Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Martina Křenová

Death in Children's Literature

Masters Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D.

2016
 / declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

Author's signature
Table of Contents

Masarykova univerzita Chyba! Záložka není definována.

Filozofická fakulta Chyba! Záložka není definována.
Katedra anglistiky a amerikanistiky Chyba! Záložka není definována.
Magisterská diplomová práce Chyba! Záložka není definována.
Masaryk University 6
Martina Křenová 6
Death in Children's Literature 6
Supervisor: Mgr. Filip Krajník, Ph. D 6
Author's signature 7
Table of Contents 8
Introduction 1
1 Death by Disease 4
1.1 The Narrator 7
1.2 Adult characters 11
1.3 Social Issues 14
1.4 The Disease 17
2. Sudden death 22
2.1 The Narrator 23
2.2 Adult characters 25
2.3 Social Issues 27
2.4 The Depiction of Death and the Acceptance 30
3. Suicide books 35
3.1. The portrayal of characters 38
3.1.1 The Narrator 39
3.1.2. The Portrayal of Adults 42
3.2. Social Issues 51
4.3. Romance 58
3.4. Life after Death 62
3.5. Suicide 64
Conclusion 71
The attachment 74
Bibliography 76
Summary 79
Resumé 80
 Introduction
Before the end of the seventeenth century, children and adults learned

about death together through fables, myths, ballads, legends, folk tales or Bible

stories. Sharing of stories ended around the end of the seventeenth century

when separation between literature for adults and children started to occur and

"from then on, the treatment of death became part of a larger problem—the

commercial and psychological exploitation of children through a special

literature aimed at them alone" (Butler 104). When children's mortality

decreased, and some social changes occurred, death became less popular in

children's literature and as Gibson comments "[d]eath has become an event

that may occur during childhood, but not one that parents must teach children

to expect" (232). Therefore the death does not entirely disappear, but appears

in larger context.

Nowadays, the portrayal of death in Children's literature and Young

Adult fiction is not uncommon, but has not always been so even though it had

been present in children's and juvenile fiction even before the rise of the "new

realism" that was at its peak in the 1960s and 1970s in the USA and in the

1980s in Britain. The "new realism" novels, however, introduced issues that had

previously been considered taboo in children's and young adult fiction, among

them the portrayal of death.

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether the portrayal of the death

of the child and a teenager has developed from the rise of "new realism" until

nowadays, as the "new realism" sees the emergence of the "problem novel"

which Sheila Egoff, a critic, calls a sub-genre of realistic fiction. "This collection

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of books, she suggests, is reductive in its literary qualities, the motivation for

writing being the exploitation of a problem, rather than artistic drive" (Gamble,

177). Gamble provides the collection of signs that classify the "problem novel ." 1

The first chapter of the thesis examines the "disease" books, where the

child is diagnosed with a terminal illness and eventually dies. It looks into four

novels that have been published in the last five decades and besides the

portrayal of the disease and its acceptance by the sick child, their family and

friends, it also examines the depiction of adult characters, narrators and social

issues, as some of the indicators of the "problem novel" is the depiction of

these issues.

The second chapter analyzes the "sudden death" books, where the

young person is faced with grievances of losing a loved one suddenly. As there

are many "types"of sudden death, every one of four books depicts a different

issue, e.g. murder, terrorism, accident, sudden allergic reaction. The chapter

tries to determine, whether the books focus solely on the depiction of the

acceptance, i.e. its focus is the bibliotherapeutic value, rather than artistic one.

The third chapter focuses on the probably most controversial depiction

of death - suicide and it tries to determine whether there have been some

changes in the attitude toward depicting such a controversial social issue. The

chapter focuses on the five novels, two of them from last year.

There are thirteen primary sources used in the thesis: A Summer to Die,

Kira-Kira, A Time for Dancing, The Fault in Our Stars in the first chapter. In the

chapter examing the "sudden death" books, A Taste of Blackberries, Bridge to

1
See the attachment.

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Terabithia, The Lonely Bones, and My Sister Lives in the Mantelpiece are among

primary sources. The "suicide books" chapter analyzes five primary sources:

Blindfold, So Long at the Fair, Suicide Notes, My Heart and Other Black Holes,

and All the Bright Places.

