Melting into Dystopias

As a writer who is friends with other writers, of course my friends and I all read. And of course because we both read and write, we like to discuss the books we read; what we think of the plot twists, the characters, etc. We debate points, consider outside possibilities, predict possible outcomes, and ferret out weak spots.

So during one such discussion, my fellow writers in my writing group and I started talking about dystopias. We've all seen them. The most famous ones right now are The Hunger Games (the second film, Catching Fire, came out semi-recently), followed by the Divergent Trilogy, the first film of which premiers in mid-March. Then there are the classics like Soilent Green and Fahrenheit 451.

But it seems like these days, the classification of dystopia is being thrown around a lot when it doesn't really fit well with the actual premise of the book.

What is the biggest theme of a dystopian novel? A dysfunctional government, seething with corruption, that's basically out to get you. Screw up once, you're dead meat. In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, reading actual books is a crime that—if you refuse to surrender said books—can result in your execution.

In The Hunger Games, if you defy the Capitol, they come after you hard (case in point, the ultimate destruction of Districts 12 and 13). In Lauren Oliver's Delirium, anyone who breaks the laws to prevent "infection" from this supposedly contagious mental illness is sanctioned, then put in prison or punished in some horrible way. I recently wrote an essay, actually, about the difference between utopia/dystopia and straight-up dystopia novels, highlighting the acknowledged tyrannical fist of a corrupt government.

But a lot of books these days that I've seen have been labeled as dystopias when honestly, it doesn’t actually seem like they are. Maybe it's a sales ploy sort of thing. Maybe it's to make more people buy the books. I don't know. But I'm seeing less dystopia in my dystopian novels these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

In Kiera Cass's supposedly dystopian novel The Selection, we're introduced to the kingdom of Ilea, which is run via a caste system. While they have rebellions, and the laws can be fairly strict (being pregnant outside of wedlock can get you thrown in prison unless you were sexually assaulted), there isn't really anything corrupt in the government that we see in the first novel. The government isn't tight-fisted or cruel or tyrannical. The king and queen genuinely care about their subjects and their kingdom. What is so dystopian about this book, exactly?

Hop over to Wither by Lauren Destefano, first book in The Chemical Garden Trilogy. In Wither (and its sequel, Fever), the government doesn’t really show up in the storyline. You see the president on television maybe once or twice. You hear about riots and rebel attacks and all that.

But no policemen or government workers ever attack the main character or anyone she knows. The bad guys don't have government authority behind them. The government is actually pretty much an ineffective mess sludging around in the background, not doing anything. The tyrannical evil entity is the father-in-law of the main character, Rhine—and he's the villain of the novels, as well. In fact, his creepy attitude and scary dictatorship reminds me more of less-violent and overtly-psychotic Annie from Stephen King's Misery than President Snow from The Hunger Games.

I'm currently reading a so-called dystopian novel called Inhuman by Kat Falls, where the government has a fairly iron-fisted grip on the country. But that's because about twenty years prior in the storyline, a virulent and so-far incurable form of fast-mutating super-rabies swept through the country and martial law was basically put into place to try and stop it before everyone keeled over dead. The virus is still incurable, and outbreaks still happen.

Imagine if zombie plague popped up in the real world. How would the US government handle it? Exactly the way they do in Inhuman. That's not dystopian. The government's not corrupt. No one's rights are being unfairly squashed or whatever. It's a public safety issue, like the cops forcing you to stay in your homes while they try to apprehend a terrorist running around out on the streets.

I could go on for days about this, actually. Novels like Divergent by Veronica Roth, Dearly, Departed by Lia Habel, Rot and Ruin by Jonathon Mabry, The Loners by Lex Thomas, Shatter Me by Tahareh Mafi, Insignia by SJ Kincaid, or Gone by Michael Grant aren't actually dystopian novels. Most (though not all) of these actually fall more under post-apocalyptic, which isn't the same thing—though I fear it may be melting into the blanket-label of dystopian.

