Wikipedia hosts a no-doubt incomplete list of dystopian literature by decade from the 18th century forward. Does it say something about our current society that there are listed a dozen novels in the entire nineteenth century, and every decade since the 1930s had at least that many per decade? That in the first decade of the twenty-first century there were over four dozen dystopian novels published? Or that in our current decade there are nearly three dozen so far (and we're not halfway through)? Or -- perhaps the biggest concern of all -- that in this century the vast majority of those bleak futuristic societies were written for teens and preteens? Why the increase? Is it just a fad? A look though Amazon.com will yield a far greater number of these tales than the Wikipedia list, if one counts all the free or dollar priced ebooks. Still, the numbers are increasing so I don't think this trend can be written off as merely a fad.
Last year I read a couple of different articles pondering the question of how much violence is too much violence in young adult literature - and the movies which eventually are spawned by these books. It's not exactly a new question. I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons and I remember hearing that debate as a child. No matter how many Road Runner cartoons I watched I never had the desire to drop an anvil on some poor bird's head, and although I might have sometimes wished to bop the noggins of various bad guys, I knew Batman and Superman never bopped anyone who didn't deserve it, and they didn't continue hitting once the bad guy started seeing stars.
There's no doubt the violence of The Hunger Games is extreme and no one seriously claims that children killing children is not, at the very least, unsettling. Is it "right" to write about such things for children? Do these types of stories increase aggression and desensitize our youth to the value of human life? I don't think such questions have simple yes-or-no answers. Nor do I think it is easy to say how much art imitates life or life imitates art. We live in a violent world, and we always have. These stories aren't simply visions of horrific futures, either the blatantly obvious horrors or the thinly disguised "more enlightened" societies they pretend to be. One of the characteristics of dystopian literature is social commentary on the time in which is is written. That thought truly makes me wonder about the plethora of these tales; have we become so cynical we can only see the bad in our society and imagine all the ways it can get worse? Or are we becoming more aware than ever before, and more willing to discuss the ills which we see?
One of the reasons I enjoy young adult fiction more than most adult fiction is the honesty with which it is written. Another reason is the hope with which it is written. Perhaps I've read the wrong books - but of those I've read, the characters in "adult" dystopian novels end up giving up -- and society is no better at the end of the tale than at the beginning. I don't need sunshine and lollipops in the books I read, but if I read a murder mystery, I expect the killer to have been caught and brought to justice when I close the book. And I expect there to be at least a glimmer of hope for the future when I close the book of a dystopian novel, even the first part of a trilogy, such as Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games trilogy or Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy. 1984 and Brave New World ended as bleakly as they began, with the adults protagonists losing their battle with their oppressive societies (and in the case of 1984, being happy about it.) Oh, Fahrenheit 451 and The Time Machine ended on the upbeat, but those are it for the adult fiction I've read in that genre. (I'll happily take any suggestions.) What I like about the bleak fiction of the young adult market is simply it's not so bleak. Despite the violence, despite the visions of society gone wrong, there is reason to hope that things are going to get better -- because the heroes in these tales -- kids -- don't capitulate like their adult counterparts do.
The world Veronica Roth draws in her Divergent series, is, as many dystopias, the post-apocalyptic result of possibly well-intentioned attempts to rebuild society after we screwed it up. Humans being as they are, they still didn't get it right. A hundred years after a war, the city of Chicago is fenced off from the rest of the world -- it's unclear how much of a world there is outside of Chicago (perhaps that is shown more in the sequels; I do not know and have resisted researching too much in case I wish to someday read those sequels). The society is divided into five "factions" -- which I saw as mini societies within the larger society -- and each of these factions is structured to think and perform according to set patterns based upon the virtues they define themselves by. At age sixteen an aptitude tests is administered to determine where each individual is best suited to remain for the rest of their lives. Regardless of the aptitude test results, people are -- supposedly -- free to choose their new faction or remain in the one they were born into. But once the choice is made, you're stuck with it, unless you fail the tests given by your new faction, and are cast out into the "Factionless", i.e., dregs of society, the grunts, the poor, the unwanted. Free will only goes so far in this society.
The five factions are Abnegation, or the Selfless, to which Tris and her brother are born into but both turn away from on Choosing Day; Amity, the Peaceful; Candor, the Honest; Erudite, the Intelligent; and Dauntless, the Brave. Tris joins the Dauntless, who originally were intended to be society's protectors, but they've grown cruel under current leadership. Her brother joins the Erudite, whose seeking of knowledge has turned them arrogant and power hungry under their current leadership. It shouldn't be a plot spoiler (and I apologize if it is) that Tris falls in love with her instructor, a boy only two years older than she, who sees the flaws in not only his own faction but in the others, and dreams of a greater unity. He also discerns Tris's secret, and he's not the only one to do so. Tris's aptitude test reveals she is Divergent, which means that she has a greater capacity to exercise free will than most people do. And the government doesn't like that.
Divergent is, for the most part, a believable society, although I do wonder what's outside of Chicago and wonder if I need to read the next two books to find out. And some of the dialog I found was too present-day and did not gel with how I believe this society would think and speak. Nothing major, but those bits were still a distraction. Taken as a whole, I can believe a society set up with the intention of the betterment of all by separating people into their factions according to there inherent gifts and dispositions. But human beings are creatures of free will and taking that away is going to cause problems, and I think the author develops those problems at a believable pace and with flawed characters the reader can grow to love and villains the reader doesn't feel necessarily guilty for hating.
The violence in the worlds of both the Hunger Games and Divergent is about equal, portrayed differently and for different purposes, but about equal. Whether it is too much for either the adult or the teen reader is a great deal up to the reader's tolerance for violence and acceptance of how it tells the story. As I've said, dystopias are part social commentary. I don't think we should sell short today's youth; they see real life violence around them every day and like us adults, often feel powerless to do anything about it. And one more thing I like about young adult dystopian fiction: the protagonists understand their choices have consequences, and they learn and grow by making those choices, both good and bad. And maybe the readers of these tales can take those lessons their fictional heroes learned and apply them to real life situations -- and possibly prevent these dystopias from becoming reality.
Divergent
The Hunger Games
