"Has young adult fiction become too dark?" Critical Analysis

In “Has young adult fiction become too dark?” by Mary Elizabeth Williams, Mary wants us to know that YA books shouldn’t be banned because although they have become “trashy as hell” and contain some gruesome content, they are educational and it isn’t right to ban teens reading YA fiction when they have grown up with dark fairy tale stories. One thing that Mary does is use quotes from Meghan Cox Gurdon’s “Darkness too Visible”, to make her counterclaim. One example of this is, “ ‘Contemporary literature has too much sex and violence, and our kids need to be protected from its ‘depravity’. So says critic Meghan Cox Gurdon in a scorching Saturday editorial about Young Adult lit.” She also uses examples from fairy tale books to feature her thoughts by explaining how its funny that kids have been raised with “big bad wolves” and “poisoned apples.” Adding on, Williams portrays the works of YA books to make the author’s intentions clear. “… devour the ‘Flowers in the Attic’ series without having sex with their brothers.” These examples just furthermore show how Mary wants us to know that YA fiction is educational and that Gurdon’s views aren’t portrayed right.

Mary Elizabeth Williams hopes to persuade readers that YA fiction writing has gotten worse, but that it helps kids learn and has a positive effects on the outcome of a child’s growth, and to be disgusted at the points claimed by Gurdon. One way that the author portrays this is by using many casual tone phrases that seem as if the author is talking to us. She asks many questions such as, “Oh jeez, do we really have to have this argument again?” which is used to make a connection with the audience and to emphasize why the author’s focus is right in a casual way. Another way is the author uses her own daughter’s opinion to make her claim. Her daughter claims that ‘young adult’ books aren’t for ‘adults’ as the name states. She uses this source to make a strong claim from such an innocent child, who might receive sympathy from readers. Also, she intentionally includes her own anecdotes to make it seem as if she knows the situation with a lot of knowledge, so that her ideas may come across a lot clearer and seem like she has more experience in talking about the darkness of YA fiction than Meghan Cox Gurdon for example.

Mary Elizabeth William’s article made me think about the exposure that kids are exposed to. Never before have I thought about how dark fairy tales are but now thinking about it, poisoned apples and big bad wolves are things that would be frowned upon if they weren’t in fairy tales. I think that this opens up a new glance that maybe I would like to know more about as it was only briefly mentioned in the article. I now realize that darkness isn’t the only thing that people backlash at YA fiction for, but now for the actual writing quality. My thoughts have changed because now I realize that there are so many opinions and even authors sometimes have many ways of disappointment with others’ writings. One thing that I was disappointed in was the source that the author used as a feel that using her daughter wasn’t very reliable and trustworthy.