Sisyphus the Hamster

Sisyphus the Hamster appears in Peter Van Houten's novel An Imperial Affliction, the book that Hazel Grace Lancaster regards as her closest thing to a Bible. The hamster belongs to Anna, the narrator of Van Houten's novel, and is a pet that Anna's mother dislikes. Throughout Hazel's repeated readings of An Imperial Affliction, the hamster's ultimate fate remains unknown because the novel ends mid-sentence when Anna becomes too sick to continue writing. This unresolved detail becomes one of the questions that haunts Hazel, who writes to Van Houten asking, among other things, "what becomes of Sisyphus the Hamster?"

The Question of the Hamster's Fate

Hazel's letter to Van Houten, sent via his assistant Lidewij Vliegenthart, explicitly lists Sisyphus the Hamster alongside the fates of Anna's mother, the Dutch Tulip Man, and Anna's friends Claire and Jake. She writes, "These questions have haunted me for years—and I don't know how long I have left to get answers to them." The hamster, though a small character, represents Hazel's broader need for narrative closure in a life defined by uncertainty. When Hazel and Augustus Waters finally meet Van Houten in Amsterdam, Van Houten initially refuses to answer any questions, dismissing them as childish. But after Hazel's persistent demands, he relents on the hamster: "The hamster gets adopted by Christine," one of Anna's pre-sickness friends, and "lives for a couple years after the end of the novel and dies peacefully in his hamster sleep." This is the only concrete answer Van Houten gives, and it stands in stark contrast to his refusal to reveal anything about the human characters, whom he insists are merely "fictions" with no life beyond the page.

Symbolic Resonance and Thematic Significance

The hamster's name, Sisyphus, is a direct allusion to the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity, only to have it roll back down each time. In Albert Camus's existentialist reading, Sisyphus's endless, futile labor becomes a metaphor for the human condition: finding meaning in the struggle itself, despite the absence of ultimate purpose. The hamster's peaceful, ordinary death—adopted by a friend, living a few more years, dying in sleep—offers a kind of mundane resolution that contrasts sharply with the grand, heroic deaths that Augustus Waters initially craves. Where Augustus fears oblivion and wants to leave a mark, the hamster's fate suggests that a small, unnoticed life, ending quietly, can still be complete. Hazel's relief at learning the hamster's fate—"Great," she says—underscores her own desire for a world where even the smallest stories have endings, a desire that mirrors her struggle to accept the open-endedness of her own life.

Connection to the Novel's Themes

The hamster's fate also echoes the novel's broader exploration of mortality and meaning. Hazel, who describes herself as a "grenade" that will eventually hurt those she loves, finds comfort in the idea that even a pet can have a defined, peaceful end. The hamster's death is not tragic or heroic; it simply happens, and that ordinariness is, for Hazel, a form of grace. When Augustus later writes to Van Houten, he reflects on Hazel's character, saying she "walks lightly upon the earth" and that "the real heroes are the people NOTICING things." The hamster, like Hazel, is a creature that does not seek to leave a scar but simply exists, and its fate—known and settled—provides a small but meaningful closure in a story otherwise defined by interruption and loss.