Previous
Chapter 23
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Everything Is Tuberculosis, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Injustice
History’s Influence on the Modern Day
Family and Community
Stigmatization and Dehumanization
Nuance, Empathy, and Understanding
Summary
Analysis
Prior to his fascination with TB, Green was a young adult novelist and a YouTuber. After the success of his novel The Fault in Our Stars and the growth of his YouTube community, he found himself with a large public platform (what he calls a megaphone). He worries about drowning out other, more important voices or angering people with his thoughts. Though he tried to get rid of the megaphone, it was tied to his job, so he found something useful to do with it. Green began publicly talking about the TB crisis, advocating in front of the U.S. Congress and enacting positive change in the state of TB treatment.
Since this is only Green’s second foray into non-fiction, this passage explores his motivations for writing this book. As has been touched on earlier, Green feels it’s necessary to use his public platform for good and spread awareness of tuberculosis; as he’s already shown, activism and awareness allow for positive progress in treating TB.
Active
Themes
The John Green that wrote The Fault in Our Stars had no idea of the magnitude of TB’s current impact. In fact, this book only exists because he happened to meet Henry in 2019. Now, he dedicates himself to bettering the landscape of tuberculosis, which has never looked more promising. Still, TB mutates into new strains that are resistant even to our newest drugs, and many patients struggle to survive. Despite all of his hardship, Henry was incredibly lucky to make it out of Lakka Hospital alive.
By highlighting his own former ignorance of TB, Green illuminates society’s overall lack of awareness of the disease. He only discovered its modern-day impact due to a spur of the moment visit to Lakka Hospital, and had he never met Henry, he would still be unaware of TB’s magnitude.
Active
Themes
Green understands that it is hard to comprehend what it means when 1,250,000 people die every year of TB—the number is simply too large—but he can comprehend Henry (who he is still in close contact with). Henry is a human with loved ones, aspirations, and a long personal history. In this way, he is like the millions of people who die of TB every year—all of whom have their own stories.