There are several secondary sources used in the thesis, such as

Kimberley Reynolds' Radical Children's Literature, a critical text of twentieth and

twenty-first century Children's literature and Nikki Gamble's Exploring Children's

Literature, a pedagogical guide to teaching Children's literature. Several essays

on different aspects of the portrayal of death are used: Lois Rauch Gibson's and

Laura M. Zaidman's "Death in Children's Literature: A Taboo or Not Taboo",

Marilyn Fain Apseloff's "Death in Adolescent Literature: Suicide" or Caroline C.

Hunts "Dead Athletes and Other Martyrs are used to help determine the

development of death in Children's literature. Some interviews, magazine

articles and statistics are used as well.

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 1 Death by Disease
The narrative in the "death by disease" novels tends to be in the first

person as in most "death" novels, the difference only being who the narrator is.

Peter Hunt divides the "the death books" into four categories: (1) "dead

athlete" books; (2) "dead relative" books; (3) sudden-death" books; (4) "good-

bye" books with the arrangement from the most formulaic and popular to the

least (242). These categories are a bit outdated and their arrangement is not
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true anymore as the "good-bye" and "sudden death" books are gaining

popularity among readers . 3

"Dead athlete", "dead relative", and "good-bye" books all fall under the

terminal disease topic. According to Hunt's characterization, the hero of the

"dead athlete" books is generally a dying young boy who is almost a saint

figure and his only flaw appears to be his disease, but the narrator is either a

parent or a friend. Meanwhile, in the "dead relative" books, the main character

is most often a girl, a relative, of a dying person. The main character tends to

be flawed and envious of her dying relative and she matures through the

experience. In the "good-bye" books the focus is on the dying person and their

acceptance of their disease and fate (242). This chapter analyzes four novels

that have been published since the rise of "new realism" in children's books:

2
O u t d a t e d b e c a u s e a c c o r d i n g to Hunt, s u i c i d e belongs to the "sudden death" books,
which is not true n o w a d a y s as s o m e suicide b o o k s c a n fall under the c a t e g o r y of
"good-bye" books, i.e. J a s m i n e W a r g a ' s My Heart and Other Black Holes narrated by
a t e e n a g e r who is about to commit s u i c i d e .
3
T h e 2012 novel The Fault in Our Stars w a s number 1 N e w York T i m e s bestseller and
c o n s e q u e n t l y the movie adaptation w a s r e l e a s e d in 2014, it also r e c e i v e d positive
critical a c c l a i m . All the Bright Places has b e e n c o m p a r e d to The Fault in Our Stars,
won 201 5 G o o d r e a d s R e a d e r ' s C h o i c e A w a r d for Y A fiction and the movie release
date has been set to 2 0 1 8 .

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Lois Lowry's A Summer to Die (1977), Davida Wills Hurwin's A Time for Dancing

(1997), Cynthia Kadohata' Kira-Kira (2004) and John Green's The Fault in Our

Stars (2012).

A Summer to Die is the first novel of an American author Lois Lowry

(born 1937, Honolulu, HI), who has won two Newbery medals - none of them

for A Summer to Die. She was a finalist in 2000 for the international Hans

Christian Andersen Award and received the Margaret Edwards Award for her

contribution in writing for teens. She is known for exploring issues such as

racism, terminal illness, murder, and the Holocaust in her literary works. A

Summer to Die, a story narrated by Meg who finds out that her older sister is

dying, is inspired by Lowry's experience of losing her sister, though as she

describes in the afterword, the book is fictional, only the feelings are real.

The second book that is going to be analyzed is Kira-Kiraas it belongs

to the "dead relative" books together with A Summer to Die. These two books

are similar, yet Kira-Kira has more to offer. Kira-Kira was written by Cynthia

Kadohata (born 1956, Chicago, IL) - a Japanese American author whose works

have been recognized several times. It is the novel Kira-Kira that Kadohata is

best known for. It is a YA novel about a Japanese family living in the 1950s US

narrated by an eleven-year-old Katie whose older sister Lynn becomes sick and

eventually dies. Cynthia Kadohata won the Newbery medal for Kira-Kira in 2005

and has written several children's books and YA novels such as Weedflower

(2006, a PEN USA Award), Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam (2007), Outside

Beauty(2008), etc.

