Showing posts with label loss. Show all posts

The Fault in Our Schools



Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars 

By this point I think it's pretty safe to assume that most people are familiar with John Green's 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list for Children's Chapter Books.

The book is about Hazel Grace Lancaster, a 16-year-old with thyroid cancer that has spread to her lungs. At her mother's behest she attends a cancer patient support group where she meets 17-year-old Augustus Waters, whose osteosarcoma caused him to lose his leg. The two bond immediately and agree to read each other's favorite novels. Augustus gives Hazel The Price of Dawn, and Hazel recommends An Imperial Affliction, a novel written by Peter Van Houten about a cancer-stricken girl named Anna that parallels Hazel's own experience. After Augustus finishes reading her book, he is frustrated upon learning that the novel ends abruptly without a conclusion. Hazel explains the novel's author had retreated following the novel's publication and has not been heard from since.

However, I would argue that The Fault in Our Stars is not a cancer story. It foremost a love story, with some of the elements of an adventure story, about two people who happen to have cancer. It is not just a love story about two teenagers, but a love story about people's conenction with fiction. Hazel and Augustus are so profoundly affected by An Imperial Affliction that seeking out Van Houten becomes their primary goal and acts as a motivator to keep going and keep living. It demonstrates the power that books can have on young people, and the comfort that they can provide. Hazel finds solace in the parallels between the character of Anna in An Imperial Affliction and her own life, and is only shaken by the abrupt ending.

That’s part of what I like about the book in some ways. It portrays death truthfully. You die in the middle of your life, in the middle of a sentence.
- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars 

Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort in The Fault in Our Stars (2014).

In spite of it's receiving critical acclaim, there were several unfavourable opinions that began to surface upon it's release. One piece in The Daily Mail criticised it as being "distasteful" and inappropriate for young teens. It stressed that the depictions of illness, depression and sexuality are inappropriate for readers, branding The Fault in Our Stars as being part of the "sick-lit" genre (alongside Jenny Downham's Before I Die, and Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper). The problem with this mindset is that if we don't allow dark themes to be explored in fiction for teens, where do we draw the line? One of the many wonderful things about fiction, and particularly YA fiction, is that it can sensitively explore topics that are otherwise difficult and unpleasant to face. It's an important step in becoming an adult, as it allows you to explore and grow an understanding of more adult themes without having to go through the sadness of losing a loved one or dying yourself to understand them. Turning a blind eye to the realities of the world never works, and fiction written specifically for young people is one of the only places where we can approach these ideals. It is closed-minded and unhealthy to sweep life under the rug.

The thing that bothered my about The Daily Mail piece is that it was a bit condescending to teenagers. I'm tired of adults telling teenagers that they aren't smart, that they can't read critically, that they aren't thoughtful, and I feel like that article made those arguments."
- John Green 

In America, the popular YA novel was found unsavoury enough as to warrant a ban in Riverside Unified School District middle schools. According to The Press Enterprise, 37 books have been challenged in the district since 1988, but only one - The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier - had been banned until now. The book disappeared from shelves after one parent said that the plot, language and content was inappropriate for young people.

Parent and committee member Julie Boyes, who voted against banning the book, said she thought Green was trying to show what a dying 16-year-old girl might go through, such as being angry and choosing to have sex because she didn’t know if she’d live to 17. However, Arlington principal and committee member Betsy Schmechel questioned whether students could handle reading about terminally ill teens.

The thing that kept hitting me like a tidal wave was these kids dealing with their own mortality, and how difficult that might be for an 11-year-old or 12-year-old reading this book.
- Betsy Schmechel

The issue I take with this is that when did we decide that kids realising their own mortality was a bad thing? Green himself notes this, observing that he is both "happy and sad" about the book ban.

