What It Is: A common criticism of Green's novels is that they're inhabited by overly-intelligent teenagers teenagers who quote literature and talk about things like metaphor and symbolism in daily conversation. A prime example is Augustus Waters' monologue about unlit cigarettes in The Fault In Our Stars. What It Means: The meaning is quite simple: Green refuses to talk down to teenagers. Throughout his books, Green writes teenagers as sensitive, intelligent human beings, capable of a massive variety of complex emotions. Isolate any of Green's protagonists Hazel Grace Lancaster, Quentin Jacobsen, Miles Halter and you'll find much the same thing. Miles, for example, is obsessed with the dying words of famous people, routinely quoting and mulling over these words. Depicting teenagers as complex is not only appealing to the young adult audience, but...it's also true. Most of the criticisms levelled at Green's characters are by people who haven't experienced what it's like to be a teenager in several decades.
