The other night, a book made my daughter cry.
It wasn't even a particularly well-written book, though it's entertaining enough. I had read it, and when she was searching through the selection of dystopian novels that her 7th grade teacher had available, I told her it was pretty good, and that she could read it. I recommended it over
The Giver, which is a novel that I read some time after my son came home in 5th or 6th grade reporting that the book that his teacher was having the class read was "inappropriate." I knew what he meant; I am pretty sure that my daughter would find it similarly inappropriate--even mortifying--if she read it. But as it turns out, the two novels--
Among the Hidden and
The Giver--share a trait, even though one has become somewhat of a classic while the other never will.
That trait is emotional manipulation, and while I would argue that it is a trait of children's and young adult dystopian fiction, it is not a trait of adult dystopian fiction. This is probably why it did not strike me that the novel would be problematic for her. Not that crying is a problem, but crying because a character in a dystopian novel has died actually does strike me as a problem. When she came to me for comfort because a character died whom she (along with the protagonist) had come to like, I said, "Well, that's a dystopian novel. People die, and it is often for no reason. Their deaths accomplish
nothing, which is the point." But then she reminded me that no, it wasn't like that in
Fahrenheit 451, which she loved, that no, that's not actually a trait of dystopian literature...
for adults.
Dystopian novels, when written for adults, are novels of ideas. We are presented with horrors, and asked to think about them rationally. I don't count
Lord of the Flies, which to me, is not actually a dystopian novel, as it does not depict a dystopia. Strictly speaking, by this criteria,
Animal Farm would also not be a dystopia. Both novels tell us something about the part of human nature that allows oppressive societies to develop. So perhaps they are novels of proto-dystopian landscapes.
Animal Farm and
Lord of the Flies also allow readers to feel pity for characters--Boxer, Piggy--though this might be less pronounced in
Lord of the Flies. The novels still do not court the reader's emotion. Certainly in
1984,
Brave New World,
Fahrenheit 451, and even
The Handmaid's Tale, we are held at arm's length. Even, I would propose, from the protagonist. We care about their fates, but we do not weep for them. In the case of
Brave New World, we may not even
like any of them. We can observe how society has altered the individual and make a judgment that is not influenced by emotion. We are treated like
adults.
In dystopian literature for children, which, for my purposes, is limited to the Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix and
The Giver by Lois Lowry, the reader is not treated as a primarily rational being. This might also be a trait of other dystopian children's fiction, where it exists. The Hunger Games series is not really dystopian. The focus is not on the workings of the society itself. It is about human survival and endurance. There is a totalitarian state. It is not engineered into a restrictive society meant to preserve order and produce an ideal life by the restriction of rights. Life is not uniform. In regional pockets, people live lives largely determined by their geography and its economic products, held by fear to the tyranny of the state, which reaps their raw materials as well as their children. But the novels are truly about the beginning of the end of this system. The Divergent series is also not a dystopia. Not really. It is about an engineered society, and the focus is on individuality and non-conformity, but it doesn't really have the oomph of a dystopia. It's teen drama. By contrast, the Shadow Children series is about a society with rigid population control. Third children are banned, purportedly because of a lack of resources. The series begins with a third child who has been concealed for his entire life, yet manages to discover another like him. It continues with the support structures that have developed to allow for the continued existence of third children. An underground conspiracy or something. (It's been a while.) And
The Giver is about a society that has managed to repress all unruly emotions by eliminating feeling (and other senses, like the ability to see color) and disrupting social structures (like biological families) that lead to unruly feelings, and so produce disorder.
