Why Do Teenagers Use Dystopian Fiction?
“The word dystopia comes from a Greek root that roughly translates as ‘bad place,’ and what place could be worse than high school? Adolescence is not for the faint of heart,” states Dana Stevens, movie critic for Slate Magazine. She is right. There aren’t a lot of people who would like to go back and repeat high school. No matter what decade a teenager has come from, whether the 1980’s or the present, there are general assumptions that can be made. Teens will grow up and will do their best to declare their independence. They think they are smarter than their parents and their parents think the teens are naïve idiots that dress stupid and have horrible taste in music. Something that has changed however from twenty years ago to now is a
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In an article from Children’s Literature In Education, Don Latham and Jonathan Hollister, of the School of Library & Information Studies at Florida State University state, “Dystopian fiction, it has been argued, is popular among teenagers because it resonates so deeply with the adolescent experience.” After all, teenagers and rebelling just go together so well. It’s true enough that teenagers have a wealth of authority figures in their lives telling them what they can and can’t do and they are probably always going to be sick of it. They can probably relate to wanting to rebel just like their beloved dystopian …show more content…
The characters in these stories are just as powerless as these teenagers themselves in the beginning, but when faced with adversity and whatever else the dystopian world throws at them they turn into heroes. Teenagers are growing up and are preparing to enter the world of adulthood where they face going to college and starting their own careers. They aren’t the same people the adults around them are because of different issues that are or were going on around them as they grew up. These new teens don’t like the world they are coming into as adults and have the hopes, aspirations, and dreams to be heroes who make big changes and make the world
In an article from Children’s Literature In Education, Don Latham and Jonathan Hollister, of the School of Library & Information Studies at Florida State University state, “Dystopian fiction, it has been argued, is popular among teenagers because it resonates so deeply with the adolescent experience.” After all, teenagers and rebelling just go together so well. It’s true enough that teenagers have a wealth of authority figures in their lives telling them what they can and can’t do and they are probably always going to be sick of it. They can probably relate to wanting to rebel just like their beloved dystopian …show more content…
The characters in these stories are just as powerless as these teenagers themselves in the beginning, but when faced with adversity and whatever else the dystopian world throws at them they turn into heroes. Teenagers are growing up and are preparing to enter the world of adulthood where they face going to college and starting their own careers. They aren’t the same people the adults around them are because of different issues that are or were going on around them as they grew up. These new teens don’t like the world they are coming into as adults and have the hopes, aspirations, and dreams to be heroes who make big changes and make the world