Name: Alexa Valaree P. Salugsugan

Course Title: CL 122: Critical Approaches to Literature (TTh)

Section: THQ

Rising as Victors, Living as Subjects: The Adolescent Subject and Ideology in the Young Adult Dystopian Novel

The 21st century saw a remarkable advent of narratives “romancing the end”1 of humanity, in

particular America and the Western world. Of course, narratives like these have always existed before the

new millennium, but their proliferation in popular culture following one devastating event after another—such

as, according to Mary Manijikian in Apocalypse and Post-Politics: The Romance of the End, a terrorist

attack on American soil, a catastrophic natural disaster that crippled large portions of the country, and an

economic recession that affected Americans coming from all walks of life2—carries heavy implications about

the concerns and anxieties of its audience. “To most Americans who are used to living in what was

ostensibly the safest country in the world, these threats seem to defy logic and comprehension”3, and this

renewed fascination with the “end” reflects a certain cynicism with the direction that humanity—and thus

known civilization and the Earth—is going.

Or could it really be called cynicism when these “end” narratives always conclude hopefully as if

calling its audiences to waking? “We are living in very troubled times,”4 and according to Jack Zipes, now

more than ever, there is a need for utopian and dystopian fiction—a need for texts that explore the imagined

futures of the world and humanity, texts that will serve as warnings to the Earth’s inheritors; for their

forebears from the older generation have already begun to—and eventually may—destroy the world that

they have been building for so long. It will be up to the Earth’s inheritors’ hands to rise and rebuild.

Before the question of who these inheritors are exactly is asked, it is crucial to first unpack even

more the reason why there is a sudden reemergence of this fascination with “end” narratives. The

correlation of their explosion in the literary landscape with events like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina seem too

simplistic and linear an argument to make; for what then should be made of end narratives that were not

exactly reactionary

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1. Phrase based on the title of Mary Manijikian’s book; Mary Manijikian, Apocalypse and Post-Politics: The Romance of the End (Lanham: Lexington Boks, 2008).

2. Manijikian, introduction, 1.3. Ibid.4. Jack Zipes, foreword to Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults, edited by

Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry (New York: Routledge, 2003). ix.

to history—such as the first epic of human civilization, the Sumerians’ Epic of Gilgamesh? What then

explains the end narratives manifesting in different centuries and among different cultures, which may be

read as reactionary but ultimately show that the fascination with the end is a recurring universal thought that

crops up every few years? Manijikian speculates that end narratives “have always been uniquely beguiling

to those writers and readers who worked within the context of power”5; and in today’s world where America

sits at the top of global power, it is no surprise that this type of narrative became profuse in its mainstream

media and pop culture. That this question of “safety” in powerful, “exceptional” nations translates as an

interest in the end narrative already implies a collective assumption among its people that they are the

pinnacle of security because they are in the position of power. Take a modicum of that safety away from

them and they begin to question the very power of their state to maintain their country. Manijikian goes on to

say that the apocalyptic or utopian (or dystopian) novel acts as a critique of powerful nations’ ideal of

“exceptionalism”, by stating that:

“[…][I]n both positing the existence of other “exceptional” nations (as one does in a utopian novel), and in

positing the erasure of one’s own exceptional nation (as one does in an apocalyptic novel), the writer can

raise questions about how and why the state’s identity has come to be seen as both immutable and

unquestionable in the first place. The novel can thus serve as a means for exploring the narrative of the

nation’s identity, as well as for raising ethical, moral, and political questions about it.”6

This pessimistic voyeurism at the imminently adverse future is then not a simple translation of

cynicism towards the end of the known world. Basing on Manijikian’s argument about the apocalyptic and

utopian novel, it can be seen that the ideology of these exceptional nations is also effectively coursed

through the text, not just in literature but also in other media such as film and television. This is a more

nuanced view of looking at the manifestation and proliferation of end narratives in mainstream media and

popular culture. The next step to take now is to finally ask who the subject of these narratives are. In

questioning who specifically the subject of ideology becomes, one may speculate that the answer may be

found by looking at where most dystopian fiction, that Zipes has adamantly called a “need”, of the last six

years7 ultimately found its niche. These novels of the imagined future can be seen dominating the young

adult or “YA” sections of bookstores all around the world. The more interesting questions to ask perhaps

are, firstly, why this trend in YA literature came to be and, along with that, what the manifestation of this

trend in the YA genre ultimately implies.

