I Fell in Love with Hope

William Shakespeare coined the term “star-crossed lovers” in his play Romeo and Juliet (1597). In the play, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet come from rival families, fall in love, secretly marry, and die by drinking poison when one believes the other is dead. The basis of the term comes from astrology and the belief that the stars hold power over the lives of people—that stars embody the fates of all people. When the stars cross, they come together and then separate by force; likewise, the star-crossed lovers in literature fall in love but, due to circumstances outside their control, cannot remain together. Most often, the endings of these stories are tragic—one of, or both, the ill-fated lovers die by the end of the narrative.

The characters whom the fates bring together represent the archetype of the Lover. Lover archetypes are overcome by passion, emotion, and love and will act, sometimes rationally but often irrationally, out of the love they feel for their fated mate. One of the characters in the pair will often embody the archetype of the Innocent—a character who others consider morally pure. They do not mean to harm those around them; it happens due to outside circumstances.

Star-crossed lovers existed before Shakespeare’s plays, and they have kept their prominence in literature, in movies, and on television. A contemporary example is John Green’s YA novel The Fault in Our Stars (2012). Borrowing a quote from Shakespeare, Green writes about the rise and eventual tragic ending of the love story between Hazel Grace Lancaster and Augustus Waters. As is the case for many star-crossed lovers, Hazel and Augustus have a short-lived relationship that progresses in the heat of the moment because both characters know cancer limits their time together. Where Romeo and Juliet died of poison, contemporary authors often take a medical approach and place the lovers in a hospital, where they battle against incurable illnesses and limited time.

I Fell in Love with Hope has its own spin on certain elements of the trope (explored more in-depth in the Chapter Analysis sections of the guide), but the unifying elements remain: Sam and his friends reside in a hospital, battling against various incurable illnesses, and someone—Hikari—stumbles into Sam’s life and sets in motion a love story that cannot end well due to terminal illness.