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 Next, Davida Wills Hurwin's A Time for Dancingis going to be

examined. Davida Wills Hurwin (born 1950, San Fransico, CA) is a teacher at

Crossroads School for Arts and Sciences and an author of a few novels, among

them A Time for Dancing {for which she won an ALA Best Book for Young

Adults), The Farther You Run, Circle the Soul Softly, and Freaks and

Revelations. A Time for Dancing\s Hurwin's first novel and the only one that

has been adapted for the screen. Although it was never released theatrically in

the US or the UK, it became a blockbuster in Italy. The novel is a story told

through eyes of two teenagers, Julie and Sam, who are best friends and do

everything together. Both like dancing, but Julie is the one truly passionate and

makes dance her priority even during cancer treatment. However, the effects of

the treatment make it almost impossible for her to continue pursuing her

passion.

The last book in this chapter is John Green's The Fault in Our Stars.

John Green (born 1977, Indianapolis, IN) is probably the most popular

contemporary author of Young Adult Fiction. He has written six YA novels,

published a few short stories, he has launched the Crash Course on youtube, a

project to educate high-schoolers, and he also participates in several

humanitarian projects. In 2006 he won a Michael L. Printz Award for his debut

novel Looking for Alaska. The Fault in Our Stars \s probably his most

recognizable novel, as it became the number one New York Times bestseller in

2012 and has earned him critical acclaim. The New York Times describes him as

the most popular genre of YA literature - using the term "GreenLit"- a genre

that "consists of realistic stories told by a funny, self-aware teenage narrator.

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These novels tend to have sharp dialogue, defective authority figures,

occasional boozing, unrequited crushes and one or more heartbreaking twists"

(Jacobs). The Fault in Our Stars is a story about two teenagers, Hazel and Gus,

suffering from terminal diseases, who meet in a support group for cancer

patients, connect and suffer together.

1.1 The Narrator

A Summer to Die belongs to the "dead relative" books, where the

center of attention is not the person suffering from a disease, but their relative.

The narration begins when the family of four moves into a small house in the

country and the narrator - a thirteen-year-old girl Meg - has to adjust to many

new things. One of them means sharing a room with her older sister Molly,

which does not particularly please Meg, because of the lack of privacy:

The hardest part about living in the same room with someone is that it's

hard to keep anything hidden... I mean the parts of yourself that are

private: the tears you want to shed sometimes for no reason, the

thoughts you want to think in solitary place, the words you want say

aloud to hear how they sound, but only to yourself (Lowry 4).

It is the difference between the two sisters that makes it difficult for Meg as she

does not have her sister's looks and popularity among classmates and they do

not seem to connect mostly due to their age difference. Though they are only

three years apart, Molly is interested in boys, at times she even ponders upon

marriage, which is foreign to Meg as she is not at that stage yet. Even after

Molly becomes ill, Meg expresses her thoughts on Molly's obsession with

beauty: "Part of why is Molly being so obnoxious, I think, is because she does

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not look very good, and it was always so important to Molly to look pretty"

(76). More importantly, Meg can become very angry with Molly not because

Molly likes to look pretty, but because Meg envies Molly her good looks even

after the treatment for the illness starts damaging Molly's body: "To hear her

talk, you'd think she was really a mess, when the truth is, that she is still billion

time prettier than I am, which is why I am so sick of listening to her" (108). It

is only after the death of her sister, when looking at the picture of herself, that

Meg realizes she has been beautiful all along.

Kadohata's Kira-Kira is also a story of two sisters, and it shows the kind

of relationship that usually occurs between sisters: one of love and petty

arguments. The relationship between sisters in Kira-Kira is portrayed with more

detail than the one in A Summer to Die. While Meg mostly depicts the

differences between herself and Molly, and focuses on their lives in the new

home, the relationship between Katie and Lynn has more layers. When Katie

first talks about her sister Lynn, she mentions how Lynn has saved her life and

it is clear that she looks up to her. While in A Summer to Die, Meg envies Molly

the good looks, in Kira-Kira, Katie admires Lynn for her intelligence: "Later that

afternoon, when I didn't know an answer, my teacher looked disappointed and

said: 'I've heard your sister is very smart.' I didn't hold this against Lynn,

though, I was proud of her" (Kadohata 55). Kadohata explores the relationship

of the two sisters in-depth, as it goes through various stages, from endless

admiration when Katie believes her sister is a genius and they are best friends,

through stages of loneliness, when Lynn finds herself a new best friend in one

of her classmates, to realizing that even though there will be ups and downs in

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their relationship, they will always love each other. Similarly to Meg, Katie

grows and matures through the process of the disease and only after the death

of her sister does she realize that she is no less intelligent than her sister Lynn

used to be: "I guess because Lynn was so smart and it had seemed easy for

her to get good grades, I never noticed how hard she worked. I thought that

getting an A was something that happened to you, not something you made

happen" (229).

