by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: May 25, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2012

Violence in young-adult fiction is inexcusable. Youngsters are malleable and impressionistic and take on ideas from others easily. They don't have the maturity to think through reasons why the author wrote such a book.  Writers who write for this age group should understand their vulnerability. Why would a writer seek as their first priority to make huge sums of money off these vulnerable youngsters? Violence in young-adult fiction is excusable if it is written by the youth: its serves a purpose for them and is a means for teachers to understand their emotions.

Making violence for violence sake available to impressionable teen-agers is wrong, wrong, wrong. Yet they themselves often write of violence in their writing classes with such anger and emotion it often times shocks the writing instructor, but if it serves as a purpose for the young author, then it is necessary. In this way they are venting emotions, trying to shock teachers and classmates, and trying to impress others in this way. Yet, the potential for damage here should not go unnoticed.

Writing is therapeutic. It's one way to be heard. Some youngsters are bookish, preferring ideas over games and other sports, while other do both well. Some children without books, especially those children with little means to engage in the many activities of other children, seem lost. And in centuries past, many youth educated themselves by reading.

There's an extra bonus in permitting youngsters to write out their anger, show off their charm, brag, or simply assert themselves by writing fiction; it tells those in authority there’s dangers to watch out for in their behavior thus allowing for remedial help when this can possibly avert more serious outcomes of flawed and miss-guided personalities.

When this is done by those for ulterior motives not sanctioned by parents and teachers and notby those in the business of helping stressed out teenagers, writing such as this is wrong., It’s the wrong use of a God-given talents. For that second look at violence in young adult fiction this is another view: If the author’s intention is to speak to the natural inclination of the youngster’s affinity for violence and to show them how to manage it in his life, then of course violence must be a part of the plot.

That will be far more advantageous for the youth than violence that is glorified and has no purpose other the supposed thrills. But even here, there must be a redemptive value to the violence being portrayed by the author. One writer of young adult literature writes that violence in literature for young people has been going for he cites the stories and the fairy tales and he certainly has a good point.

But the difference in that viewpoint and the alarming amount of violence being done today is that it isn’t as easily outgrown as were the fairy tales of old. These were of animals and children, while at the same time gaining emotional help from the horror and drama, did not personally associate with the characters. What boy or girl of sixteen of today, or even of yesterday, still read fairy tales? Today’s violence is more of adult violence thrust in the lap of youth still not ready to see through its pretensions.

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