I am happy because apparently young people in Riverside, California will never witness or experience mortality since they won’t be reading my book, which is great for them.But I am also sad because I was really hoping I would be able to introduce the idea that human beings die to the children of Riverside, California and thereby crush their dreams of immortality.
- John Green

Regardless of how you feel about it, it's hard not to argue that The Fault in Our Stars has had a pretty big impact in the literary world. However, as far as I'm concerned, you can't look past the fact that the reason it has had such an impact, and been such a success as both a book and a film, is because young people connect with it. If young people are finding something in this book that is important to them and connects with them, then how can it possibly be bad?
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In the Midst of Death We Are in Life


“He carried Hell with him, as we all did, like a little load on our backs that we hardly noticed most of the time, or like a huge great hump of suffering that bent us over with its weight.” 
- John Marsden, Tomorrow, When the War Began 

 John Marsden's Tomorrow, When the War Began is considered modern classic and is taught in secondary schools all over the world. Considered a modern classic, the book (which is the first novel in the Tomorrow series) follows the lives of a group of Australian teenagers as they struggle not only with their rapid ascent into adulthood, but to respond to the surprise invasion and conquest of their country. Though written to be accessible to teenagers, Tomorrow, When the War Began discusses some very adult viewpoints and enables the series to be consumed and enjoyed by persons of all ages.

 The best element of Marsden's work is the way in which he writes his characters. The main characters in the Tomorrow series are not your typical action heroes. Marsden favours characters that are believable perfectly ordinary people, who could be any one of us, who've found themselves in a nightmare situation. Their struggle to cope in a world gone mad forms the heart and soul of these novels. The structure and narrative draws in the reader, and it's all too easy to find yourself imagining being in their situation and wondering how you would cope.

 Prominent themes throughout the book include the struggle with right and wrong, coping with loss, consequence, death and supporting one another.

“A few people would suffer, but a lot of people would be better off.'
'It's just not right,' said Kevin stubbornly.
'Maybe not. But neither's your way of looking at it. There doesn't have to be a right side and a wrong side. both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong...” 
Written from the point of view of Ellie, the narrator, and therefore not covering anything that she has not observed, the book leaves large sections just sketched in for the reader to flesh out in their imagination. This enables the reader to become a participant in the story, creating their own image of what is going on around and with the characters.

 The characters could be anyone of us, any group of young people in any western leaning country. They are people you can relate to. They are very human, very believable, very ordinary. When their lives are smashed apart they are forced to respond, change, grow and adapt. So by the end of the book every character has changed in a different way depending on how they cope with the situation. Throughout the story you find yourself immersed in their feelings, their uncertainty, their fears, their hopes, the drama of what they are experiencing. Ellie, Robyn, Fi, Homer, Chris, Corrie, Kevin and Lee can become real for the reader, and you can relate to them as you would real people. This is a common factor, I feel, in books that are successful in relating to a YA reader. The ability to relate to and understand a character plays an important role in the connection with young people and reading. It's can be an outlet for confusion, and is a reminder that there are all types of people in the world. With books you are never alone.

"Hell wasn't anything to do with a place, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people."
Essentially, Tomorrow, When the War Began isn't a novel about war, but about how eight very ordinary teenagers respond to war. Faced with a hellish situation, aspects of their personalities start to emerge. They begin to protect and support each other, and they start to grow. Those who have kept their heads convince the others not to panic and others are completely overwhelmed by what has happened. Once of the nice things about this novel is how fallible the characters are. They all have their problems, they all have trouble coping and the lead swaps around as each finds something to contribute. It's a story that greatly illustrates the importance of teamwork and supporting one another.
“We'll never feel safe again, and so it's bye-bye innocence. It's been nice knowing you, but you're gone now.” 
Tomorrow, When the War Began is an important novel for young readers because it manages to teach a lot of moral lessons, as well as some of the realities of our world in 300 pages of a thrilling adventure story. It highlights the importance of courage, and the heroism of ordinary people. Courage is one of the hardest of human virtues to characterise, it comes and goes, and depends on the situation and the person. Courage can run out and all people have their limits.

The book also asks some simple questions: Who are you? What do you believe in? What do you want to be? and What price are you willing to pay to achieve this? The characters give their answers and pay their price. Each of us in turn as we live our lives will have to give ours...though hopefully not in as dire circumstances! What John Marsden has created with the Tomorrow series is a collection of stories that in some way reflect all of our lives. In some way or another it reflects something of who we are.
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Reading is One Form of Escape. Running for Your Life is Another.

Illustration by Brett Helquist

"All of the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk."
- Lemony Snicket

Today I'd like to talk about a series that has played a pivotal role in my own life as a young adult. Though categorised as "children's novels", the saga is that has the ability to make an impact on all young (and old!) readers. Of course, the series that I am fortunate enough to be discussing is Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

A Series of Unfortunate Events consists of 13 novels written by Daniel Handler under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. It follows the lives of three children, Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire, after the mysterious death of their parents. After being placed into and then escaping the custody of their villainous relative Count Olaf, they are pursued throughout all 13 books by Olaf and his henchmen, who wish to steal the children's vast fortune. As the series progresses it is revealed that everything is not as it seems, as they are faced with a variety of strange obstacles, people and places and begin to uncover more and more about a secret organisation only known as VFD. They discover and unravel several mysteries, but in the end not everything can be explained.