Am I being too picky about this? Maybe. But I actually know people who hold the dystopian classification in contempt, and those people aren't buying a lot of the books I mentioned above which are being incorrectly labeled.

What's my point? Authors, editors, agents, publishers, reviewers—be specific. Just because it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, doesn't mean it's a duck. It might actually say "cock-a-doodle-doo" instead of "quack," which probably means it's not a duck. Actually, if it looks like a duck but crows like a rooster, it's probably a parrot in disguise. And maybe readers shouldn’t judge a book by cover or classification, but you know they do. So please, advertise accurately.

Stay tuned for reviews for Shatter Me, Inhuman, The Loners, and Rot and Ruin coming soon!

— LA Knight

Show Your Face? (Sometimes a Pose Is Just a Pose Part 1)

So I came across an interesting article about book cover trends a little while back and read through it, and one of the points sort of surprised and actually disturbed me.

Now, one of the first things that attracts someone to a book usually is the cover. Does the cover look interesting? And of course we have a lot of covers with pictures of people on them. The Once Upon a Time YA novel series from Simon and Schuster actually revamped their covers from illustrated to photographic, rereleasing every book in the series so far except two (Scarlet Moon and Spirited) and I actually like these covers a lot better. They're beautiful. I'm a big fan of photographic covers.

But the point that was made by this article was that a certain trend in photographic covers is having a negative impact on feminine identity among teens. This trend is the image of a girl whose face is hidden in some way from the camera. You see this in the Matched Trilogy by Ally Condie (Cassia is always looking away from the reader), in The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (you see Cinder's foot, Scarlet's arm and part of her upper body but no face, Cress's back and her hair), The Mortal Instruments (hard to see any faces), and in a lot of other books. Then there are the books where only part of the face is revealed (Kiera Cass's The Selection, where part of America Singer's face is hidden by her arm).

According to this article, the trend of hiding a girl's face from view somehow takes away from her strength, from the strength of her identity as a strong character, and from her ability to be viewed as a role model by the reader. I find this interesting, since a lot of novels with strong female leads (The Hunger Games, Divergent, etc.) don't even have images of their stars on the cover at all.

This reminds me of something my sister once told me. Now, I'm biracial. My father is African-American, my mother is Caucasian. When I was little, I had this idea (not because of my parents) that I couldn’t do anything that a biracial person hadn’t done before. As an example, I would play A Little Princess with a friend of mine from down the street, and I was always Sara and she was always Becky, because I had lighter skin than she did and I thought that was how it was supposed to be (in the 1993 film, Sara is white and Becky is black). It wasn’t until I got older (say, eight or nine instead of four or five) that I realized that wasn’t necessarily the way things had to be, and I learned it was acceptable to put myself in the shoes of a character who didn’t necessarily look like me.

What does this have to do with this book cover trend?

A lot of readers will take in the text description of the main character when they first come across it, but then they'll push it aside and put themselves in the situation instead. It's one of the fun things about reading. This lack of facial imagery on the cover is actually rather conducive to doing that, since the reader isn't stuck with a fully realized image of what the main character is supposed to look like.

I know that when I'm reading a really good book, I have a hard time slowing down enough to visualize everything, so if I don't have an established picture in my head, the MC looks like me, even if she's black or Greek or blond or red-headed or a green Martian with no hair. It's just easier to insert yourself into that character because the physical characteristics are less prominent. Which is probably one of the reasons the publishing companies do it so often.

The other reason? It looks pretty. One of the most beautiful trio of book covers I've seen is for the Matched Trilogy and what the poses tell us about the state of mind of the main character. They're gorgeous. Sometimes a pose is just a pose. Sometimes it's purely aesthetic.

But I doubt the industry is trying to weaken the feminine identity of the female teen masses. At least not most of them. I'm not worried, and I hope that when I'm published, I can have a cover as beautiful as the ones I've listed here.

