Young Adult Dystopian Fiction and Its Impact
How Anderson's Feed and Lowry's The Giver Affect Young Readers
Dec 16, 2008
With the massive amount of external stimuli children experience, it’s difficult for any child to learn, decide, and discover who they are.. Because of this, it is more important now than ever for children’s literature to depict protagonists who are not afraid to fight for what they believe in, even when—sometimes especially when—it goes against authority and society.
Two novels that challenge its readers to push the rules and accepted truths around them, sometimes prompting parents and authoritative figures to ban them, are M.T. Anderson’s Feed and Lois Lowry’s The Giver. Two prime examples of child (or young adult) protagonists who fight for what they know is right internally, although it goes against everything they’ve been taught externally, come from these novels.
Violet from Feed and Jonas from The Giver push the limits of the world surrounding them to fight for what they understand to be inherently right. Characters like these impact young readers who are figuring out their place in the world.
Dystopian Fiction's Growing Popularity and Message
Young adult dystopian literature is a newer genre first sparked by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in 1932. Since then, it's become more popular, each book pushing the limits further and challenging its readers to foresee a downfall of the world as we know it.
Although Feed and The Giver are both dystopian novels intended for young adult audiences, they are near opposite in execution. Feed is a world of consumption, technology, and indulgence; The Giver is a world of sameness, simplicity, and control. Both novels revolve around a character who, because of unique circumstances, understands the flaws of his or her world, and both of these characters choose to resist the authority of their societies.
M.T. Anderson's Feed
Feed portrays a futuristic society that in the beginning seems humorous and reminiscent of the cartoon, The Jetsons. Readers instantly feel this light tone with the book’s opening sentence, “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck” (3). This is a world of flying cars and instant information, a world of technology at its worst.
As the novel progresses, however, its tone darkens, and by the end of the novel, readers feel much different about the novel’s and their own world when the final sentence “Everything must go” (299-300) is repeated until it virtually disappears into the page.
Resisting the Feed: Violet's Rebellion
Violet is the hope and tragedy in Feed, although she is not the main character. She is set apart from her dystopian community because of her eccentric father who pursues knowledge, fighting reliance on the feed, though he does have a detached one.
Violet, like all her peers, has a feed in her brain, but she isn’t dependent on the feed like her peers because she received it at a later age, also allowing her to understand what life is without the feed. Because of her unique ability to think for herself without solely relying on the feed, she is able to develop her own set of morals that she frequently reassesses against her community’s standards of rapid consumerism.
She is able to actively resist the feed’s classifying abilities through unrelated purchases, thoughts, and viewings. Ironically, it is her ultimate downfall because her sporadic feed activities have left her without a clear label causing her feed to malfunction when it is corrupted by a hacker.
Lois Lowry's The Giver
The Giver depicts a society of sameness where everything is perfectly normal every day. Everybody is polite. Every family has a mother and a father. There is no hate or war. From outward appearance, it is the perfect community, but further into the novel it becomes apparent what the community is missing: love, color, and diversity.
We feel the impact even more of what is missing as we experience Jonas’ first memories of snow, sun, and sailing—all seen with his newly-acquired colors. The Giver’s tone is less dark than Feed’s because readers identify with Jonas’ realization of the community’s deficiencies and Jonas’ growing desires for change.
Readers journey through the pain and joy of the memories and weigh the benefits and limitations of Sameness, understanding Jonas’ need to reach Elsewhere.
Stranded in Sameness: Jonas' Escape
Jonas is set apart from his dystopian community when he is chosen to be the next receiver, the one who holds the memories of the past, who is entrusted the wisdom for the community’s dilemmas, who has the ability to see beyond.
Jonas is the one destined to be lonely and to understand what his life is lacking. Because of his unique position to understand and develop values about life, Jonas is able to fight against the community’s loss of sight and choice.
Message to Teenagers and Young Adults of Today
While both novels demonstrate the dangers of control and apathy in our modern world, Anderson and Lowry’s message is delivered through Violet and Jonas, who encourage young adult readers to discover their values and develop the courage necessary to defend their freedom.
Some adults worry that this message will send the wrong idea to teenagers who are already known for rebelling, but Anderson and Lowry, as well as all young adult dystopian writers, demonstrate the faith they have in modern youth to challenge society’s norms.
Today’s young adults might not feel chosen as Jonas is or may feel unintelligent like Titus in Feed, but we do not live a dystopia—yet. Although it is difficult with the bombardment of media, children still have the freedom and opportunities to understand themselves and how their views correlate with their society through art, religion, and common human experience.
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