Burned, Burning, or About to Burn -

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Burned, Burning, or About to Burn: Mapping Trauma Through Young Adult Dystopia

Novels

Victoria Co

May !"th

, #$!%


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Whoever inquires about our childhood wants to know something about our soul. If thequestion is not just a rhetorical one and the questioner has the patience to listen, he willcome to realize that we love with horror and hate with an inexplicable love whatever

caused us our greatest pain and difficult.!

- Erika Burkart

"#erfect #$%& 'ab (ngel" is how I describe ever character in $he )unger *amesfranchise except for *ale, who I refer to as "%ex+ed Whin %tatist -ittle %hit."!

- Rikki Reynolds

In recent years, dystopian fictions have achieved unparalleled levels of success among

young adult audiences. This trend has provoked a flurry of examination and speculation from

publishers in the field, ho marvel that !These are books that kids talk about among

themselves" #$pringin%. The reaction to this boom in popularity of &oung 'dult (ystopian

)iction #or &'()% has come in many forms, but in academic discussions mostly presents as

bafflement or skepticism concerning the roots of reader engagement. *redominant readings of

this body of ork cite a tendency toard escapism #$tiefvater%, vicarious empoerment

#Belanger%, or a sort of comforting voyeurism concerning distant future horrors #)eiel, +td. in

$pringin%. 'll of these approaches reveal more about their adult authors, ho tend to approach

this poerful trend ith a degree of anthropological patroniation, than about the internal

mechanisms of the books and the readers ho consume them. Indeed, it is perhaps precisely

this method of approach that reveals the extent to hich these topical interpretations fail. ne

cannot begin to approach a system that they are already fully inside of. Through a survey of


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several recent &'() novels, I hope to criti+ue these readings and provide an alternative

perspective on these books as texts and as a space for young adult engagement/and to expose

the ays in hich their brutal topographies of trauma and ab0ection are transformed and

revealed as crucial, necessary, and intimately connected to survival for both characters and

readers.

(ystopia has comprised a significant segment of &' books since the emergence of the

field, and marks a functional rubric for tracing generational fears1 e ere evidently obsessed

ith nuclear fallout in the 23s, fundamentalism and technology in the 43s, media saturation and

environmental crisis after the millennial turn. &' as a genre/acknoledging the limits of the

term #5art 6%/ bears a long history of didacticism, from the character lessons of Tom Bron

and co. to the vast saths of !problem novels" that packed school library shelves in the 7483s

#9c:avock%. It is tempting to place &'() into this tradition, given its focus on social and

ethical problems. ;oever, the focus of these books can hardly be called instructional in a

traditional sense. Examining a book like $he glies, in hich everyone undergoes radical

cosmetic surgery before entering adult society, as simply a cautionary tale about the dangers of

a meritocracy based on physical appearance and surveillance culture undermines the extent to

hich its readership is already intimately ac+uainted ith these concepts. $cott


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author >ames *atterson similarly vies the genre as a sort of messed-up sandbox for pampered

naifs, saying !They think theyre born ith all these freedoms, and the right to an i*od, and I

ant them to think about the notion that that isnt a right." #+td. in $pringin%. 's a reader, I find

that I do not need this sort of reminder. Rather, I ould assert that in any assessment of

familiarity ith omnipresent authority, control and discipline, body horror, identity dissolution,

poverty and violence, I am the ?atniss to *attersons Effie Trinket #as e kno, mahogany is

not a right either%.

This, then, is the locus of of my conflict ith expert assessments of &'() aims/from

both a scholarly and a personal perspective. I dont pity ?atniss@ I relate to her and learn from

her and #yes% am in love ith her. The appeal that I and many other readers derive from

folloing her story, or from itnessing Tally fight the $urge that transforms her from an Agly

to a *retty, comes from seeing ourselves and our struggles reflected in these texts, but nely

revealed in a context here our greatest anxieties are made manifest and validated. )or young

adult readers living through comparable struggles, the trappings of futurism provide merely the

obscuring lens necessary to prevent immediate traumatic flashbacks. 's author ynda Barry

says, !


