The Fault in Our Stars, The Metatext

“In the distance, soaked in the unblemished sunlight so rare and precious in our hometown, a gaggle of kids made a skeleton into a playground, jumping back and forth among the prosthetic bones ” (87).

Funky Bones, the installation described in this quote, references an idea expressed in a vlogbrothers video of whether the living owe anything to the dead and what that would be. As Augustus remarks, “‘First, the bones are just far enough apart that if you’re a kid you cannot resist the urge to jump between them. Like, you just have to jump from ribcage to skull. Which means that second, the sculpture essentially forces children to play on bones. The symbolic resonanaces are endless, Hazel Grace” (87). Though the idea of playing atop death may seem morbid, it can also be reassuring, suggesting that life continues onward, making the best of what the dead have left behind. The cyclical nature of children playing on bones also has ‘symbolic resonance,’ in which the very beginning and end of life interact harmoniously.