While starting
contemporary literature, I was excited to begin reading books that I thought I
would be able to connect with. I thought that after a semester of high rolling
socialites and children on quests, I would find characters that I shared a
common ground with. Keeping my goal in mind, I selected Angus, Thongs, and
Full Frontal Snogging and Planet Janet among my texts. Both of
these books center on young teens as they struggle to find themselves within
modern society. They seemed to fit the criteria very well, however, the
characters that are portrayed have been the hardest for me to connect with
during the entirety of the class.
They are vain, with
limited understanding of anything that does not directly affect them, they show
little to no development, their personalities are shallow and very little
redeems the character to the reader. This brings me to wonder: Is this what
society thinks of my peers? While marketed to represent a majority of the
teenage population, the books fail to give teens any depth (this is not to say
that I have not read books that do an excellent job with this: The Fault in
Our Stars by John Green to name one). If I were to base my knowledge
solely on the contents of these books, I would come away with an entirely
incorrect view of this demographic.
For me, this raised many questions of truth in literature. What these books
were portraying was not my truth (nor the truth of anyone I know), but a truth
nonetheless. In thinking about what to say in re of this course, I found that
this was the biggest lesson that I was taught. I learned that romanticized and
limited views portrayed in the novels that I read are not representative of the
whole of a society. It took two insipid teenage characters to remind me that
characters are mere shades of what we think and how we act. They represent the
best and the worst of us, and sometimes lead us to lead better lives; but they
are not, and will never be us.