- LA Knight

Divergent - Veronica Roth

 

One choice can transform you...

 

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue--Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is--she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles alongside her fellow initiates to live out the choice they have made. Together they must undergo extreme physical tests of endurance and intense psychological simulations, some with devastating consequences. As initiation transforms them all, Tris must determine who her friends really are--and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes exasperating boy fits into the life she's chosen.

But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers unrest and growing conflict that threaten to unravel her seemingly perfect society, Tris also learns that her secret might help her save the ones she loves . . . or it might destroy her.

I'm so excited! Why am I excited? I will tell you why! Because Divergent the movie is coming out in less than six months! Now, does that mean I'll get to see it in theatres? Doubtful. But maybe in the cheap theatre. Who knows?

In the meantime, I'm finally writing a review for the novel Divergent, by Veronica Roth, which I actually read over a year ago but recently reread aloud to my roommate. This is one of my favorite novels ever because of the main character, Tris, and her motivating credo. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In the novel Divergent, the city of Chicago has become its own standalone community after a lot of apocalyptic events like World War III or what-have-you. In this city, the people are divided up into five (technically six) factions or clans that take care of different parts of the society:

- Abnegation, the Selfless: these guys are basically like the Amish or the Mennonites. They believe in serving others, in doing charitable works, etc. Their whole thing is selflessness and service. In order to become a member of Abnegation, you do a month of community service. They run the government side of things because everyone wants selfless people in office, right?

- Amity, the Peaceful: this is the faction in charge of farming and whatnot. They're basically hippies. I have no idea what their initiation is. They're generally nice people…but you find out how strict they are about the whole peaceful thing in book two. If you get in a physical confrontation with another person, both you and that person have to talk to a counselor and get put on happy pills. And I think they drug their water with happiness juice.

- Candor, the Honest: this faction is made up of lawyers and law-makers and whatnot, and their whole thing is honesty. It can get a little obnoxious, though, because in Candor you're raised to take that filter between your mouth and your brain and go stick it in a hole somewhere. One of the secondary characters, Christina, is from Candor and she has some trouble adjusting at first to another faction where blabbing is discouraged. Their initiation is to undergo a public truth test where they dope you up and ask really personal questions because there are apparently no secrets in Candor.

- Dauntless, the Brave: the warrior clan of this society, made up of fighters. A majority of the book is Dauntless initiation, which focuses on learning to control and/or confront your fears so they don't cause problems in the field, as well as learning how to fight (but also, Tris learns how to have fun). But, like every club, there's some corruption here. It's actually the worst here and in Erudite, unfortunately.

But I love Dauntless because one of their basic principles, the one Tris loves and believes in, states: we believe in everyday ordinary acts of bravery. That might seem small, but it's not. It's pretty cool, actually. Because to quote another book* I love, "It's more than being brave. It's about good against evil, right against wrong. Of doing what you know to be right even when no one else will help you."

* The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald; this is actually a direct quote from the movie, paraphrased from the book

- Erudite, the Intelligent: or something like that. These are the scientists and researchers. Their main problem (and the biggest issue regarding corruption) is their clinical detachment from human emotions to pursue logic and information. The main bad guy of books one and two is so evil because she wants to figure out how this one group of people work…by torturing, experimenting, and dissecting them, because it's the most convenient way to work.

And the thing I like is, it's not everybody in Erudite who has this problem. And not all the bad guys are from Erudite, either. Some are in Dauntless, one's in Abnegation, and I think there's one in Amity. It would be the easiest thing in the world for Veronica Roth to be like, "Oh, well…see, ALL of Erudite's bad. The end." But she didn’t—which is good, because that would be sloppy writing. Thank you, Ms. Roth, for this lack of sloppy. Happiness abounds in me because I'm tired of slacker writers. Boo. But she's not a slacker, so yay!

