Youth in Dystopia (DRAFT)

Christopher Lewis

Chapman University

May 21, 2014

Vadeboncoeur (2005) criticizes the age-old question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and explains that youth are always defined as being in the process of becoming an adult. But what happens if this question is no long applicable or even necessary? Dystopian novels remove this illusion of choice. In each of the novels I will address, all teenagers attend or participate in a ceremony whereby they transition from young adult to adult. The first series I will address is Scott Westerfield’s Uglies series, where youth undergo plastic surgery as their rite of passage. Maturation and growing up require endure body modifications to create same-ness and the perfectly pretty white race. Second, I will analyze Ally Condie’s Matched series, where social order to determined by sorters who decide vocation and spouses. All teenagers attend a ceremony where a person’s perfect match is determined by a computer program. Lastly, I will use Veronica Roth’s Divergent series to explore how the world is constructed by personality type. Youth choose to participate in factions that are determined by a psychological examination that detects a youth’s instinctual predilections when facing their fears. As readers begin to figure out the rules to this new society, they are challenged to make comparisons to their own world. We are forced to wonder whether or not, as educators, we reinforce stereotypical constructs of adolescence despite our interaction with seemingly critical texts.
In the last few years, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of dystopian novels marketed to young adults. The story always begins in media res, where some kind of travesty, disease, war, or alien invasion forced those in power to re-consider how to maintain order and control. The characters are already imbibed in a world where they are taught to function as members of society without question and often without memory of how things came to be. They know the rules of society, but the reader does not. Some form of a totalitarian government controls all aspects of life include political activity, economic structures, systems of education, vocational training, birthing procedures, and relationship status. People are divided into categories for the good of society. But because these novels are written for a young adult audience, one of the most significant characteristics is the way that youth experiences are defined and represented. The young hero or heroine never feels that they quite fit into or can’t seem to find their place in the rigid society. This uneasy feeling often leads to rebellion, violence, and an attempt at usurping those in power. But this rebellion, often framed as anti-adult, is more importantly a resistance to some aspect of youth identity that has been manipulated and controlled by the government. Most young adult dystopian novels function as “critical dystopias,” where the characters exist, usually unknowingly, in an oppressive society until they find out there is an alternative that exists – a eutopia outside their own world (Sargent, 2003). This encourages the characters, through the author, to develop a counter-narrative that challenges hegemonic structures that seem to be innate and necessary to maintain order. Their resistance is two-fold – first, they challenge the physical space and boundaries of their constructed world, and second, the youth also challenge aspects of their identity that have been constructed by adults. Analyzing dystopian fiction provides for discussions about ways that youth experience is treated as monolithic, and that under certain conditions all youth can be controlled. For educators, dystopian novels problematize aspects of youth identity that are treated as normative in schools and in society. The purpose of this paper to is to introduce three dystopian series that might help teachers consider the way youth identities are constructed by society.
The Dystopian Body In the first series, Uglies by Scott Westerfield (2005), youth’s bodies and body image are the primary targets of this dystopian world. Tally finds herself looking across the river from her town full of uglies to New Pretty Town where she knows she’ll be one day. In school she learned that, “Everyone judged everyone based on their appearance. People who were taller got better jobs, and people even voted for politicians just because they weren’t as ugly as everybody” (Westerfield, 2005, p. 43). Society had been torn about by wars between people because “people killed one another over stuff like having different skin color,” so Tally is taught that providing surgery normalizes everyone, makes everyone happy, and creates peace. In Tally’s world, which is a social experiment that operates in isolation from the rest of society, becoming pretty is a rite of passage whereby the government manipulates brain tissue to create beautiful and compliant citizens. The government implants a lesion into the brain tissue to alter behavior and motivation. Body Dysmorphia. Like the popularity of television shows that depict extreme body makeovers, some dystopian novels are addressing problems with an emphasis on body image in youth. This indicates one aspect of adolescence that often gets represented in popular culture – puberty. While the human body progresses through natural biological changes, characters in this novel experience a kind of forced body alteration, which says there is only way to look, act, and feel. After transitioning to being a Pretty, characters never experience the diversity of body types brought on by natural examples of puberty. When Tally first encounters magazines from the past, the narrator explain,
Tally’s eyes widened as Shay turned the pages, pointing and giggling. She’d never seen so many wildly different faces before. Mouths and eyes and noses of every imaginable shape, all combined insanely on people of every age. And the bodies. Some were grotesquely fat, or weirdly overmuscled, or uncomfortably thin, and almost all of them had wrong, ugly proportions. But instead of being ashamed of their deformities, the people were laughing and kissing and posing, as if all the pictures had been taken at some huge party. (Westerfield, 2005, p. 189)