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5. Manijikian, introduction to Apocalypse. 7.6. Ibid., 8.7. Joseph Campbell, “’The Treatment for Stirrings’: Dystopian Literature for Adolescents,” in Blast,

Corrupt, Dismantle, Erase: Contemporary North American Dystopian Literature, eds. Brett Josef Grubisic, Gisèle M. Baxter, and Tara Lee (Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2014). 165.

That dystopian fiction has emerged over the past few years as a subgenre in the wide array of

young adult fiction—a genre that in itself has admittedly grown with unparalleled proportions—could be an

implication of these texts, and consequently the values and themes they instill, being marketed towards the

youth. The young adult genre, though still struggling for legitimacy within the literary canon in spite of its

immense proliferation8, remains one of the most popular genres of literature among the masses today.

These texts ultimately mark the rise of the adolescent reader, constructing the young adult as a subject.

Catherine Belsey, in her essay “Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text”, takes off from

Louis Althusser’s statement of literature being a part of the ideological state apparatuses “which contribute

to the process of reproducing the relations of production, the social relationships which are the necessary

conditions for the existence and perpetuation of the capitalist mode of production,”9 in saying that literature is

not merely representative of the imaginary versions of real social relationships constituting ideology. Belsey

argues that on a larger scale, the whole genre of realist fiction, which has been the dominant genre since

the 19th century, “interpellates” the reader by directly addressing him or her, “offering the reader as the

position from which the text is most ‘obviously’ intelligible.”10 Thus, the reader is made both a subject in and

of ideology. The proliferation of young adult literature would ultimately mean that adolescents are now being

made primary subjects through which the dominant ideology of the State may be interpellated. This is

significant in that this tacit consensus exists among readers and writers now to give the young adult the

position of intelligibility; thus, while she or he now has the ability to call her or himself an “I” claiming their

place in the world, the young adult is subsequently being claimed by the world through ideology.

In the YA dystopia, the role of protagonist or the “I” is given, as aforementioned, to the adolescent

subject. Into the youth’s hands are thrust the traditionally ‘adult’ values of active political involvement,

militancy, and leadership. That these are valorized in the youth implies that amidst all the anxieties of

contemporary society, there is yet hope to be found in the youth who emerges from the rubble of the

crumbling and corrupted social order—and just in time to stop it from leading to the ultimate ruin of a once-

powerful, once-morally intact nation. Always, the adolescent subject becomes the face of the revolution,

ultimately rises as a victor, and successfully emancipates society from its oppressors. Joseph Campbell, in

“’The Treatment for Stirrings’: Dystopian Literature for Adolescents,” says that “[d]ystopian literature is

concerned with making the often seemingly invisible cycle of ideological subject formation and offers

adolescents some sort of agency

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8. Erin Blakemore, “A Brief History of Young Adult Fiction,” JSTOR Daily, April 10, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015, http://daily.jstor.org/history-of-young-adult-fiction.

9. Catherine Belsey, “Constructing the Subject: Deconstructing the Text,” in Contemporary Literary Criticism and Cultural Studies, 3rd ed., eds. Con Davis, Robert and Ronald Schliefer (New York and London: Longman, 1994). 355.

10. Ibid.

existing within that system.”11 The adolescent subject, then, is made to believe that she or he is messianic;

and by being the messiah in a setting that seems to be an exaggeration of current society, the adolescent

subject is given a false consciousness that she or he holds agency and is not a subject. Campbell goes on

to say that dystopian literature is predominantly didactic—teaching its readers by defamiliarizing existing

aspects of contemporary society and exaggerating power structures “so as to be more easily seen by the

reader.”12

The genre of YA dystopia, then, is highly critical, in that it questions the relationships of subjectivity

and power. Its didactic nature both gives a warning to the reader, by say, showing the ills of a totalitarian

regime, and at the same time carrying with it the cultural attitudes and values it intends to instill. The genre,

then, of the YA dystopia may be seen as both shaped by ideology inasmuch as it shapes ideology.13

