Having grown up in the Cold War, I have always had a morbid
fascination with anything related to doomsday, but in particular with nuclear
holocaust. I’m aware that my reading dystopia now is an obsession born of
that fear. It’s been the equivalent of continually prodding a
hole in your tooth with your tongue or picking a scab. Despite it terrifying the living daylights out
of me, I couldn't help but returning to the scene of trauma, observing,
gathering information, considering possibilities. Maybe in an attempt to
rationalise absolute horror or the possibility of not just my own extinction
but that of our entire planet.
It was a possibility in the 80s, one we got very very close
to around ’84, and to this day I can’t decide whether it makes suitable Young
Adult fiction. It is too unimaginably awful to be child’s play. Of course,
there is the current trend of post-apocalyptic teen fiction, but it’s all set in
a fairly far-off dystopia which is safe enough for a young mind to contemplate
and play with. Enough interspersed with young romance and heroism that makes
those scenarios abstractly symbolic enough to not become gratuitous. But
something as real and close to home as nuclear holocaust?
I have always been in two minds about it. I think kids need to know about certain issues,
and shouldn't be left in the dark about them. And we definitely shouldn't talk
down to them. But then again, it’s our job to protect them from fear too big to
be processed healthily in a young mind, and I think if kids read these kind of
books, they need to be talked about with adults and contextualised. It’s not
something juvenile cognition can cope with on its own.
I first read a children’s book about Hiroshima, The Day of the Bomb by Karl Bruckner, the true story of Sadako Sasaki, the girl with the
thousand cranes – ironically a present
for International Children’s Day, when I was about 9. Then there was the
equally harrowing Raymond Briggs film When the Wind Blows, which some fool
had broadcast on a Saturday afternoon, during a children’s matinee. All this in
a time where talk of nuclear threat was on the news on a daily basis.
Altogether, for me it was a bit much – it gave me nightmares.
Then, when I was 11, there was a terrifying book called The Last Children by renowned German author Gudrun Pausewang, dealing with an
atomic attack on central Germany and the effect on and pitiful demise of a
family. It was syllabus material then, and no doubt valuable in a time when
every ounce of peace movement was needed. But it’s still one of the most
horrific books I have read on the subject. It had everything. Graphic
descriptions of a scorched earth. Horrible mutilations. Radiation sickness. The
disintegration of civilised society. Deformed newborns. And one particularly
powerful scene of a teenage boy whose legs had been torn off by the blast and
who only got around by means of a rickety, soiled pram, hanging himself off a
tree by a wall on which he had written “Damned parents”: The parents who had
stood by and done nothing to stop the nuclear arms race. It was meant to be a
cautionary tale, and, justified, Pausewang didn’t hold back.
The more astounded I was recently when I saw that Louise
Lawrence’s Children of the Dust is classed as 9-12. While it is by far not as
bleak as Pausewang, and actually has an ending of hope,the first half is still pretty full-on. I have recommended it to parents, but with a word of warning - I don't think it should nor is meant to be read "alone".
Still, as a grown-up, I can’t help myself but read
everything on the subject I can get my hands on. Thus it was inevitable that I
picked up Doomsday Kids. And here’s the verdict:
It is doubtlessly well-written. I love the characters, who
are mildly cliched (there’s a jock and a princess and a weird girl and the
loner type, but then, teenagers tend to fit themselves into one category or
another for a sense of belonging, so I think those “classifications” work), but
the variety of them makes for some tense, conflict-ridden reading. Imagine
those different types locked into a small shelter, having to get along, because
the only alternative is a bombed out, radioactive world outside. I like that
different ethnic groups and disability were represented (the little sister has
Down’s Syndrome): you ended up getting a good cross-section of the population.
And none of these characters were static: each one of them grows and develops
and becomes deeper and more rounded with every page. None of them end up being
fully good or fully evil, no one having a moral high ground. They’re kids
suddenly confronted with the end of the world, having to survive without their
parents, where they suddenly can no longer trust even those they thought to
know well, and adults become a threat more than a source of protection and
help. They are kids who have to deal with sickness, injury, hunger, emotional
distress. They make good and bad decisions. They are fallible and vulnerable.
They’re kids.
The story is carried and paced well, suspense is kept up throughout.
It ends on a cliffhanger that made me scream “What? You can’t stop now, man!
WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN?” – so in that respect it has done a great job of
storytelling. And yes, I am excited that there will be sequels.
It’s a fairly harrowing tale – again not as extreme as Pausewang,
but still pretty gruesome. I can’t decide whether I liked or disliked how
amazingly those kids had it together, all circumstances
considered. But would a young mind be calmer because it couldn't grasp the true
horror...or would it collapse for the same reason? Again, that would probably
vary from person to person, but that mental struggle didn't come across as
strongly as it could have. Also, I couldn't help but think that the threat of radiation sickness was somewhat underplayed. The
actual scope of what nuclear war means is missing, reducing it to the playful
horror of a computer game. Maybe it’s intentionally played down in order to
protect the young reader, and maybe it's still coming in one of the sequels, but inevitably I worry that it creates a “meh”
attitude towards the subject matter. What bothers me is that it seems to treat nuclear
war more as a form of entertainment in the wake of the current YA Dystopia
trend.
The question raised for me again is: Is softening young adult post-apocalyptic literature (especially using scenarios that pose or have posed a real threat) irresponsible? Or should young adults be protected from these subjects by giving them a “light” version? I’m in two minds about it, always
aware of the fears I lived with as a child, but now, at the same time, glad I
wasn’t patronised by a sugar-coated apocalypse.
I have grown up with these type of books being treated as a
warning, being politicised, being catalysts of public debate. I think if we’re
dealing with true threats, they shouldn't be used as a mere source of
entertainment.
Because, maybe - MAYBE - we’re meant to be scared to death of some
things.
Traumatisedly yours,
Patty
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