We go through life wondering what our future will be and how we will affect ourselves and others. We try to control our fears and insecurities, we connect to works of fiction and use them to help us solve everyday problems. In “The Fault in Our Stars,” John Green uses symbols to show how people feel the need to control our fears, how we affect the futures of others, and how we try to relate to works of fiction. The cigarettes Auguste puts in his mouth but the light does not represent our attempts to control and manage the things we fear. When he tells Hazel: “It's a metaphor, you see: you put the killing object in your teeth, but you don't give it the power to kill. »1 It seems that what he is trying to control is his own. cancer. Over the course of the novel, cigarettes are shown to have a greater meaning than he initially stated. He reaches for them whenever he feels insecure or feels like he needs to control his fears. This shows how much we feel the need to control our fears and insecurities. Agustus tries to go buy a pack of cigarettes but something goes wrong, and when Hazel comes to help him he says "I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes" he mumbles. “I lost my bag. Or maybe they took it away from me, I don't know, they said they would get me another one, but I wanted... . . to do it myself. Do a little thing myself. (68) » This shows that he is trying to regain control, but at this point he has already lost it. Another symbol that John Green uses to show how we will affect the people around us is the pomegranate. Hazel constantly compares herself to it, saying, “I'm like. As. I'm like a grenade, mom. I'm a grenade and at some point I'm going to explode and I'd like to minimize casualties, okay? (31). Which shows... middle of paper ... and makes sure that when we pass away, we leave our families with positive memories of us so they can move on. When John Green uses symbols to show our need to control our fears and insecurities, how we wonder how we will affect the future of the people around us, and how we connect to works of fiction to help us solve daily problems. We try to control our insecurities by finding creative ways, like Augustus does by putting an unlit cigarette in his mouth. We also try to control how we will affect the lives of others after we die or even leave. We try to distance ourselves from others when we know bad times are coming, like Hazel begins to distance herself from her family when her cancer begins to worsen. . We try to escape our own lives and even compare our lives to those in fiction, in order to better understand our lives and our effects on others..