Tally responds by asking, “Who are these freaks?” (p. 189). This situation occurs in the first novel, which exhibits the power education and socialization have had on the way people in New Pretty Town view the body. The primary characters in the novel are female, which adds another layer to the objectification. Westerfield allows his characters to dwell in their prejudice through most of the first novel, until the point when Tally fears her operation and ends up meeting a character named David who lives outside of New Pretty Town. He is part of the Rusties, a group of uglies that escaped the oppressive society. Tally’s disgust for uglies does not dissipate as quickly as readers would hope after she learns more about the operation and how the governments of New Pretty Towns all over the world are making body alterations as a form of social control. In our world where body modifications are easier to attain and media glorifies what it means to pretty or beautiful, readers might struggle to find the means to overcome such systems. Self-Mutilation. In additional to the government-imposed operations, a second issue that Westerfield includes in his novel is body dysmorphia. Some of the pretties engage in acts of rebellion as a way to express their carefree lifestyle. For example, a few characters get tattoos. But it is not the image of a tattoo that represents the rebellion and the freedom. Instead, it is the pain the characters endure that raises their awareness of life and heightens their senses. Tally’s best friend, Shay, finds herself feeling out of place, even in a world constructed on sameness. To enforce rules in New Pretty Town, the government created a class of Pretties called Specials, who have had additional operations to increase their physical strength, sensory awareness, and brain function. These Specials work for branch of the government that attempts to prevent the Rusties or characters who have escaped the society from infiltrating and overthrowing the system. But the Specials operate at such high levels of awareness; they often find themselves overwhelmed by their responsibilities. Shay leads a group of Specials called the Cutters, who practice ritual self-mutilation. The Specials use this ritual to help clear their minds and overcome the effects of the lesions implanted when they were Pretties. The images of a group of young Cutters hiding in the forest under the moonlight passing around a knife is quite jarring at the beginning of the third novel titled Specials (Westerfield, 2006). Westerfield broaches a subject, like cutting, by connecting it to the effects of New Pretty Town’s extreme control over both mind and body. These characters explain that they can truly feel what it means to be alive and aware in the presence of pain. They get a heightened sense of exhilaration and a clearer mind that counters the negative effects of the lesions. For naïve readers, this might be misleading if they come to the conclusion that one’s resistance to social control is partly accomplished by harming oneself to feel alive instead of anesthetized. Instead, the group of Cutters later figures out how to counter the effects of their additional operations that made them Specials. At some points in the novels, it becomes quite confusing to separate certain groups of characters from others as a result of multiple operations. However, Westerfield through the dystopian genre, points to the negative effects that operation enhanced body image and self-image can have on youths and raises essential questions about the representations of being pretty that are glorified in society.
The Dystopian Personality Perhaps one of the most popular series in the last few years, assisted by the box-office success of the film version, is Veronica Roth’s Divergent. Over the course of this trilogy, it is explained that Tris seems like a normal youth living in Chicago hundreds of years in the future. This newly designed city is run by five factions, which formed to systematically divide people into appropriate groups based on a personality aptitude test administered at sixteen years old. Jeanine Matthews, leader of Erudite, explains this history to Tris’ graduating class,
Decades ago our ancestors realized that it is not political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality – of humankind’s inclination toward evil, in whatsoever form it is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray…Working together, these five factions have lived in peace for many years, each contributing to a different sector of society. Abnegation has fulfilled our need for selfless leaders in the government; Candor has provided us with trustworthy and sound leaders in law; Erudite has supplied us with intelligent teachers and researchers; Amity has given us understanding counselors and caretakers; and Dauntless provides us with protection from threats both within and without. But the read of each faction is not limited to these areas. We give one another far more than can be adequately summarized. In our factions, we find meaning, we find purpose we find life. (Roth, 2012, p. 42 - 43)
This dystopian series also employs similar genre characteristics of science, medicine, and technology to maintain control. What Tris learns toward the end of the series is that her entire world was just a social experiment being conducted by scientists living just outside the city walls. This city, like several others, were built to experiment with political and social conditions that would allow for humans to live peacefully and avoid future destruction through war and famine. One characteristic of dystopian novels is the dissatisfaction of the heroes and heroines within such strict societies. For Tris, she explained that she questioned the five factions and did not know where she belonged. After her test, she was found to be Divergent, a special class of citizen that can’t be separated into factions. It is the Divergent that threaten the faction system. This particular dystopian novel uses aptitude and group identity to frame the youth experience. Characters are forced to choose on identity over another, or fear being excommunicated.