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violence or neglect. 's $haron $tringer says, !Anless e are describing the most extreme cases

of disturbance, e encounter a gray area as e try to avoid exaggerating or minimiing the

problems of young people. $triking a realistic balance beteen underestimating and

overestimating adolescents troubles is difficult" #24%. *art of my certainty here is anecdotal,

clearly. *erhaps I have only become ac+uainted ith traumatied readers by chance. ;oever,

I have spent enough time scrolling through endless critical dissemination of the final ords of

/ockingjaon the blogs of teenage girls to doubt the significance of this frameork among its

most impassioned consumers. The passage I am referencing reads as follos1

...I kno this ould have happened anyay. That hat I need to survive is not

:aleCs fire, kindled ith rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself.


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not really."


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In the uni+ue space of the dystopian future, e move both under vast constraint and into

vast possibility. The lockstep system of totalitarian control that contains our heroes also

provides them endless motivation for resistance. The protagonists of these books are innately

prone to rebellion/and often uni+uely selected for victimiation/by virtue of character,

ability, or circumstance of birth. ?atniss and 5onnor are both chosen for a sacrificial ritual that

defines their society, and refuse to go +uietly to the slaughter #5ollins, $husterman%. Tally and

Todd are structurally inducted into systems they gro to despise, and must find ays to resist

even as they become complicit in enacting their on horrors #onas and

eora carry poerful prophetic gifts that drive them out of their community, that cause them

terrible pain #ory, Butler%. )inn has a similar agoniing gift, and the orld-sied sentient

prison he lives in hispers to him, saying !&ou are so special. In all the entrails and veins of

my body, in all the millions of beings I enclose, there is no one +uite like you" #)isher F4%.

Each one is forced to invent a ay out of unthinkable problems, and does so, and thus is

marked as orth folloing #as book sub0ect or revolutionary figurehead%. Each embodies the

impossible, in ays that are both triumphant and devastating1 !'lthough their poers may

make them vulnerable, the characters also delight in them and use them to their on benefit."

#strey HF%.


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their respective fights%, but the radiant triumph of these books is/as alays, ith good &'/

their commitment to emotional accuracy. &'() intimately examines the psychic repercussions

of trauma and control, both for the individual and the society that surrounds them1 Tributes in

the ;unger :ames are reaped from the ages of telve to eighteen explicitly as a reminder of

each districts eakness. In $he glieseveryone undergoes extreme plastic surgery at age

sixteen to erase their imperfect bodies, and this subdues far more than it radicalies the

!Aglies" that remain. Every human that Todd and iola trust is revealed as corrupt or helpless.


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about. &'() novels function as such poerful outlets and vectors because they dont stop ith

the triumph of fighting hatever it is that is crushing our hero #if ere lucky, e get triumph

for five minutes, three-+uarters of the ay through%. The text exists to probe the gristle of hat

is left of a body hen it is forced to do terrible things and live through them. They do not shy

aay from the fact that these things ruin you, and are nonetheless central to your character and

your survival. *eeta and ?atniss are thevictorsof the hunger games, and they are both plagued

ith endless nightmare flashbacks, intrusions, blurred boundaries, scars and severed limbs.

Even hile standing on stage, bathed in golden light, they are hair-trigger terrified. Even

afterard, even outside the arena, they still ake up screaming. If these are my role models, it

is not because they respond better than I do, even ith their superhuman reflexes and hands

that can dra the future. I look to them because e respond in the same ays.

(ystopia novels have a uni+ue relationship to the past, as some catastrophic event must

exist to explain such vast societal transformation/often a civil or orldide ar, a natural

disaster, or the release of a terrible plague. Regardless of the source, the location of a single

point that divides a history into a distinctly demarcated before and after also identifies a place

of departure for the narrative. Ander the governmental regime that dictates the ;unger :ames,

the only depiction of !the (ark (ays" comes in the form of mandatory propaganda vieings.

