The fault, dear Brutus.

*tiup habuk*

Oh bertahun (setahun) tinggalkan wadah mengarut ini, kini telah kembali! 

So, I was just reading an anthology from Buku Hitam Press titled Maut Sebelum Ajal and was kind of inspired to start writing again. I read a lot recently, an escapism from the not my cuppa tea reality. 

This first two months of 2014 is a good book months for me:

John Green - Looking For Alaska, The Fault In Our Stars, Paper Towns

Adibah Amin - This End of the Rainbow

Zaib Ibrahim - Ampun Tuanku

Farish A Noor - What Your Teacher Didn't Tell You

Paulo Coelho - Manuscript Found In Accra, Aleph, The Alchemist, The Zahir

All of the listed books are amazing, and the one I am particularly interested to write is The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green. I am not going to make a book review, saya tiada tauliah JAKIM untuk berbuat demikian. But! I want to share a quote from the book which provoke my faculty of thought.

The fault, dear Brutus is not in our stars / But in ourselves, we are underlings.

This was inspired by William Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar, which was used in TFIOS by John Green. A character in the novel, Peter Van Houten said in a letter to Augustus Waters (a major heart throb by the way, but not so by the way they portray him in the film version):

Were she better, or you sicker, then the stars would not be so terribly crossed, but it is the nature of stars to cross, and never was Shakespeare more wrong than when he had Cassius note, ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves

Peter was saying that the fault is in the nature of things. Not in how you do them, or even just in yourself generally. This becomes important because it was fate's fault when Augustus died, not Gus' fault. So therefore, the Fault is In Our Stars, and we can do nothing about it. We don't have a choice in the matter.

Or readers can look at it this way: All of us are made of stardust. Well maybe we can be deemed as stars on Earth. And the other people closest to us can be seen as our stars. The fault in them is that they burn out (MATI). Some before others, but everyone will eventually be subject to the same fate. It's a fault that we all possess and cannot stop. 

Although I know what the book says might not fully support my view, it's still the way I see it. I didn't think about the title all too much. But when I did, what I said above is what came to mind.