Last month, we ventured into the bleak world of adult dystopias, offering warning signs to help you identify and flee. I noted that venturing into these speculative territories is highly discouraged, and that if you do unwisely visit, you will find your outcome bleak. There is little to no hope in the dystopian worlds – the adult versions at least.
Photo © Ella Voorhis
However, if you’re a teenager…you might not only survive, but start the rebellion and beginnings of meaningful change to balance the world back to utopian ideals. The younger version (both in the history of the map and the marketing-designated suitable age group) shares the same characteristics as the adult version – the warning signs are the same, with some substitutions of government to overly rigid and defined school systems, and perhaps even more of an emphasis by the societies on the pressure to conform. Media is still manipulated, revisionist histories abound, the arts are trampled, individual freedom is limited, and rote meaningless lives abound.
So, if the warning signs and characteristics are the same, why are you so much more likely to survive a YA dystopia? WHY IS THERE HOPE IN YA? What tips might aid in your survival?
You’ll definitely want a native field guide when you venture into YA dystopias – so I enlisted the help of a junior field researcher and native tour guide for this column (Abby Voorhis) which looks at the top tips to thriving in a YA dystopian realm. Abby’s currently at work on her first novel and is a voracious reader of speculative fiction in all forms. And she’s a teenager, so with her help, we might escape the certain doom of dystopia.
YA dystopian worlds took significantly longer than their adult counterparts to start to appear on the map. The first example was Lois Lowry’s The Giver in 1993, which introduced “The Community”.
In it, Jonas is trapped in a failed utopia of “Sameness”, where emotional memories are removed to encourage conformity. He becomes the new Receiver of Memory and must tackle with the concepts of morality and the duality of a humanity allowed to make choices. The Giver won the Newberry Award in 1994.
YA dystopias really took over the map starting with the publication of The Hunger Games in 2008, followed rapidly by the rest of the trilogy (Catching Fire and Mockingjay). The Divergent universe plopped down on the map in 2011.
But all of these are at heart, science fiction dystopias. The Hunger Game’s continent of Panem is set in a potential future. Divergent is a post-apocalyptic world, as is the Maze Runner series (James Dasher, starting in 2009).
The junior field researcher reminded me I’d only been looking at those SF variants and made a very valid argument for the inclusion of some fantasy worlds as well, such as the Purgatory of the Angelbound Series (Christina Bauer, 2016) or the totalitarian school system prevalent in books all over the place, including the Alpha Girl Series or the “evil government/large marginalized lower class” (Aileen Erin, from 8/6/2018 FB chat) Shadow Ravens series (particular favorites of the native tour guide and junior field researcher) by Aileen Erin.
But you’re here for the tips, so without further ado…
Tips to Surviving a YA Dystopia – Compiled from a Native Guide
Don’t grow up!
If you’re an adult, you face two choices in the worlds of YA dystopia. You’re either good – which means you’ll die trying to help the protagonist, or you’re evil, in which case, congratulations, you might just have a starring role as the antagonist (also dead). You can be either President of Panem (Coin and Snow, dead) or Finnick (also dead). Basically, across the board, if you’re a grown-up, you’re dead.
Join a gang, or better yet, start one!
Unite to fight the power – the more diverse, the better in order to escape fear, alienation, and danger. Offer protection to those who need your help. Sometimes your group will be pre-sorted for you, such as in Divergent, so you’ll need to make allies across different cultures, ethnicities, and sexual identities, in order to optimize your best chances for survival in any autocratic dystopia.
Be yourself!
Don’t conform, celebrate your uniqueness and those around you. Find your “superpower” and use it for the benefit of your tribe. As Abby points out, “In Alpha Girl, the world around her sometimes outcasts her because of her ethnicity, and because she is a female. In the context of the story, she is also isolated because she is a “half-breed”, half werewolf, and half witch, which is considered a bad thing by certain characters in the text. In the Angelbound series the main character is shunned by the world around her for her personality and her gender, as well as her job. In the Matched series, the main character lives in a world which no one has individuality, and she is treated unkindly by her family and friends for choosing to defy that rule and be her own person.” (Abby Voorhis, via email 8/4/2018).
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