Aptitude Tests. Before the Choosing Day, all sixteen year-olds endure a test that uses psychotropic drugs to test the patient in certain situations. These metal exercised force the patient to make a choice in specific stressful situations such as being attacked by a dog while given the option of grabbing a piece of cheese or a knife and being on a bus where a man asks if you recognize the picture of a murderer in the newspaper – you do, but you have to decide whether or not to tell. Tris’ results were inconclusive and she showed aptitude for three different factions, which is thing the system is attempting to identify. Tris has to go home and decide which faction she will join at the Choosing Ceremony. This one test has the ability to force a teenager to choose their lot in life.
Roth keenly combines elements of contemporary society – the prevalence of testing and forcing teenagers to decide what they want to be when they grow up – through the manipulation of science, technology, and standardized tests. Youth are limited in their choices – the faction not only acts as a label of personality, but it also determines profession, economic class, life expectancy, and social position. Identities, as explained by Jeanine Matthews, are limited and defined narrowly in order to create justice and peace. And yet, Tris does not feel that she belongs in any of the factions or that she can make such an important decisions on a whim. This process is very similar to the way students in today’s school system take exams that help determining their aptitude. One’s test scores often limits possibility of choice in the future. Those that control the test, thus, control the future of youth.
This series has multiple layers that exhibit the notion of identity being socially constructed. The factions were determined by personality characteristic and once a person chooses a group, they are forced to live out their lives in that community. An external layer is the fact that this world, which seems like utopia to the inhabitants, exists within a dystopian world of scientists and politicians that built an experimental community. One of scientists explained that experimental communities were set up around the country to test genetic modifications that attempted to remove the violence inherent in humans. Until Tris travels outside the walls, she assumes that the factions were the best option for humanity. Once she escapes, her perspective changes and she begins to question whether or not her genes or the social environment determined her choices. What might this mean for young adult readers as they question their life paths? Are they determined by social constructions of identity or are they determined by our genetic predispositions? Tris commits the ultimate heroic act at the end of the series as she goes back to her home in order to free the people from their oppression. Her rebellion against authority represents the symbolic resistance of youth to challenge adultist definitions of identity and control.
The Dystopian Dating Game The last series again utilizes a common plot element where the main characters believe they live in a utopian world, when in reality there is more going on the other side of the city walls. In this case, however, there are not physical walls that divide people. Instead, there is an underground world of trading secrets, a plague threatening to destroy everyone, and a battle between the Society (those in political power) and the Rising (the resistance movement). But against a backdrop that takes the characters from perfectly constructed and clean suburban communities, to mountainous forests, and empty deserts, Cassia is left with an important decisions – does she choose to marry the boy chosen for her by Society’s computer program or does she continue to fall for the boy she loves and should not marry. Cassia beings to resist Society’s and the Officials control over love, work, and death. Allie Condie’s (2010) Matched series presents a world where adolescence ends with the government decides who one marries, where one works, and when one dies. Soul Mates. Today’s youth are inundated with technological advancements that make communication and interaction less and less formal. Once a picture or video goes viral, it becomes the topic of conversation for at least the next day. But in a world where technology allows people to interface with one another through digital media, relationships are based on interests and “likes” rather than interpersonal compatibility. Cassia attends the Matching Ceremony not knowing if her match was her best friend or a stranger in some other town. Computer programmers, called Sorters, use various data sources to determine the best match. The computer shows two images – one boy and one girl – who are matched, but before marriage they get to go on a few supervised dates. Society in Cassia’s world determined that the best society was one where matches were determined by compatibility and productivity data. The primary conflict of the novel begins when Cassia is matched with Ky, an Aberration in Society who is unable to be matched. The forbidden love between Cassia and Ky is enforced by Society’s control of group identity. Ky was born in an Outer Province where he learned to read and write and where his parents were killed. After coming to Society, he was labeled an Aberration and could not have full access to Society’s opportunities – including love and marriage. Anomolies that live in secluded