'ny mention of the Before Time is called !forbidden talk" in eoras country #Butler 73%.

>onass cohort has no idea that animals ere ever anything but imaginary, as their communal

archive does not include a time hen they existed. 'fter their re+uisite disillusionment, our

heroes often develop an obsession ith recalling hat happened before the moment of change,

of reaching to reconstruct a history. This is complicated by the purposeful erasure of reminders

of the past, of poerful propaganda machines that misrepresent hat occurred, or even of


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outright refusal to acknoledge that things have ever been different. 5athy 5aruth identifies

this as a fundamental aspect of grappling ith traumatic events1

...


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challenge to the singular nature of a self, it is also entirely a text of trauma. 'drienne ?erter

seies upon this reading, saying the 5haos onas is able to receive the :ivers

accumulated memories, skin-to-skin #ory D4%@ or the ay that tracker-0acker poison turns

*eetas on thoughts into devices of torture #/ockingja7D4%. 's $ara 'hmed says !*ain

involves the violation or transgression of the border beteen inside and outside, and it is

through this transgression that I feel the border in the first place" #D%.

Even as metaphysical borders are ruptured or dissolved, their physical counterparts are

reified to totalitarian ends. In these nightmare futures, political and social exclusion reaches

ne heights in the form of endless alled compounds. eora is locked inside illage H@ (istrict

7 is surrounded ith electrified ire@ the alls of )inns prison are so massive and absolute

that !outside" is rumored to not exist. &et despite poerful efforts to control them, there is still

a remnant capable of breaching these boundaries as ell@ ho can cross over, come out, or

avoid enclosure entirely. Even the most oppressive systems e encounter can not entirely erase

the imaginary possibility of an outside orld, even if, like illage H, they populate it ith

monstrous creatures and asting disease #Butler 68%. ' band of rebellious Aglies form the

$moke, a primitavist camp that orks to preserve humanitys roots and undermine the

shalloness of *retty society. 5onnor stumbles his ay into a massive underground netork of

rebels, and is flon to a haven in the desert for children fated to be Anound. These pockets of


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emergent or untouched resistance provide their on kind of hope for those still ithin/either

that some place exists unruined, or recovery is possible. ;oever, our heroes no sooner

manage to reach these places then they are revealed as tenuous, or as treacherous as the place

they escape. Betrayal is a constant threat, and it knos no boundaries of inside or out.

Even after she has lived through countless horrors, been half-killed a doen times over@

hen ?atniss is at last rescued by rebel insurgents they immediately thrust her in the middle of

a treacherous political struggle. The same factors that distinguish our protagonists as heroic

survivors mark them as scapegoats, as forces from all sides seek to exploit or destroy their

gifts. They act ith e+ual motivation to fight their oppressors and protect their community, but

both drives extract a terrible cost1 !the ell-being of the collective comes at a price, a toll

hich is paid by an adolescent, not an adult" #;int F8%. >onas gradually comes to accept that

this is his role, to bear his communitys memory and pain so that they dont have to. ?atnisss

realiation is even bleaker1

's she said, your primary ob0ective, to unite the districts, has succeeded, Boggsreminds me. These current propos could be done ithout you. ThereCs only one lastthing you could do to add fire to the rebellion.

(ie, I say +uietly.

&es. :ive us a martyr to fight for #/ockingja74%.

'll our heroes abilities to imagine and fight for alternative futures cannot ensure their on.

Indeed, a change in societal conditions can often come about only at their expense1 !'dolescent

heroes and heroines must take matters into their on hands...They are the only ones ho can

act" #;int 83%. 'nd it follos that because they can, they must. They are the only ones ho

are strong enough, capable enough, kno the secrets to tear don the alls. 'nd the source of

this poer, the reason for this distinguishing strength, is because they have been given more

reasons to be angry than anyone else.


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The fullest extent of dystopian disciplinary systems are employed to control our

singularly resistant heroes/indeed, many exist solely for their sake. The !selective memory"

of >onass village !creates a sense of numbed peace for those ho Mfit in,C for those hose

profile is consistent ith the norm" #ea F4%, and thus only >onas feels the provocation to flee

it. )or everyone else, the fences and cameras are superfluous.


