Connecting

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.