The story is narrated by Lemony Snicket, who works tirelessly to uncover the truth about what happened to the Baudelaires, though he finds the tale almost to sad and unfortunate for anyone to bear. With a cynical, yet humorous tone, he often urges the reader to put the book down and pursue more enjoyable and pleasant hobbies but his clever and unique way of writing keeps you drawn to the children's tale of woe.

"Grief, a type of sadness that most often occurs when you have lost someone you love, is a sneaky thing, because it can disappear for a long time, and then pop back up when you least expect it."
- The Carnivorous Carnival

Perseverance is one of the key themes featured in ASOUE. The Baudelaires are portrayed as being admirable for their vitality. The siblings coping with loss is an important feature as it allows the reader to develop an understanding of grief, or relate to characters suffering with despondency. In The Austere Academy Snicket observes that “Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.” Fictional characters are no exception to this rule. In a time where a young person may be feeling alone, being able to relate to someone has the capacity to be a great comfort. Throughout the series, Snicket seems to urge the reader to find courage in him or herself and in his or her friends and if not to challenge despondence then at least to take it with a grain of salt. It also looks at perseverance and bravery as playing key roles in the triumph over evil.

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
- The Slippery Slope

As I briefly touched upon in Daniel Handler on Childhood, one of the important lessons taught by ASOUE is the importance of continually asking questions, and the reality that not all of these can be answered. Though the series is extravagant and sometimes ridiculous, there are many core elements that bring it back to reality and provide a lesson without the almost offensive tidy moralising implemented in many YA novels. "For some stories, it's easy. The moral of The Three Bears, for instance, is 'Never break into someone else's house.' The moral of Snow White is 'Never eat apples.' The moral of World War I is 'Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand." (The Wide Window). While many of the critical plot points are given answers, Snicket explains that no story can be fully devoid of questions as every story is intertwined with numerous others and every character's history is shared in a great web of mysteries and unfortunate events that make up the world's legacy, making it impossible for anyone to know all the answers to every question. By leaving loose ends and questions unanswered Snicket provides a sort of comfort for young readers by reminding them that it's okay to be confused and bewildered by the world, because the world is a confusing and bewildering place. Though you may not think you're able to so easily slip into the shoes of three orphans stuck in the midst of a villainous plot, in the end everyone is able to relate to the feeling of being lost, confused and trying to find their place in the world.

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
- The Grim Grotto 

The mysterious organisation VFD is a main feature in the books. Exactly what VFD does is unclear, as its members go to great lengths to conceal all traces of their activities. However, it is strongly suggested that the main purpose of the organisation is firefighting, amongst many other humanitarian acts. There's also a great respect held for literature, and it is believed that people who read cannot be evil. In Daniel Handler on Childhood Handler mentioned that the question he is most often asked about the series is "Is [VFD] real? Is there really a secret society of literature?" to which he replies,"Yes, and you're in it."

VFD stands for humanitarianism and the importance of being well-read, and we're all members. However, it also stands as an acknowledgment that there are as many good people as bad people in the world. Though there are many observations of the distinction between good and evil, and how right will always come out on top ("Right, good temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” - The Reptile Room) as the series progresses it begins to display strong themes of moral relativism, as the Baudelaires become more confused during the course of the series about the difference between right and wrong, feeling they have done wicked things themselves and struggling with the question of whether the end justifies the means. Evil characters are shown to have sympathetic characteristics and often have led difficult lives. Similarly, good characters' flaws become major problems. Almost every major character in the books has lived a life as difficult as that of the Baudelaires, especially the villains. In The End Count Olaf, a past member of VFD, observes that he's "no worse than anyone else", and it is an unsettling moral lesson to think that, in some ways, he may be right.

These complex moral views along with a myriad of other themes drives ASOEU and has resulted in it being an exceptional piece of literature that has a lesson for all readers. It's a reminder of some of the realities of life, tied up in a bizarre tale about three orphans who've done nothing to deserve their fate but keep their chins up regardless.

For those who read last weeks entry, the answer is of course D. Life is a nightmare, so why not have one?
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