There are two narrators in A Time for Dancing, one is the "good-bye"

narrator and the other one is the "dead athlete" narrator. Two best friends take

turns narrating the story of their friendship when suddenly one of them

becomes terminally ill. Although both girls are dancers, Julie is the true athlete,

the one who makes dance her priority. Whenever Sam narrates their story, she

depicts Julie as a perfect girl whose passion is dance and who does not have

flaws. When occasionally she behaves angrily or inappropriately, it is portrayed

as the influence of chemotherapy. This is her only flaw, thus the "dead-

athlete"narrative. In Sam's eyes, cancer destroys almost everything in Julia, but

it does not destroy the tools of her trade: "Everything else had been changed

by the cancer - her face, her hair, her body - but those long fingers, those

delicate dancer hands, were untouched and exquisitely beautiful" (Hurwin 244).

Moreover, Julie achieves immortality through dance: "The casket sat in front of

the church, open to all. I [Sam] didn't look. Whoever was there, wasn't Jules.

Jules was at the ocean now, being a seagull. Dancing. And Free" (257).

When Julia narrates the story, the reader sees that she is a normal

teenager dealing with everyday problems, such as little arguments with her

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little sister, boy troubles, or the life in the dance group. When she finds out that

she has cancer, her world is destroyed and she needs to come to terms with

changes cancer brings to her life, i.e. weak body, hair loss, inability to

participate in school life and, more importantly to her, dancing. In addition, she

feels alienated even more, because people around her do not know how to

treat her, except for her mom and Sam: "Sam was the only person besides my

mom that seemed to be able to remember I was still Juliana. Whatever

happened, I was he One and Only. She treated me like she had always had.

Which was great, except when she wanted me to do something I didn't really

want to to" (114). The two polarizing narratives complement each other well

and offer a unique perspective on the teenager with terminal illness.

While Hurwin's depiction of the effects of the disease on the family and

friends of the sick person focuses both on the world of the ill person and on the

world of the people around that person, John Green's focus in The Fault in Our

Stars\s mostly on the teenagers suffering from cancer, and their alienation

from the world, as no one seems to understand their problems. John Green

gives the heroine the narrative voice of a mature teenager, who is sharp-witted,

sarcastic, and well-read:

There will come a time,' I said, 'when all of us are dead. All of us.

There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to

remember that anyone ever existed or that our species did anything.

There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone

you [Gus]. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and

discovered will be forgotten and all of this' - I gestured encompassingly-

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 'will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe

it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our

sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms

experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the

inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it.

God knows that's what everyone else does' (Green 12-13).

As can be seen from this paragraph, the narrator focuses on the existence of

humanity and the imprint it leaves behind. The narrative of the book focuses on

the question of human existence and asks "why" throughout the whole novel -

almost sounding too mature for a teenage narrator, but as the author himself

puts it: "The way teens approach big, important, interesting questions is more

interesting than how adults do, because they tend to ask them without fear or

embarrassment. They're willing to ask why suffering exists, or'What's the

meaning of life?"'(Simon).

1.2 Adult characters

There are a few adult characters in A Summer to Die, namely Meg's and

Molly's parents, Meg's friend Mr. Banks, and a young couple expecting a baby.

While the role of the parents is not the one of failure, as in many YA novels,

there is an unconventional adult outside of the family that helps the young

narrator realize that she is just as valuable and beautiful as her sister. At first,

Meg thinks of herself as inferior to her older sister Molly: "Sometimes it seems

as if, when our parents created us, it took them two tries, two daughters, to

get all the qualities of one whole, well-put-together person. More often, though,

when I think about it, I feel as if they got those qualities on their first try, and I

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represent the leftovers" (3-4). It is through friendship with their old neighbour

Mr. Banks, that Meg finds out her qualities and that she has a lot to offer, and

in the end, it is his photograph of her that shows her, she is beautiful just like

her sister: " Y o u made me beautiful,' I said shyly. 'Meg,' he laughed, putting

one arm over my shoulders, 'you were beautiful all along'" (154). The young

couple, on the other hand, is not given a lot of layers, their role is the opposite

of the death Molly is facing. They are a metaphor of life, as witnessing the birth

of their baby they name Happy gives Meg hope and "for some reason that

made difference" (134).

