A few days after the funeral Hazel visits Isaac. They
two play the blind-friendly video games. Than Isaac asks, if Augusts
was in pain, Hazel says, he was. They agree that dying sucks and
Isaac points out, that Hazel seems angry. Hazel thinks back to the
time, when she first meets Augustus, when he said, that he fear
oblivion. Her response was that oblivion was universal and
inevitable, but the problem wasn´t really oblivion or suffering but
the meaninglessness of these things.
She also remembers her dad saying the universe wants
to be noticed and thinks what we want is to be noticed by the
universe. Isaac tells Hazel, that Augustus really loved her and he
mentions, that Augustus was writing something for Hazel during his
final days.
Hazel drives to Augustus´s home, hoping to find
whatever the writing was. Augustus was writing on his computer. She´s
startled, however, by the drunken presence of Van Houten in the
back-seat of her car. He claims he merely wants to apologize for
ruining the Amsterdam trip. Van Houten says, that Hazel reminds him
of Anna, because she was based on his own daughter, who died of
cancer at the age of eight. Hazel surmises that “An Imperial
Affliction” was a way for Van Houten to give Anna a second life as
a teenager. Following this revelation, Hazel recommends that the
author return home and writes another novel.
At Augustus´s, Hazel has lunch with Augustus´s
parents and mentions he was writing something. They say he didn´t
use the computer much in the last month, but she´s free to check it.
But she doesn´t found something, even not something handwritten.
Augustus´s father points out that Augustus was probably too sick to
have written anything during hi final month.