The Giver is a wholly irrational book. From the beginning, it invites the reader to
feel. We are asked to feel even the faint arousal that accompanies bathing an elderly woman--which is likely what made my son feel that it was "inappropriate." We are not only asked to feel, we are conditioned to believe that all feelings--especially sexual feelings, especially feelings that we are told by any institution (society, family, religion) are harmful or dangerous. When I taught this book to college students, I was told in no uncertain terms that it was a favorite because it validated adolescent sexuality. Not explicitly, but the students remembered getting that message from the book. I heard some stories from students of friends who were sexually active, and the book gave them a framework to be able to deal with things they couldn't talk about at home. The book is also emotionally manipulative. It leads the reader through the trusting perspective of the protagonist, Jonas, to believe that the process of euthanizing the elderly and weak infants is "release"--that these individuals will literally go to a different, and better, physical place. Now, perhaps the assumption is that the reader will perceive what the character does not, and some readers who are more worldly likely will. But this depends on the age and circumstances in which the child encounters the book. I believe that the revelation that "release" is actually
killing relies for its impact on a naïve reader, and that the narrative does nothing short of emotionally manipulation. Certainly, we are not asked to
think. We are asked to react. And from our emotional reactions, we are asked to draw conclusions and react against what would oppress our feelings--family, society, religion. I asked that my son be allowed not to finish reading the book. The book would have hurt him emotionally. He had a new baby sister. A sibling he had--without my knowledge--yearned for for years. The justified killing--or attempted killing--of an infant was not something that he was emotionally ready for. And the teacher was completely uncomfortable teaching the subject matter of the book, and did not plan to really go into the "issues." So you see, this is why books are "challenged." Because they are not necessarily appropriate to be taught to all readers in a classroom setting, particularly when the teacher is uncomfortable doing so. He was in 5th grade (I'm pretty sure; an advanced class reading 6th grade books). My daughter is in 7th--a world apart, really. But her sensibilities would be completely offended by the bathing. She takes issue with bikinis and topless men jogging--and that has nothing to do with anything she learned at home.
Among the Hidden is not as manipulative... until the end. Until the protagonist's only friend--another third child--marches on the capital with other third children to force an acknowledgment of their existence, and is (presumably) annihilated. I can't remember whether she resurfaces at some point. Her father, unlike our protagonist's, is a powerful member of the government, and has greater ability to hide a third child. Although she was similarly devastated when Hedwig died in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was not prepared for my daughter's strong reaction to the ending. I, frankly, did not remember the character's death. Perhaps because I thought her actions were foolish. Perhaps because I am used to dystopian literature, in which death is frequently ignoble and ultimately pointless (that death is
not supposed to be pointless is one of the things that makes the Divergent series not-quite-dystopian). But something about my attempt to explain this to my daughter in the context of
Among the Hidden disturbed me. Yes, death in dystopia does not accomplish anything. It has no purpose. But as adults, we are able to recognize that rationally. We do not become caught up in emotion when John Savage's mother Linda dies in
Brave New World. What does this tell us about the assumptions within children's literature?
Both C. S. Lewis and Tolkien waxed poetic about what dragons and monsters accomplished in fiction. If a child is presented with a scary monster, she learns, when the monster is defeated, that it is possible to defeat monsters. Tolkien shows us, quite clearly, that death can be meaningful, and noble--and he also shows us that it can represent the ultimate descent into despair. But he shows both in the same work. The kind of emotional journey represented by heroic fantasy offers the reader a glimpse of the greater accomplishments of the human spirit. This is actually a feature of The Hunger Games. Should there be an emotional journey in dystopian fiction? When a writer trusts that the reader will understand--will
get the essential message of the fiction, we do not find
pathos used to drive the point. When the author does not trust that the reader will understand rationally, or will be interested in the message, we find rampant emotionalism. I'm not sure it is appropriate to underscore the futility of existence in a particular model of society via emotional involvement. Rather than depicting despair (as in the death of Denethor in
The Lord of the Rings, a scene that the movie got horribly wrong), it
produces despair, and if the book ends on that note, well.... My daughter does not want to read the next book in the series.
She did, however, read and enjoy
Fahrenheit 451. When she was 11, in fact.
And she got
it. And she is not alone in her peer group. Children
can think rationally about society. Increasingly, they are asked to do so in school--asked to make choices beyond their knowledge in every election year to practice "being involved." So why is it that their literature does not trust them to do so?
Last week I found myself consumed by mushrooms...
