affliction. She expresses her feeling when she speaks about oblivion in the Support Group.
Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten [
…] and this will have been for naught […] and if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows
thats what everyone else does.
Green, 2012:1 Hazel gets the expression from the novel, where she emphasizes how she is
facing the world as a temporary place, where she did not need to please everyone for what she do as everything will be forgotten and no one will remember. She was
provoked by the author of An Imperial Affliction. She thought to have the same experie
nce as the novel main character’s, who understand what it’s like to be dying and not have died. Hazel treats the novel as the guide for her action, where it
affecting her life in many ways. She found it successfully express her feelings towards the world and understand her so deeply.
“If I could just stay alive for a week, Id know the unwritten secrets of Annas
mom and the Dutch Tulip Guy.” Green, 2012:8
