The Fault in Our Stars
Dear John Green,
I met my mom at the Chinese market today for some preemptive Chinese New Year shopping and she brought me, completely unprompted, my gloriously signed copy of The Fault in Our Stars!
I’m only about halfway through, so I have to return to reading immediately, but I wanted to say something about scrambled eggs. I think the scrambled eggs are a metaphor for Hazel. She feels bad for the eggs because they are only associated with breakfast. Scrambled eggs for dinner are breakfast for dinner; a sandwich with an egg on it is a breakfast sandwich. I think that Hazel is the scrambled egg: she doesn’t want to be thought of as Hazel Who Has Cancer. A rotten lot has given Hazel cancer and now she’s not Hazel That Likes Reading Obsessively, or Hazel With a Sense of Humor Heavily Reliant on the Quirks of the English Language, she is Hazel Who Has Cancer. Not eggs at dinner. Eggs in the box of breakfast… for dinner.
(Although that being said, I would like to point out that Chinese people eat eggs in all contexts. When we studied in Beijing, Rachel (probably done reading TFIOS by now) and I would go downstairs to the restaurant in our building under the pretense of ordering something different, but always return to xihongshi chaojidan (stir-fried egg and tomato with rice). Also, my mom makes these really awesome tea eggs that sound weird but are actually delicious (and non-Asian people like Richard like them too). They’re eggs boiled in black tea with special spices and soy sauce. After they’re boiled they’re cracked and then left to soak in the spiced water overnight. We eat them as snacks (not Breakfast For Snack)).
Thank you for this story,
Connie Cann
PS. Was I right about the eggs?
