The Image of Childhood in Pop Culture (Childhood in Crisis)

Raluca Zbîrcea Zbîrcea

doi:10.32996/ijllt.2021.4.9.20

Abstract

This article will focus on the importance of educational values instilled in teenage characters of the Twentieth and Twenty-first century English and American Literature. Education is a fundamental part of intellectual freedom and one of its main values is enhancing how children view, exist in, and participate in the world (Rothwell, 2013). The scope of what follows is to examine the image of childhood in popular culture, comparing two great novels, Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Hunger Games written by American novelist Suzanne Collins. In both novels, children tend to get into various crises, as evidenced by contrasting images. It is here where the survival instinct becomes dominant and children lose their childhood together with their innocence.

Highlights

1 To begin with, article's fundamental objective is to analyse childhood in crisis and to prove that in difficult circumstances, regardless of genetic background or education, the survival instinct becomes dominant and aggressive behaviour becomes the rule of law
Judith Rich states, “nature and nurture are the movers and shapers; they made us what are today and will determine what our children will be tomorrow.” (2009:3) Essentially, it is the parent who determines the future of the child and the way they will raise their child will eventually determine what type of person they will turn out to be
Throughout this article, we have looked at how violence plays a key role in both stories, the only difference being that while violence in Lord of the Flies is shown as a point of no return in the personality of the children in The Hunger Games, violence is but an external factor that may seem impossible to overcome for the main characters yet through a very painful journey Katniss and all the others evolved manage to overcome the limits imposed by the Capitol and pave the way to a better Panem and in doing so offer generations to come a chance of living their childhood they never had which is a childhood free of death, sacrifice and the Hunger Games

Summary

Introduction

Both Lord of the Flies and Hunger Games could be novels about the evil of the human heart; as Harold Bloom points out it may be about “the frightening potential of children for violence.”(2010:58) The intriguing fact is that both Collins and Golding manage to manipulate the reader in such an easy manner that we temporally forget that the characters of the novels are children and not adults and by the end of the narrative, it all comes as a shock when realising that they are children after all and “we are willing to accept anything but this, even an atomic war, which seems less savage than the violent obsessions of young Jack and his followers.”(Bloom, 2010:59) Lord of the Flies ends in a rather sudden way while Ralph runs from the “savages with spears” only to be promptly saved by the arrival of a naval officer.

Results

Conclusion