No-phones-during-dinner rule

The no-phones-during-dinner rule is a strict household policy in the Lancaster home that prohibits checking or using mobile phones at the dinner table, reflecting the family's commitment to undistracted togetherness and the normalcy of shared meals despite Hazel's illness. The rule is enforced without exception, even when Hazel is expecting an important call, and it creates a small but significant space of ordinary family life in a world otherwise dominated by cancer, treatments, and the constant presence of medical equipment.

Enforcement and Context

The rule is invoked during a Sunday night dinner when Hazel's phone begins to ring. She has just finished eating pizza with green peppers and broccoli with her parents at their little circular table in the kitchen when the phone starts singing, but she is not allowed to check it because the family has a strict no-phones-during-dinner rule. Hazel's mother and father are engaged in a conversation about an earthquake that had just happened in Papua New Guinea, a country where they met while serving in the Peace Corps. The discussion about Guinean infrastructure and the strengths and weaknesses of the country's roads and buildings absorbs them completely, and they do not even glance over at Hazel as she eats faster than she has ever eaten, transmitting items from her plate into her mouth with a speed and ferocity that leaves her quite out of breath. The breathlessness, in turn, makes her worry that her lungs are again swimming in a rising pool of fluid, a fear she tries to banish as best she can. She has a PET scan scheduled in a couple of weeks, and she tells herself that if something is wrong, she will find out soon enough, that there is nothing to be gained by worrying between now and then. And yet still she worries. She likes being a person. She wants to keep at it. Worry is yet another side effect of dying.

Consequences and Significance

Once Hazel finally finishes eating, she asks to be excused, and her parents hardly even pause from their conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of Guinean infrastructure. She grabs her phone from her purse on the kitchen counter and checks her recent calls. The call she missed was from Augustus Waters. She goes out the back door into the twilight, sees the swing set, and thinks about walking out there and swinging while she talks to him, but it seems pretty far away given that eating tired her. Instead, she lies down in the grass on the patio's edge, looks up at Orion, the only constellation she can recognize, and calls him back. The rule thus serves as a narrative device that delays Hazel's connection with Augustus, heightening the anticipation of their conversation and underscoring the tension between her desire for a normal family life and the constant intrusion of her illness and her feelings for him. The rule also illustrates the Lancaster family's attempt to maintain ordinary routines and boundaries in the face of extraordinary circumstances, a small but meaningful assertion of control over their daily lives. The no-phones-during-dinner rule is one of several household rules that structure Hazel's life, alongside the Lancaster no midriff rule, the no leaving house without permission rule, and the must eat dinner rule, all of which reflect her parents' efforts to parent a terminally ill teenager with both love and discipline.