It seems like I can't turn on my television without being inundated with trailers for I Am Number Four, the recently released movie based on the Young Adult novel of the same name. Up until a couple of weeks ago, though, all I knew about the movie was that it contained aliens and Alex Pettyfer, who appears to be in the running for the male lead in every YA-book-to-movie project in circulation. I read about the story when the New York Times ran an interesting, if flawed, article about trends in YA dystopian fiction. "Teenage Wastelands," by Charles McGrath, concentrates mostly on the plot of I Am Number Four—an alien masquerading as human, struggling through teenage romance, and running from an assassin. While the story is certainly science fiction, however, it doesn't exactly ring true as dystopian, as Anna at Persephone Magazine has already noted. It was the author's description of the difference between YA and Adult dystopian fiction, however, which was most jarring. While Mr. McGrath praises a number of YA dystopian novels, including The Hunger Games, his conclusions about the genre aren't exactly glowing.
What distinguishes this kind of dystopian fiction from its adult counterpart—beyond its being less dire and apocalyptic—is a certain element of earnestness, even preachiness, and the moral is pretty transparent: be yourself. That’s because most young-adult novels are not written by young adults. They’re grown-up guesses or projections about what we suspect or hope might be on the minds of teenagers, or they’re cynical attempts to plant a profitable notion there.
Whether in Huxley or Orwell or Collins, I believe that the most pervasive moral in dystopian fiction—young adult or adult—is the importance of freedom. The Hunger Games features a future world called Panem, whose thirteen districts are all under the heel of the Capitol and all subject to its cruel Games, the reminder of a failed rebellion. The requisites for dystopia are there, but I certainly don't think that the moral of The Hunger Games has much to do with individuality. Rather, the reader is shown time and again the corruption that arises from absolute power, and the consequences of a Big Brother-esque government.
On the other hand, I can't ignore the fact that individuality is an important facet of some dystopian works. I just finished Beth Revis's debut YA dystopian science fiction novel, Across the Universe, a couple of weeks ago. "Be yourself" certainly is a moral in this book; the alternative is to be almost soulless. On the ship Godspeed, life is strictly ordered, and the vast majority of the population is comprised of people with no sense of self, workers who are little more than drones. Only a handful of "insane" mental patients have any kind of free will or imagination. Which brings me to the point that I think the Times article misses: that the yearning for individuality is common in dystopian fiction because sameness is a symptom of the revocation of freedom.
What do you think? Is the morality of dystopian Young Adult fiction as simple as "be yourself"? Is I Am Number Four dystopian?
Can you tell me why Alex Pettyfer is famous?