In
the article “Darkness Too Visible,” Megan Cox Gurdon discusses how young adult
literature isn’t for teens. Gurdon feels that young adult literature is too
dark and she shows the reader this by using examples from specific books. For
example, she mentions the books The
Marbury Lens and Rage. Gurdon
argues that there are no appropriate young adult books on shelves today.
In
the article Gurdon talks about several books. In the part that my group
annotated she talks about how in the book The
Marbury Lens, “Young Jack is drugged, abducted and nearly raped by the male
captor.” The reason why she put this description in was to show the reader how
inappropriate young adult literature can
be. Another way that Gurdon gets her point across is by using imagery. “’She
sliced her arms to ribbons, but the badness remained, staining her insides like
cancer. She had gouged her belly until it was a mess of meat and blood, but she
still couldn’t breathe.’” This quote is from the book Rage and the purpose of using this quote in the article is to show
the reader how gruesome books can be. Lastly, Gurdon helped make her point by
using sophisticated language. For example, in describing these books she uses
words such as “unimaginable gore and cruelty,” “nightmarish,” “sadistic sexual
prank,” “tortured adolescent,” “emotional turbulence” and many more. This helped Gurdon show the reader that there
is some pretty terrible material in young adult literature that teens are
reading.
Are
there really no suitable young adult books for teens? I don’t think so. In the
whole article, Gurdon mentions twelve books and I’ve only read two of them. This
proves that the books that she mentioned aren’t necessarily books that teens
are reading right now. Additionally, young adult books are written for young
adults and not once does Gurdon mention what teens thought about these books. All
in all, Megan Cox Gurdon proved a strong argument, but young adult literature
isn’t as bad as she said it is.
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