Rise in Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

I chose to do my presentation on Utopian and Dystopian Literature largely because of the dystopian literature. I've always found it interesting, and I account my skills in doing close readings to the fist dystopian novel I was ever required to read. I was only in Elementary school at the time and we started to read The Giver. I remember several kids in my class were excused from reading it after a day or two because of some nightmares, tears, and angry parents. The effect it had on them made me want to read it even more. I started to realize that, even though this world didn't really exist, I could find similarities with things that were going on in my world. It was a simple first reading (and I can't really tell you any more about it because I haven't even read that book in so long), but it got me started on being able to read and understand books in a different way.

Another reason I chose to do this as my presentation was because, as I said in our discussion on Friday, there has been a massive rise in Young Adult Dystopian novels (and YA fiction happens to be my favorite). I knew this, just by the time I spend in the library and looking at the books. The Hunger Games became extremely popular, but on top of that, it seems that every book with a cool looking cover ends up being another dystopian novel! This one's about teenage girls being egg farms for families, this one's about an minority group being seperated and needing to go to others for help because something that happens, this one extracts emotions, and this one... ugh. I don't even know.

Since it did come up this last Friday though, I looked into it, and I'm not just being paranoid. I've looked up the rise of dystopian literature in young adult fiction, and others see it too. Even better, they even have some theories as to why. My favorite article happened to be from another English major. You can find it the article here (http://suite101.com/article/young-adult-dystopian-fiction-and-its-impact-a84705) if you want to check it out yourself. Young adult fiction has that unique window of when a lot of teens are trying to figure out who the heck they really are. As corny as it may sound, dystopian literature, especially the young adult type, shows a lot of strong protagonists who are not afraid to fight for what they believe in, even when it seems the entire world is against them. Dystopian novels enjoy pushing the limits and making people think about the world they live in.

I also believe that the Hunger Games has caused an increase in interest in the genre. They were very popular books, still are, and became a popular movie. Websites like Goodreads.com have become very popular and with ereaders, we constantly get a stream of “you liked this book! You'll love these too!” There's also the more pessimistic view that our world is becoming more apathetic and more technological. Some think that because of this, teens can connect better with them now. Now I want to know, what do you guys think?

Right Brain, Left Brain

This last week of discussion of Arabella's 'foible' got me thinking about her in a different context. In my Language Systems and Linguistic Diversity class we have been discussing the case of Genie (humor me, this does have a point. I promise). For those of you who don't know about Genie or need a refresher, here's the gist:

Genie was abused, neglected, and isolated by her family until she was nearly 14 in the 1970's. She was tied to a potty chair in her room with no social interaction whatsoever. She was discouraged to even make sounds. Once she was taken into custody they did everything they could to try to teach her to walk, talk, and, for lack of a better term, become normal. They were able to teach her to walk, though she tended to walk in a 'bunny' fashion with her knees bent and hands held out, and they were able to teach her to speak a little. She had trouble with the actual semantics and rules of English, but her vocabulary was much more advanced than someone else at that learning stage. She lost valuable time in her critical periods for language acquisition.

One thing they learned about Genie is that her right brain was well developed, however, her left brain was so underdeveloped it was nearly not developed at all. The left brain in language development is where we store all the rules and semantics. It is more reality-based and prefers symbols (such as writing and upper math) and is much more rational and logical. Genie, being purely right brain dominant was more emotional and impulsive and needed concrete things. Though she didn't have much to look at in her tiny room, she did have things to see and stimulate her somehow. Now, to the point, the right sided person is more imaginative and fantasy oriented.

Arabella lives purely in her right brain. She lives in a fantasy she created, but learned it from something concrete to her (she takes her romances as concrete history). However, just because she is creative and imaginative does not mean that automatically rules out reasoning. Arabella's intuitive properties are wonderful. She puts them to use often, but still based on her concrete histories. This also helps since we know that the right side of the brain is the first to develop.

 We know that children need a model to learn from (learning how to speak, walk, write, etc. We know children learn... they are not taught), which is wherein lies the problem with Genie, obviously since she had no human interaction whatsoever. This could be one of the reasons that we have so much trouble with Arabella as well. She did not have enough human interaction in her life to better devolop the left side of her brain. She does have exposure to her father often, and she occasionally got to interact with tutors, and Lucy, but that is the only interaction she has had. Perhaps if she had more human interaction her left brain would have been stronger and she wouldn't rely purely on her right side fantasies. Plus, if she were to be around more people starting from an earlier age, she would have learned at an earlier age by all her 'models' that what she read in her books is not the norm anymore if it ever was.