The parents in Kira-Kira are probably the most developed parent

characters of the all novels analyzed in this chapter. While most parents in YA

books are either only present and do not show any development or portrayed

as dysfunctional, in Kira-Kira they not only set moral grounds for their children

(as in): "my parents said hitting someone was the worst thing you could do.

Stealing was second, and lying was third" (Kadohata 13), they also go through

character development. At first, when there is a strike at one of the hatcheries,

Katie's mother opposes the idea as in her opinion "it's wrong to fight people

who are trying to help you" but as the events with Lynn's cancer unfold, she

changes her mind (95). She realizes that the owners of the hatcheries are

wrong on giving families no time to grieve, and when another child of another

family gets cancer and the union vote is held, the union wins: "the union won

by one vote. That was a surprise because everyone had expected it to lose by

one. My mother seemed pleased that the union had won, so I know how she'd

voted" (237). Katie's father is so devastated by Lynn's death that on the same

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day, to Katie's surprise, he damages a car of the hatchery owner, whose trap

almost crippled Katie's little brother. But he shows a lot of courage, when he

later visits the owner and apologizes to him, even though he knows he will lose

his job. Apologizing for his transgression is more than a parenting act, as

Katie's father knows that Mr Lyndon would fire him and the whole family would

have to move to find another job: "I think that summer, when my father moved

Lynnie's bed, and when he went to apologize to Mr. Lyndon, he'd realized that

we had a choice: Either we could be an unhappy family forever, or not" (236).

He realizes that not dwelling on the death of one of his children, but moving on

with their lives is for the good of the whole family.

A Time for Dancing has two types of parents present. None of the

parents get enough space for character development, but while Sam's parents

are divorced, Julie's parents have a marriage that works, but is put through

challenging times, when Julie becomes sick. One of the most difficult

misunderstandings they go through is when Julie decides to stop her

chemotherapy. While Julie's mother supports her decision, her father at first

strongly disagrees, but eventually comes to terms with it. On the contrary, Sam

has a turbulent relationship with her mother, who, as Sam feels,

misunderstands her. They do not connect at all, Sam even does not tell her

mother about Julie's illness, her mother finds out when she meets Julie's

parents, and is very upset and embarrassed by it. Even during the tough times

of Julie's illness the two never find a way to connect. The last time Sam's

mother is mentioned is when Sam tells the big words "fuck you". Although her

mother tries to reconcile with her, Sam never shows the same effort.

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 Again, the parents in The Fault in Our Stars 60 not play a significant

role. Both Hazel's and Gus's parents are portrayed as caring and worried about

their children, pushing them to live their lives as normal as they can, which is

almost impossible for the teenagers who feel more alienated from not only the

adult world, but also the whole world, as not many people can answer their

questions about the meaning of life and suffering. They, especially Hazel, are

interested in one adult only - a writer Peter Van Houten - whom Hazel wants to

meet, as she wants to get answers to an open ending of his only novel.

Unfortunately, he refuses to answer her questions and Hazel learns that "the

world is not a wish-granting factory" (Green 182). Van Houten serves as a

metaphor for the question that is being asked in the novel: What is the

meaning of life and why do people suffer? Just as Hazel does not get an answer

about Van Houten's novel, she never finds true answers to questions regarding

life.

1.3 Social Issues

There are hardly any social issues depicted in Lowry's A Summer to Die,

apart from the social hierarchy of high schools, which includes popularity and

beauty standards. Realizing that one is beautiful regardless of the standard

society sets, is another central topic of the novel together with dealing with the

loss of a loved one, as Meg comes to terms with the death of her sister through

seeing the picture of herself, where she sees the resemblance with Molly:

There was something of Molly in my face. It startled me, seeing it. The

line that defined my face, the line that separated the darkness of the

trees from the light that curved into my forehead and cheek was the

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 same line that had once identified Molly by its shape. The way I held my

shoulders was the way she held hers. It was a transient thing, I knew,

but when Will had held the camera and released the shutter for one five-

hundredth of a second, he had captured it and made permanent

whatever of Molly was in me. I was grateful and glad (150-151).