Campbell builds on Althusser’s ideological state apparatuses to explain how ideology is transmitted through

literature and the dystopian genre in summarizing Althusser’s discourse:

“It is absolutely essential that we understand, Althusser tells us, that any successful society will be one that

has come to recognize that, in order to remain a successful society, it must create individuals who believe it

important to maintain the society in question. This ideology, along with all others of a society, then, must be

distributed or disseminated.”14

It can be said, then, that this is the YA dystopia’s value, along with all of realist fiction—it acts as an

ideological state apparatus that transmits the ideology of the nation in power in order to keep subjects

believing in that ideology. The power structures that these texts critique ultimately reflect what ideology must

then remain dominant. The YA dystopia has emerged because of ideology, but also because it helps shape

and reinforce it to the adolescent subject; further stressing the aforementioned argument of Manijikian that

the end narrative, now in particular the dystopian novel, has become an effective means to maintain the

dominant ideology of the “exceptional” nation. What then is this ideology that must be strongly and

constantly reinforced?

Building on Frederic Jameson’s “late capitalism” in his essay “The Cultural Logic of Late

Capitalism,” the world is now living in the third stage of capitalism; which he defined using two essential

features: “(1) a tendential web of bureaucratic control[…] and (2) the interpenetration of government and big

businesses (‘state capitalism’).”15 Late capitalism—or as Jameson preferred to call it, “multinational

capitalism”—differed

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11. Campbell, Treatment, 166.12. Ibid.13. Ibid., 167.14. Ibid.15. Frederic Jameson, introduction to POSTMODERNISM, Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

(Durham: Duke UP, 1991). xvii.

from the old capitalist system in that it is no longer the older imperialism, no longer “a rivalry between the

various colonial powers.”16 In this world, nobody notices anymore how the state merges with big businesses.

Jameson further goes on to say that in the postmodern the base and the superstructure—the economic and

the cultural—collapse in on themselves and begin to “say the same thing.”17 Through the transition to late

capitalism, the world has drastically changed and Jameson explains this by saying that:

“What ‘late’ generally conveys is rather the sense that something has changed, that things are different, that

we have gone through a transformation of the life world which is somehow decisive but incomparable with

the older convulsions of modernization and industrialization, less perceptible and dramatic, somehow, but

more permanent precisely because [it is] more thoroughgoing and all pervasive.”18

This world of late capitalism is also the ambit of American exceptionalism; it is the playground upon

which America has risen to become the big kid who protected all the other kids from the bullies. It would not

be surprising then to read the ideology of the YA dystopian novel as that echoing American exceptionalism.

Through the fall of the USSR in the Cold War, and consequently the victory of the stigmatization of socialism

and communism, America rose to become the ultimate global power and it holds and vehemently fights to

keep holding that position until today. The dystopian novel, therefore, would reflect the ideology that

America stood for: liberty and self-determination, but also the ideology of late capitalism. In order to instill

upon the young adult subject this ideology that would preserve American global power, the dystopian novel

must also be conveying a meaning that would be interpreted by the subject as such—thus, it also carries a

meaning to keep within the system of late capitalism.

Campbell says that in the dystopian novel which teaches by negative example, “[t]he subject is

offered choices”19 which she or he can choose to accept or reject; however, should the subject reject the

option given by the ideological state apparatus at work and refuse to be a subject, she or he becomes the

concern of the repressive state apparatus. This is difficult however, for as Althusser argues, “ideology has

always-already interpellated the individuals as subjects, which amounts to making it clear that individuals

are always-already interpellated by ideology as subjects.”20 Simply put, it is difficult for the individual to go

against the grain and reject ideology, simply because the subject has already been interpellated before it

was even

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16. Jameson, introduction to POSTMODERNISM, xviii.17. Ibid., xx.18. Ibid.19. Campbell, Treatment, 168.20. Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Marxists.org, accessed May 11,

2015, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm.

born. By differentiating itself as an “I”, as Belsey says in support of Althusser, the subject has already

willingly accepted ideology and its subject-positions necessary to participate in the greater social

formation.21

In order to illustrate how ideology comes into play in a YA dystopian text, the novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins22 will be used as the subject of critique. A groundbreaking work of YA fiction,

