The Ethics of Darkness, Part 2

The Ethics of Darkness
PART TWO: THE DARKNESS TREND
Last week, we looked at the problems of the new dark trend in YA/Children’s Literature:
“The only problem, the only aspect of this new, growing trend of dark literature that bothers me is that the strategy is not working. Rather than seeing young adult literature produce a generation of able and ready, healthy young adults, we have just as much (if not more) depression, suicide, sexual activity, substance abuse, and many other ugly factors among children and teens. Of course it could be objected that literature is not the sole cause, and that is true. But literature does not seem to be helping the situation, and it is probably a larger factor than most people suspect.”
Remember that? Today we dive into the core of the contemporary “strategy,” and take a look at literature of the past, so that we can begin analyzing just what went wrong.
Of course we cannot shield young people from the darkness of real life, but whenever we endeavor to “prepare them” we must ask ourselves two vital questions. One, are we preparing them in the right way? Two, is our preparation geared toward helping them fit in, or making life a brighter, more hopeful place for them? I propose that the current run of books in children’s and young adult literature is going about the process of “helping” young people in entirely the wrong way. These books expose kids of all ages not to the real, but the grotesque. They do not guide children’s minds, they violate them. The problem is not the darkness itself, then, but the way in which the darkness is presented. Books by C.S. Lewis or Lloyd Alexander are not afraid of dealing with very real darkness. Look at the classics which children (used to have to) read in school. Many of the same themes are there, but dealt with much more tastefully. In the case of many of the new books, the author simply goes too far. Meghan Cox Gurdon, a writer on children’s literature for the Wall Street Journal, was harshly criticized by the public and by critics alike, simply for writing an article saying so: that there are some places a novel just should not go. If you disagree, or think that this is all reactionary fear, then read this section from her article, Darkness Too Visible:
In Andrew Smith's 2010 novel, "The Marbury Lens," for example, young Jack is drugged, abducted and nearly raped by a male captor. After escaping, he encounters a curious pair of glasses that transport him into an alternate world of almost unimaginable gore and cruelty. Moments after arriving he finds himself facing a wall of horrors, "covered with impaled heads and other dripping, black-rot body parts: hands, hearts, feet, ears, penises. Where the f— was this?" No happy ending to this one, either.
Who would want their child, whatever the child’s age, to read such things? “But,” plead the authors of this kind of story, “how else are we going to get the message across?” If writing like the above excerpt is the best modern authors can do, then perhaps it is time to accept that even if they have not lost all semblance of artistic talent, they have lost any kind of tact. If nothing else, parents and writers need to be aware that there is a line, somewhere, and that line is being crossed. Rather than applauding authors who cross this line, complimenting them on their “creativity,” should we not be trying as hard as we can to find literature that will actually help children? Senseless gore, meaningless sex and a constant overload of vivid, nauseating details cannot possibly have a positive effect on young readers: and if it does, is the negative impact of the images worth what small lessons can be gleaned?
Even mentioning the word lessons is dangerous, because many people do not like being told that they should take value out of what they read. “It is just entertainment,” they say, objecting that these books cannot be too bad, and pointing out that many of these same raw, dark events are depicted in the Bible, too, and in the old “classic” stories, such as the Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm. This response, however, ends up being little more than an excuse. In the Bible, as well as in many great secular literary books, horror and darkness are indeed present, but they are presented in a way that explains the darkness and what is wrong with it, without forcing the reader to experience the darkness for themself. This is a concept that has been around for a long time, though the general public has yet to realize the significance of the issue. In this passage, written in 1963 by Flannery O’Connor (American novelist, essayist, and student of fiction), the issue I speak of is brought to light, near the beginning of the “darkness trend.”

Modern fiction often looks simpler than the fiction that preceded it, but in reality is more complex…. The modern novelist merges the reader in experience; he tends to raise the passions he touches upon…. Unless the child has had some literary experience before, he is not going to be able to resolve the immediate passions the book arouses into any true, total picture…. here the moral problem will arise. It is one thing for a child to read about adultery in the Bible or in Anna Karenina, and quite another for him to read about it in most modern fiction. This is not only because in both the former instances adultery is considered a sin, and in the latter, at most, an inconvenience, but because most modern writing involves the reader in the action with a new degree of intensity, and literary mores now permit him to be involved in any action a human being can perform.