It is then, when she realizes that though generally not considered beautiful,

there must be some beauty in her, as she can see Molly in herself.

Interestingly, while every "disease" novel describes the effects on the

emotional well-being of the whole family, Kira-Kira is the only novel that

describes the financial difficulties a family faces, when encountered with a

terminal illness. On a few occasions, Katie mentions medical bills and how they

affect the whole family:

Because of Lynn's medical bills, soon my parents were getting behind

on the mortgage. All they did was work. My mother came home only to

sleep, and my father did not come home at all ... My parents were so

exhausted, I wasn't sure they even realized what arrangements we

were making each day. Some days nobody stayed with us (Kadohata

180).

Even though their financial problems are intertwined with them being a poor

working class family, nevertheless, that does not mean that terminal illness

never affects family's finance. As Katie's family are Japanese immigrants, they

occasionally experience racism. One day, when going into a motel, they have to

wait for a long time before their presence is even acknowledged, and then they

are told that'"Indians stay in the back room/She pushed a key and registration

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card toward my father. 'We are not Indian/ I said. 'Mexicans, too.' My father

was dark that summer from working in the backyard" (27). Eventually, they

accept back rooms, but have to pay two dollars extra.

In A Time for Dancing, Hurwin points out the dangers of alternative

medicine. After several chemotherapy sessions which destroy Julie's body, she

decides to stop the treatment and opts for an alternative one. Unfortunately,

the healer recommends a "good healthy" diet that ultimately makes Julie's body

weaker: '"Julie's good healthy diet,'Dr. Conner interrupted, 'has made her body

anemic. Dangerously so" (185). Hurwin points out the fact, that people

sometimes fall for alternative treatments and do not listen to doctors, which

often leads to damage and even death.

The main issue The Fault in Our Stars deals with, is the alienation

cancer patients often feel, as people do not usually know how to approach

them. Hazel attends asupport group for young cancer patients, which does not

serve only for cancer patients who deal with possibly being terminal, but it

functions as an ordinary social interaction group. Green also stresses the

difficulty some people might have keeping relationships with cancer patients, or

the effects the treatment could have on them, when Hazel's and Gus's friend

Issac is about to face the surgery that will leave him blind:

"She [Isaac's ex-girlfriend] said she couldn't handle it," he told me. "I'm

about to lose my eyesight and she can't handle it." I was thinking about

the word handle, and all the unholdable things that get handled. "I'm

sorry," I said ... "It's unacceptable," he told me. "It's totally

unacceptable." "Well, to be fair," I said, "I mean, she probably can't

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 handle it. Neither can you, but she doesn't have to handle it. And you

do (60).

Through Hazel, John Green offers the perspective of others not being able to

deal with problems like cancer and he is not patronising them.

1.4 The Disease

The symptoms of the disease are often portrayed very similarly in the

"dead relative" books: at first, cancer manifests itself as an ordinary flu and

then it slowly starts manifesting itself more often. In A Summer to Die, Molly

has nose bleeds which no one pays attention to until one night she wakes up

covered in blood. At first, Meg is not told that it could be serious, she is

distraught by the behaviour around her, especially when she sees that even

parents behave like doctors around Molly, instead of treating her like a person,

they treat her like a clinical specimen: "Stop talking about it! If you want to talk

about Molly, then talk about Molly, not her stupid medicine! You haven't even

sent in her camp application, Mom. It's still on your desk"(62). Before the sick

person dies, they usually get better, for some time, so the narrator thinks that

their life is going back to normal, but then the narrator notices the change in

the sick person:

Finally Molly has stopped being a grouch. It was gradual, and I'm not

even sure the change is a good one. She hasn't gone back to being the

old Molly she was before she was sick. She isn't giggly, funny Molly

anymore, full of smiles and ideas and silly enthusiasmus ... She's

quieter, more serious, almost withdrawn ... It's as if she has become,

suddenly, old (91-92).