villages in the Outer Provinces after escaping the control of Society murdered Ky’s parents. Because of Society’s decision to label people as being either accepted or being denounced, Cassia is left with a situation all too familiar with today’s youth. Some youth might find themselves at odds with family, community, or even school because of the people they love. Notions of racism and homophobia rear their head in beliefs about inter-racial dating or same-sex relationships. And while both of these issues are starting to be accepted from a policy perspective, de facto racism and homophobia still exists under environmental conditions and through beliefs held by those in power – adults, parents, or educators. Love triangles occur in a number of young adult novels because they symbolize the conflict youth experience in exploring love and sexuality. However, there are two ways these love triangles might be framed. First, youth are experiencing biological and psychological changes during puberty that indicate their inability to make sound decisions about love, sex, and relationships. In this case, adults explain that these trysts are just a stage and that they will pass eventually. Often, in young adult novels, the main character is interested in one person parents might approve of and one person that is definitely not approved. This adds a layer of rebellion to dating. The love a young character feels is delegitimized by adults and is labeled as just a stage. Alternatively, this adultist perspective about love triangles can be simultaneously problematized. A subtext that should be considered is the reason an adult would discourage particular kinds of love and sexuality. It is not that dating is merely a stage of adolescence, but the delegitimizing acts as a way reinforcing normativity. While youth might experiment, by telling them it is just an “experiment,” there is the belief that youth will eventually abide by social norms and the status quo. Resistance and rebellion are merely steps towards accepting what the dominant group approves. Love triangles, then, function as a plot point that help youth question reasons some kinds of love and sexuality are allowed and some are not. A point that deserves more consideration, but not for this essay’s purpose, is that way that heterosexuality is given dominance. The dystopian world in Matched (Condie, 2010) makes government control of marriage seem rash and inconceivable. However, for LGBTQ people in the United States, this is a stark reality. It is not so dystopian for all.
Conclusion
As an adult reader, I am often left wondering if I have lost my rebelliousness because after succumbing to the adult world? Is there hope at the end of dystopian novels in that our world will not become these extremes because youth readers see something different than adults? And how do adult authors continue to maintain a sense of control over the way youth are defined in society? These three dystopian series do have similarities in plot structures, worlds built within worlds, and constructed identities. The youth experience is framed by an oppressive society that attempts to remove resistance by any means necessary. In Uglies, this was through body modification and brain surgery; in Divergent, this was through aptitude tests and factions; and in Matched, it was through computer sorting and suppression of artistry. These texts offer youth an interpretation of the political and social world that has been constructed to the most terrifying extremes while still balancing glimmers of hope in the end that there is a chance our world will not end up this way. And yet reading these novels requires two lenses. First, we can consider them as critical dystopias that are offering critiques of the world in which we live. And second, we must consider what aspects of social construction are silently reinforced. The government is blamed for extreme control as adults in power determine appropriate ways of organizing society to create peaceful and just conditions. Youth are treated as subjects within these societies who must learn to adjust to political, economic, and social conditions. But each of these novels function to reinforce capitalism and heterosexuality – two contemporary institutions that continue to maintain difference and define normativity. As educators read dystopian novels written for young adults, it is imperative to read through both of these lenses. Youth grow up within systems where their identities and experiences are viewed through the eyes of adults. Dystopian novels raise important questions about the construction of adolescence while simultaneously demanding a careful reading to determine how they are constructed.

References
Condie, A. (2010). Matched. New York, NY: Speak.
Roth, V. (2012). Divergent. New York, NY: Katherine Tegan.
Sargent, L. T. (2003). The problem of the “flawed utopia”: A note on the costs of eutopia. In Baccolini, R., & Moylan, T. (Eds.). (2003). Dark horizons: Science fiction and the dystopian imagination (pp. 225-231). New York, NY: Routledge.
Vadeboncoeur, J. A. (2005). Naturalised, restricted, packaged, and sold: Reinfying the fictions of “adolescent” and “adolescence.” In Vadeboncoreur, J. A., & Stevens, L. P. (Eds.), Re/constructing “the adolescent”: Sign, symbol, and body (pp. 1-24). New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Westerfield, S. (2005). Uglies. New York, NY: Simon Pulse.
Westerfield, S. (2006). Specials. New York, NY: Simon Pulse.