The Hunger Games was published in 2008; and according to Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie

Hintz in Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers, “Collins’ trilogy neatly

outstripped all of its competitors and ensured that its genre would be the latest publishing phenomenon in a

post-Potter, post-Twilight market.”23 By January 2015, the trilogy has sold 36.5 million copies in print in the

US alone24, and the trilogy has been turned into three successful box-office films as well—with the third

book’s film adaptation Mockingjay Part 1 raking in a hundred and twenty million dollars in just its opening

weekend.25 The text’s massive popularity has been made the basis for being chosen for analysis, for its

influence on the whole genre of YA dystopian fiction is uncontested.

In Hunger Games, the protagonist is a sixteen-year-old girl named Katniss Everdeen. The novel is

set in post-apocalyptic North America, now known as Panem, which is ruled by an elite government known

as the Capitol. Panem is divided into twelve districts, each one representing a particular sector of society

(for instance, District 12 is the mining sector, District 4 is fisheries, District 3 is technology, and so on), and

each one providing labor to produce specific products to be distributed to all of Panem. The districts of

Panem had all once united in revolt against the Capitol’s abusive government and lost; hence, as a

reminder of their defeat, the Capitol initiated the “Hunger Games” which is an annual fight to the death

among twenty-four chosen teenagers from the districts. The Games served as a means to keep the districts

from revolting once more, and to reinstate Capitol power. Where the Games were a horrific reality to the

districts, to the Capitol the genocide of its subjects was mere spectator sport. Katniss hails from District 12,

the poorest district of Panem, living with her mother and sister. In the 74th Hunger Games, her sister gets

picked as a District 12 tribute; to which Katniss reacts by volunteering in her place instead. She is partnered

with a boy her age named Peeta Mellark, who eventually becomes her romantic interest in the text. She and

Peeta are taken to

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21. Belsey, Constructing, 358.22. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (New York: Scholastic, 2008).23. Balaka Basu, Katherine R. Broad, and Carrie Hintz, introduction to Contemporary Dystopian

Fiction for Young Adults: Brave New Teenagers (New York: Routledge, 2013). 1.24. Stephan Lee, “Updated figures for the ‘Hunger Games’ books: More than 36.5M in print in the US

alone,” Entertainment Weekly, January 18, 2015, accessed May 1, 2015, http://www.ew.com/article/2012/03/28/hunger-games-updated-sales.

25. “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (PG 13),” BoxOffice Media, accessed May 1, 2015, http://pro.boxoffice.com/statistics/movies/the-hunger-games-mockingjay-part-1-2014.

the Capitol and as the story progresses, it is revealed that Peeta has had romantic feelings for Katniss since

their childhood—this is used to their advantage by their mentor, Haymitch, to gain the support and sympathy

of Capitol residents, who viewed the Games as some sort of reality TV show where they can help their bets

survive until the end. In the end, Katniss’ skill as a hunter and archer and Peeta’s strength and ability to

camouflage leave them the sole survivors out of 24 tributes, and unable to kill each other, they instead

attempt to commit suicide. The Gamemakers are forced to let them both live to save face, but their act is

forever seen by the oppressed districts as a powerful act of defiance against the depraved Capitol. This

spurs forward an inspiration among them to band together once more in revolution. Katniss becomes the

face of the revolution against their corrupt regime and ultimately leads the districts to victory, although the

rebellion is spread out through the second and third books of the trilogy.

Firstly, the conflict in the text is between the State and the individual, specifically the young adult.

This is a recurring conflict in the dystopian YA genre, but here in Hunger Games, unpacking this State vs.

Young Adult struggle is crucial in order to deconstruct the text’s meaning and see how ideology is at work.

