The Encouragements
The Encouragements are the collection of sentimental, cross-stitched aphorisms that festoon the Waters family home in Indianapolis, Indiana. From the moment Hazel Grace Lancaster first enters the house, she is confronted by a wooden plaque engraved with "Home Is Where the Heart Is" in the entryway, an illustration above the coatrack reading "Good Friends Are Hard to Find and Impossible to Forget," and a needlepointed pillow in the living room promising "True Love Is Born from Hard Times." Augustus Waters's parents call them "Encouragements," and they are everywhere, creating a domestic landscape of relentless, pre-packaged wisdom.
Augustus's Ironic Relationship with the Encouragements
Augustus Waters maintains a deeply ironic relationship with his parents' Encouragements. He openly mocks them, telling Hazel, "Quick, give me a throw pillow and some thread because that needs to be an Encouragement" after his father offers a platitude about the Lord putting good people into one's life during dark times. Yet he immediately undercuts his own sarcasm by wrapping his arm around his father and admitting, "I like the freaking Encouragements. I really do. I just can't admit it because I'm a teenager." This moment reveals that Augustus's critique is not a rejection of the sentiments themselves but a performance of teenage rebellion against their earnestness. He is, in his own way, a believer in the power of symbols and metaphors, and the Encouragements are the most literal, domestic form of that impulse.
Hazel's Critique and the Limits of Comfort
Hazel Grace Lancaster offers a more philosophical critique of the Encouragements' underlying logic. When she sees a drawing of an angel with the caption "Without Pain, How Could We Know Joy?" above the television, she immediately dismisses it as a stupid and unsophisticated argument. She thinks to herself, "the existence of broccoli does not in any way affect the taste of chocolate," rejecting the idea that suffering is a necessary precondition for happiness. This critique aligns with her broader worldview, which refuses easy comfort and insists on the unadorned truth of pain and oblivion. The Encouragements represent the kind of hollow, feel-good philosophy that she and Augustus both resist, even as Augustus is drawn to their metaphorical resonance.
The Encouragements at the Funeral
The power of the Encouragements to fail in the face of genuine grief is most starkly demonstrated at Augustus's funeral. Hazel, tasked with delivering a eulogy, finds herself unable to speak the truth of their love story and instead falls back on the very platitudes she despises. She begins her eulogy by quoting an Encouragement from Gus's house: "Without pain, we couldn't know joy." She then continues with what she calls "spouting bullshit Encouragements" as Gus's parents nod along. This moment is a profound act of betrayal of her own principles, but it is also a recognition that funerals are "for the living." The Encouragements, for all their inadequacy, provide a script for grief when no authentic language seems possible. Hazel's performance of these hollow sentiments is a painful act of love, a concession to the social need for comfort that she intellectually rejects.
Thematic Significance: The Failure and Necessity of Platitudes
The Encouragements function as a thematic counterpoint to the novel's central concerns with oblivion, pain, and the search for meaning. They represent the world's attempt to impose order and significance on chaos and suffering. Augustus and Hazel, in their intellectual honesty, see through these attempts, yet they are also drawn to them. Augustus's unlit cigarette is itself a kind of personal Encouragement, a metaphor he lives by. The novel ultimately suggests that while the easy answers of the Encouragements are insufficient, the human need for them—for symbols, for stories, for something to hold onto—is undeniable. The Encouragements are not true, but they are necessary, a fragile scaffolding built against the void.
