Negotiating Hope and Honesty: A Rhetorical Criticism of Young Adult Dystopian Fiction

<p>Young adult dystopian fictions follow the patterns established by the classic adult dystopias such as George Orwell's <em>1984</em> and Aldous Huxley's <em>Brave New World</em>, but not completely. Young adult dystopias tend to end happily, a departure from the nightmarish ends of Winston Smith and John Savage. Young adult authors resist hopelessness, even if the fictional world demands it.</p> <p>Using a rhetorical approach established by Wayne Booth in <em>The Rhetoric of Fiction</em> and <em>The Company We Keep</em>, this thesis traces the reasons for the inclusion of hope and the strategies by which hope is created and maintained. Booth's rhetorical approach recognizes that a narrative is a relational act. At issue in this study is the consideration of what follows from viewing a narrative as a dynamic exchange between text, author and reader. Through a focus on rhetoric as identification, the responsibilities of both the author and the reader to a text are identified and discussed.</p> <p>Three young adult novels, <em>A Wrinkle in Time</em> by Madeleine L'Engle, <em>The Giver</em> by Lois Lowry and <em>Feed</em> by M.T. Anderson will be analyzed as case studies. Together the analysis of these novels reveals that storytelling is an act of forging identifications and forming alliances. The reader becomes more than just a spectator of the author's rhetoric; the reader is a fully involved member of the interpretive and evaluative process.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

MA

Grantor dc:publisher

Brigham Young University - Provo

Author dc:creator

• Reber, Lauren Lewis

• dystopia
• rhetoric
• young adult literature
• Wayne Booth
• Lois Lowry
• M.T. Anderson
• Madeleine L'Engle
• The Giver
• Feed
• A Wrinkle in Time
• identification
• The Rhetoric of Fiction
• The Company We Keep
• Kay Sambell
• English Language and Literature

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/284

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarsarchive.byu.edu:etd-1283