- and then there are the factionless. These are the homeless, the mostly-jobless (some of them work as janitors, city bus drivers, etc), those without health care or anything like that. Abnegation tries to take care of them, but Abnegation is fairly small in population compared to the factionless.

Being factionless is considered the worst thing, short of losing everyone you love to death or losing your own life, that could happen to someone in this world, because it's basically a death sentence. Most of the factionless don't live to old or even middle-age unless they're something special (kids who've washed out of Dauntless training, for example).

We actually don't see much of the factionless in Divergent, but we see enough to know that I, personally, would rather live the nun-ish life of an Abnegation woman than live factionless.

So those are the five (six) factions in the world of Divergent. When you turn sixteen, you take an aptitude test to see where you're best suited to go. You don't actually have to follow the results of your test, but the odds of you washing out during initiation and becoming factionless are much, much higher if you're in a faction you're not suited for.

Most kids test highest for one faction—maybe two, if they're weird. But Tris, the main character, is Divergent: she tested into three factions.

Abnegation. Erudite. Dauntless.

A little backstory of the world politics. In the last five to ten years, the leader of Erudite (the scientific sociopath we mentioned earlier) has been slandering the two highest government leaders of the city, who both belong to Abnegation, as well as slandering Abnegation itself, because she wants to be in power. Most of what she's saying actually is NOT true, but that's not the point. Point is, Tris would never join Erudite. She's unhappy in Abnegation, and she wants to learn to be brave and help people by protecting them…so she chooses Dauntless.

And then we, the reader, are launched into the fun, radical, ridiculously high-spirited, reckless, and incredibly dangerous world of Dauntless and its initiation. I gotta say, one of the things I love about reading is experience things I would never do in real life (like swimming with jellyfish or working in a circus or walking on Mars*). Divergent and the segments of Dauntless training and life give me that in spades. I will never go zip-lining, for example, or climb to the top of a Ferris wheel, or jump off a roof or a train, but I can feel the exhilaration and adrenaline of doing those things when I read Divergent.

* "Experiences" I enjoyed while reading Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz, Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck, and A Wizard of Mars by Diane Duane.

I'll say it again: thank you, Veronica Roth.

There's more to the plot—such as why Divergents are considered so dangerous to society and Tris has to hide her Divergent status; what's really going on over at Erudite; the secrets of Tris's mother's past—and they're all fantastic, but we're going to leave that alone for now. Just know that they're genius AND I couldn’t call them, not even at the last minute. That is saying something.

Also, Four (the love interest) is hot. Like, for real. I haven’t gotten a good look at the actor who's going to play him, but the way he is in the book, he's hot. And I don't approve of getting tattoos (my personal opinion), but the reason he has tattoos of the five symbols of the five factions is a pretty good one—he wants to be selfless, loving, honest, brave, and smart, the five "virtues" as it were of the five factions. Give the boy some props, he's not just spilling random ink on his body. And Veronica Roth manages to strike the perfect balance between dangerous-bad-boy and vulnerable-scarred-boy and smexy-romantic-boy with Four, as well. His secret identity? Didn’t see that one coming either.

The final thing about this book that really impresses me is how the author cuts through the language to these beautiful, poignant thoughts and ideas…but the language is actually very, very simple. It reads like someone talking. It doesn't read like a book, which actually makes it a pretty fast read, because it feels like Tris is actually talking to me about what's going on. That's a pretty good trick.

So I now own Divergent and Insurgent and hope to get book three, Allegiant, for Christmas. Hopefully it's as brilliant as Divergent, without some of the minor flaws of Insurgent (only real flaw in book two: Four briefly turns into a moron and makes me want to slap him; Tris's reaction to his moronicity makes me want to smack her, but she has more of an excuse—she's sixteen). I loved Insurgent, don't get me wrong, but it's not the 5-star book Divergent is. Hopefully Allegiant is a 5-star, too.

And after that? The movie! Ex-CITE-ment!

- LA Knight