Funky Bones
Funky Bones is a monumental outdoor sculpture by the Dutch artist Joep Van Lieshout, installed in the art park behind the Indianapolis Museum of Art. The work consists of a giant, childlike skeleton rising out of the ground, with each bone approximately waist-high; the thighbone alone is longer than a person. The sculpture is not a faithful anatomical rendering but an oversize, playful abstraction that invites physical interaction. Augustus Waters brings Hazel Grace Lancaster there for a picnic that he has carefully orchestrated around Dutch motifs, and the sculpture becomes the symbolic centerpiece of his grand romantic gesture.
Design and Physical Experience
The bones of Funky Bones are arranged so that the gaps between them are precisely calibrated to a child's stride. As Augustus explains to Hazel, the bones are "just far enough apart that if you're a kid, you cannot resist the urge to jump between them." The sculpture thus forces children to play on bones, leaping from rib cage to skull and back again. Augustus points out that the "symbolic resonances are endless" in this design, which turns a representation of death into an instrument of lively, joyful movement. When Hazel and Augustus return to Funky Bones weeks later, after Augustus's cancer has recurred and he is in a wheelchair, he remarks that the last time he imagined himself as the kid jumping; this time, he identifies with the skeleton itself.
The Dutch-Themed Picnic and the Amsterdam Wish
Augustus stages the picnic at Funky Bones as an elaborate, metaphor-laden proposal. He brings an orange blanket, a pint of orange juice, and sandwiches of Dutch cheese and tomato wrapped in plastic with the crusts cut off. He wears an Indiana Pacers jersey bearing the name of Rik Smits, the Dutch-born basketball player, even though Augustus has come to loathe basketball. The color orange, the Dutch cheese, the Dutch artist, and the Dutch-named player all point toward a single destination. After a memorized soliloquy in which he compares Hazel's wasted Disney World Wish to the patient waiting of Vladimir and Estragon, Augustus reveals that he has saved his own Wish and is using it to take her to Amsterdam to meet Peter Van Houten. The picnic transforms Funky Bones from a mere art installation into the launching point for the novel's central journey.
Return Visit and Changed Perspective
After Augustus's cancer returns and he is confined to a wheelchair, Hazel wheels him back to Funky Bones. They sit near the sculpture with a bottle of expensive champagne donated by one of Augustus's doctors, drinking from paper Winnie-the-Pooh cups. Augustus watches the children jumping and says, "Last time, I imagined myself as the kid. This time, the skeleton." The line crystallizes the shift from his earlier heroic self-image to a recognition of his own mortality. The sculpture, which once served as the stage for a hopeful future, now reflects the narrowing of that future. Hazel points at the children goading each other to jump from rib cage to shoulder, and Augustus answers just loud enough for her to hear over the din. The scene is the last time they visit the park together.
Narrative and Thematic Significance
Funky Bones functions as a spatial emblem of the novel's central concerns: the relationship between play and death, the desire to leave a mark, and the tension between symbolic meaning and physical reality. Augustus, who is "a big believer in metaphor," reads the sculpture as a text about mortality and joy, while Hazel experiences it as a real place where real things happen—a picnic, a confession, a goodbye. The sculpture's Dutch origin connects it to the Amsterdam trip, to Peter Van Houten, and to the novel's recurring motif of the Netherlands as a place of both freedom and disappointment. In the end, Funky Bones is where Augustus first gives Hazel the future he cannot have, and where they later sit together in the shadow of that future, watching children jump over bones.
