Jay Parini, author of “The Passages of H.M.,” stated that dystopian fiction is a method for young readers to relieve themselves of the pressures set by our society. He wrote that often young adults and teenagers feel as though they are caged by our society and forced to test themselves using methods that often leave them humiliated and often leave them with various levels of anxiety. He goes on to say that the dystopian novels often parallel the way the young readers feel. For example, in “The Hunger Games” novels, children are forced to fight and kill each other just to survive. Teenagers and young adults often feel this way, in a metaphorical sense. Personally, I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. When I was younger, I felt the need to demoralize kids I felt were beneath me, more than likely landing on someone’s shit list at some point. I’ve also been on the receiving end of this treatment, although not often as I had learned how to not stand out enough. “The Giver” is another example of a dystopian novel that kids can relate to. In that novel, everyone is forced to be uniform. This is similar to the way that our society has a tendency to try and make us all act the same when it was never meant for us to be the same or have the exact same outlook.
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Memorable Book
I grew up on a lot of books. My family believed that reading a ton of books would make me super smart or something. Unfortunately, I don’t even remember reading half of them. Short-term memory sucks. So I got a little nervous when this assignment was given because there was no way I was going to remember enough of the first book I read to write a paper. I don’t even remember what the name of it is, only that it was like a story about Christmas and it showed the same picture of Santa Claus on his sleigh on about 5 pages in different colors. The earliest book I can recall at least the title of was one of those little My First Bibles, I think. Even then I only remember a yellow plastic cover, cardboard pages, and the stories of Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel. That’s pretty much it. Thankfully, we’re allowed can talk about a memorable book from later in life. For me, that is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The entire series is amazing but this one stood out the most for me. The first thing is that it was the final book in the series and I remember being super excited to read it. If I remember correctly, I only had to mention it once since my family knew from past experiences that I was going to bug them till they bought it. The second thing that made this book so memorable was the deaths. The series is no stranger to death and I still remember all of the other deaths vividly, but the deaths in this one were so devastating. I mean Hedwig was the very first death! The little bird that the entire fandom had come to love bit the dust because she protected Harry! I was not prepared for that when I first read the book. Then the deaths kept coming. Moody dies not long after Hedwig, then the Minister of Magic (whom I may add, I at least hadn’t heard of until the book just before this one) is killed at a wedding, and even Dobby is murdered by my favorite villain, Bellatrix! That was disturbing to say the least. When I learned Fred (or was it George), Tonks, and Lupin died as well I had to put the book down for weeks. That’s when I realized even my favorite characters could be killed in stories, which makes me wonder why I’m still so upset about the last Game of Thrones episode.
Adrian Cherry