Debate: Why the Dystopian Trend in YA Lit?

[retsuko]

The New York Times has an interesting discussion here on the growing trend for dystopian topics in Young Adult literature. Among the debaters are several YA authors, experts and professors. (Adding a young adult to that mix would probably have been appropriate as well.) Why are books like The Hunger Games so popular right now? The answers are diverse and interesting; the short essays by each contributor are well worth the read. For my money, though, there's another answer that none of the contributors touches on: the great majority of dystopian YA books contain sophisticated writing and content that shows the readers that the author respects them enough to not condescend. For example, The Hunger Games is a violent and scary book, and Collins doesn't pull any punches (pardon the euphemism), and therein is the key to its success. (If Collins had had the scenes shift away the fighting and violence instead of portraying it and its consequences honestly, the book would have been a lot less effective and popular.) Or, for another example, the His Dark Materials series contains some very complicated philosophical and religious themes that most YA books eschew. (Perhaps the failure of The Golden Compass as a movie lies with the fact that the screenplay completely abandoned these themes.) Young adults are just that: young adults, and as such, want to read works that treat them like adults, not idiots who just want simplified romance and toothless conflict.

I remember reading Bridge to Terabithia when I was about eleven. The themes and characters in that book rang incredibly true to me, and the death of one of the major characters was made all the more bittersweet because of the honesty the author treated it with. (The ensuing guilt and grief is raw and true, and entirely realistic.) The book did not have the falsely sweet, almost sing-songy, tone to it that other books dealing with death I'd read had. Terabithia gave me the knowledge necessary to deal with death when I did encounter it, and I can say I'm a better person for having read it. It wasn't a work of dystopia, per se, but it was serious and important without taking itself too seriously. Books like these wax and wane in popularity, but I think the serious side of YA will always be there, and it will always be necessary.

Comments

[owlfish]

I would like to put you in touch with tammabanana. It's not because you both have fairly young children, but because you two are some of my best and most interesting sources of book recommendations and discussion on LJ at the moment.

(I'll be reading The Hunger Games at some point this week because she recommended it, and then so did C. once I'd checked it out from the library and he read it in one fell swoop, and I have to return the book within the next week because someone else has a hold on it now.)

I just finished reading Gullstruck Island today and was very impressed with it. I very much recommend it - and it's another example of dealing with extremely complex issues in young adult format.

[bottledgoose.livejournal.com]

Yes on all of this. Kids in the young adult category know when they're being condescended to and that is the age when you desperately want to be treated like a grown-up (even though you aren't quite, but don't tell them that.) So things that depict the world as not necessarily full of fairy farts and roses are gonna get read. Hell, it's not even just true of YA fiction - Roald Dahl, anyone? - or a recent phenomenon (The tripod series).

[sioneva.livejournal.com]

I think dystopias are a returning trend, not a new one - I remember reading various dystopian novels as a YA (A Rag, A Bone, and a Hank of Hair; the Tripod trilogy) and really enjoying them.

The world is a really big and uncertain place. Dealing with that in a microcosm of controlled fiction-in-a-book is reassuring, in its odd little way.

[tammabanana.livejournal.com]

Hello! This comment is only obliquely related to the post - owlfish pointed me in your direction (http://tammabanana.livejournal.com/806205.html?thread=1868093#t1868093). Soooo, I've friended you!