Dystopia

The Boy is reading The Giver by Lois Lowry.  I remember reading this book for a book club when I lived in St. Louis.  In December, we chose a children's novel for ease, speed and fun.

The Giver was not fun.  I know lots of people love this book, and for good reason, but I was not one of those people.  I am not a fan of dystopian literature, yet all through grade and middle school I read about Jewish girls whose lives were impacted by the Holocaust.  I didn't need dystopian literature.  Nowadays, that seems to be the main theme in young adult novels and school curriculums: alternate realities where the world stinks.  The Hunger Games.  Divergent.  

The Boy broke down and cried today.  He cried for ebola.  He cried for a four year old child who shot a three year old who is now at Harborview.  He cried for an unarmed boy who was killed by police.  

"Why did he have to kill him?  Couldn't the police have used a taser or pepper spray?  Broken his arms?  Shoot him in the leg?"

The boy's solution to all of this needs some work: vaporize the world so there is no more pain and suffering.  Stop humans from hurting each other by just getting rid of all of us.  Not quite a real solution or one Gandhi would have proposed.  I can see how rage kicks in where sorrows leaves off.

He wants to cancel the newspaper so we don't have to read about anymore bad stuff, about starfish dying from infections, or possible earthquakes.  

Jack thought the boy might have a meltdown when he got to the end of The Giver.  Nope.  He had a meltdown reading The Seattle Times.  "I am an eleven year old boy," he said.  "I have no power to change anything.  I can't make this world a better place."  He needs to read to the end of The Giver, where a young boy in a dystopian world makes a change.  Dystopian novels help us use fake worlds to find real solutions.

"No one will listen to me or take me seriously because I am a kid." 

I am listening.  As hard as it is to see my son come to grips with tragedies in the world, I listened.

As he went to bed, he found a book he said would make him happy:  Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.  Interesting choice, as this is a comic book written by a woman who suffers from depression.   Her goal in writing was to make people laugh.  She tried to be as funny as possible.  

Perhaps this is the medicine this sorrowful little boy needs.