Basing on Vladimir Lenin’s “The First Phase of Communist Society” as written in his The State and Revolution, this State—the Capitol—seems to have been in the first phase of communism, where the state

governs the “means of production, the factories, machines, land”26 and not capitalist entities or private

owners who could easily exploit the working class. This can be seen in the appropriations of labor to each

district basing on its capabilities and environment; however, Lenin says that in the higher phase of

communism, the end is actually for the state to “wither away in so far as there are no longer any capitalists,

there are no longer any classes, and consequently no class whatsoever can be suppressed.”27 That is

obviously not the case in Hunger Games because the state has remained a strong force that has even

contributed to the exploitation of its own constituents; hence, causing a great divide between two classes,

namely, those from the Districts and those from the Capitol. It can be seen, then, that the Capitol seems to

have been a state that had attempted to apply the principles of communism but was stuck in the first phase

until it corrupted on its own, until it devolved into a totalitarian state that began to oppress and repress its

constituents through means like the Hunger Games.

A reading of this text could then be that it serves a didactic purpose against a communist state, for

although the reader-subject may not be learned in the works of Lenin or Marx, she or he is definitely taught

in this text that a state which has control of its means of production risks the possibility of devolving like the

Capitol in the worst case scenario. Aside from the state, the YA protagonist seems then to also be fighting

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26. Vladimir Lenin, “The First Phase of Communist Society,” in State and Revolution, trans. Robert Service (London: Penguin, 1992). 84.

27. Ibid., 85.

conformity—in so far as the districts are repressed and forced to conform to the Capitol’s demands. In the

districts of Panem, there seems to be no choice among people but to work for the Capitol and to live in

poverty. To quote parts of the text:

“Our part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning

shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since

stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out of their broken nails, the lines of their sunken faces.”28

“What must it be like, I wonder, to live in a world where food appears at the press of a button? How would I

spend the hours I now commit combing the woods for sustenance if it were so easy to come by? What do

they do all day, these people in the Capitol, besides decorating their bodies and waiting around for a new

shipment of tributes to roll in and die for their entertainment?”29

This struggle against conformity also reflects a warning against the communist state; for the fight is

not against capitalism—in fact capitalism in this society does not seem to exist—but against what seems to

be the transition towards a fully communist society, which has inevitably fallen to ruin before it even truly

started. This struggle for conformity also goes against what Marx says is a necessary step in order to

achieve equality and freedom under communism:

“In the higher phase of communist society, after enslaving the subordination of the person to the division of labour vanishes; after the antithesis between mental and physical labour vanishes; after labour has ceased

to be merely a means of sustaining life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased

together with the all-round development of individuals, and all the sources of social wealth flow in full spate;

only then when it will be possible to cross over the narrow horizon of bourgeois right, and will society be able

to inscribe on its banners: ‘From each to his own ability, to each according to his needs!’”30

Hence, the text reflects a meaning of preserving American exceptionalism, and American ideals of

self-determination and liberty through the avoidance or rejection of this necessary “subordination of the

person to the division of labor.” The text shows that a communist society is bound to corrupt for it does not

give its citizens the right to self-determination, thus reflecting the ideology that late capitalism must be

maintained in order for society not to fall for this trap. It could also be reflecting the anxieties of America as

the world’s current exceptional nation towards socialism and communism; it is a fear of these systems

becoming more powerful than themselves.

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28. Collins, Hunger, 4.29. Ibid., 61.30. Italics added for emphasis; Lenin, Phase, 85-86.

These are just alternative readings of The Hunger Games by, according to Belsey, “locat[ing] the

point of contradiction within the text, the point at which it transgresses the limits within it is constructed,

breaks free from the constraints of its own realist form.”31 The Hunger Games is a speculative work on what

would happen in a communist takeover, the bane of capitalist society, and it is just one among many other

dystopian texts that may be read in the same way. It can be concluded, then, that The Hunger Games is an

example of the dystopian novel which inherently perpetuates the ideology of the exceptional nation; though

at first it may be read as a radical text because of its primary concern with emancipating the masses, this

alternative reading also shows that it actually reinforces a sort of “false consciousness” to the reader-subject

through ideology for her or him to fear also what America fears, to caution her or himself from the kind of

society present in the text. In this way, the YA dystopia acts as an effective ideological state apparatus that

transmits ideology through its very pages and the young adult is made the new primary subject to course

through this ideology. This just goes to show that although the rise of the young adult protagonist in the YA

novel always ends in victory, the rise of the young adult also means the beginning of life as a subject.

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31. Belsey, Constructing, 362.

Bibliography

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http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm.

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http://daily.jstor.org/history-of-young-adult-fiction.

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