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us a chance to see precisely hat this interiority sounds like. Todds textual voice is tinged ith

a constant undercurrent of shame, as he punctuates any account of personal eakness ith

aggressive parentheticals1

...ICm so hacked off, still so raging ith anger and hate #and fear, yes, fear, shut up% that

I donCt even look round to see if 'aron heard my Goise. I donCt look round. I donCt look

round #Gess D%.

...!


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a tithe. ;is companions accept this status as an honor, and encourage each other of their

miraculous and imminently divisible bodies1 !


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Each of them is caught and held in the tension beteen the imperative to preserve a history and

the impossibility of remembering/or the impossibility of forgetting. 'gain, the trauma of

these orlds creates a liminal space of contiguous contradiction. 'gain, the bodies of our

survivors remain marked and contain traces of their orst nightmares inextricably inside them.

;o, then, can anything change in these orlds= udith Butler extensively explains, the aftermath of even the

most vicious histories can be a space to reconstruct1

JiolenceK delineates a physical vulnerability from hich e cannot slip aay, hich

e cannot finally resolve in the name of the sub0ect, but hich can provide a ay to

understand that none of us is fully bounded, utterly separate, but, rather, e are in ourskins, given over, in each otherCs hands, at each otherCs mercy" #737%.

In the epilogue to/ockingjae see this in practice, as ?atness and *eeta ork to rebuild a

future together, even if !on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in anything

because ICm afraid it could be taken aay"#26%. 'lthough they are both still utterly devastated

by hat they have shared, they choose to have children together1 !children, ho donCt kno

they play on a graveyard" #2H%. This book as called the most brutal and least satisfactory of

the trilogy #?ate%, but perhaps this is simply the nature of conclusions. The message that

5ollins hammers home ith this epilogue is that any triumph, any survival, any healing comes

not only as a result of our heroes actions, but directly at their expense and through their pain.

They are sacrificed, heart and soul, in order for catharsis to be possible. The utopic promised

land is ithheld from them because of the nightmare they carry inside, a ound too deep to

heal/indeed, the ound becomes them and testifies to hat they have endured. But here, at


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the end, e are left ith a promise that this pain can be good for something. ur heroes catch

bullets and their children are spared. 'nd memory, too, remains both damaging and useful1


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Bibliography

'hmed, $arah. $he 4ultural #olitics of motion. ondon1 Routledge, 336. *rint.

'lexander, >efferey. !Toard a Theory of 5ultural Trauma." 4ultural $rauma and 4ollectiveIdentit. Berkely1 Aniversity of 5alifornia *ress, 336. 7-H3. *rint.

Barry, ynda. 233 &emons. $eattle1 $as+uatch Books, 33F. *rint.

What It Is. 9ontreal1 (ran and Nuarterly, 332. *rint.

Belanger, 'shley. LThe &oung 'dult it (ystopian Timeline.L/etro $imes. F $ept, 37.


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:ray, Emma. !The ;unger :ames1 ennifer arences ?atniss Is ' ittle Too ikeable."

$he )uffington #ost. H 9arch 37. . !The Effects of *sychological Trauma on 5hildren and 'dolescents"

;ermont (genc of )uman %ervices. H3 >une 33F.


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#336%1 6D-8D. *rint.

$husterman, Geal. nwind. Ge &ork1 $imon and $chuster, 33D. *rint.

$polsky, Ellen. L(arin and (errida1 5ognitive iterary Theory 's a $pecies of *ost-

$tructuralismL#oetics $odaH.7 #33%1 6H-8. *rint.

$pringen, ?aren. !'pocalypse Go1 Teens Turn to (ystopian Govels."#ublishers Weekl.

FD.D #373%1 7. *rint.

$tiefvater, 9aggie. L*ure Escapsim.L0ew 9ork $imes.3 (ec. 377.

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