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Then, one day the heroine realizes that her sister is not coming home from

hospital but is going to die. Before she accepts that fact, she feels that it is not

fair and asks why: "And why Molly? Dad, I'm the one who always got into

trouble! I'm the one who threw up on my own birthday cake, who broke the

window in kindergarten, who stole candy from the grocery store. Molly never

did anything bad" (122). Before Meg accepts that it is a disease and there is no

why, she experiences survivor's guilt. Eventually, Meg learns that there is

nothing she can do for her sister but be there with her, for as her father

explains, "dying is a very solitary thing. The only thing we can do is be there

when she wants us there" (135). Although the heroine mourns her sister, she

eventually realizes that "there's a whole world waiting still, and there are good

things in it" and that the memory of her sister will live in her forever as there is

some of Molly in her despite their many differences (140).

Unlike any other character in the "disease"novels, Lynn is the only one

who has a dream, an omen of her upcoming death: "When she [Lynn] woke

up, she said she'd dreamed that she was swimming happily in the ocean. She

sobbed. T h e sun was shining. Everything was beautiful."Why did that dream

make you cry?"Because it was only my spirit swimming in the ocean, and not

really me'" (Kadohata 63). Slowly, the symptoms of cancer start manifesting

themselves with no one paying much attention to them. Then, not unlike in A

Summer to Die, Lynn has to spend more and more time in hospital.

Interestingly, Katie never questions why her sister must die. Rather, she

contemplates whether other people have felt as sad as her at the moment of

her sister's death: "A lot of people had been sad as I was. Maybe a billion of

18
them had been sad. As soon as I realized this, I felt like I was no longer a little

girl but had become a big girl. What being a big girl meant exactly, I wasn't

sure" (200). Unlike Meg, Katie does not feel guilty for not being the sick one,

she feels more guilty about being angry at her sister at the time of her disease,

but her uncle explains to Katie that

You [Katie] didn't hate Lynnie. You were mad, because she was so sick.

There was one day when my son was so sick and in such pain, I

thought I should just smother him with a pillow to take him out of his

misery ... When someone is dying, you have crazy thoughts. Don't feel

guilty, you're too young for that (222).

Although Katie mourns for her sister, she eventually starts feeling happy again,

as she remembers that her sister taught her to see the world in bright colors. In

the end, when the whole family goes to the sea, the one place Lynn always

wanted to visit and see, Katie hears her voice saying "Kira-kira" (means

glittering in Japanese): "My sister had taught me to look at the world that way,

as a place that glitters ... but the water started to make me feel happy again.

Here at the sea - especially at the sea - I could hear my sister's voice in the

waves: 'Kira-kira! Kira-kira" (243-244).

While the "dead relative" books offer a glimpse of cancer and what it

does to one's body, but mostly focuses on what it does to the person's family

and friends, A Time for Dancing depicts the effects of the disease and the

treatment realistically. While through Sam's narration the view of the disease

and acceptance of it is similar to the experiences of the characters in the "dead

relative" books, Julie's personal experience is so excruciating that at one point

19
she decides to go against the advice of her doctor and stops her treatment, as

she cannot handle the loss of hair, the weakness and moodiness. Only after the

alternative treatment fails and she has to go back to hospital where she finds

out she is terminal, she starts asking why. While Julie's best friend Sam asks

this question immediately after Julie is diagnosed, Julie stops fighting and faces

her fate with a lot of screaming and crying, but eventually calming down as she

realizes that there is no real answer to that question:

Who could I rage at because I was dying? Who could I blame? It wasn't

anyone's fault. So who could I curse? My parents? They hadn't done it.

Fate? What was that? "God" was the only thing big enough to take it

on, and I didn't believe in Him. And why me? Well. ... Why not? (209).

In the end, Julie decides to leave the world of the living her own way -

dancing. Against reason, she decides to participate in a banquet which exhausts

her so much that she has to go to hospital the next day and dies soon after

that. As Sam realizes, however, Julie lives forever "dancing. And free" (257).

The narrative of The Fault in Our Stars starts after the heroine is

diagnosed, which changes the dynamics of the narration. Families and friends

are already familiar with the disease and the fate, the narrative rather focuses

on making the lives of cancer patients as comfortable as possible, while

encouraging them to live fully. Hazel does not seem to be concerned about the

reason of her illness, her concern are her parents, and the effect her illness has

on them:

I understood: No use wasting good lungs on a hopeless case. I nodded,

trying not to look like that comment hurt me. My dad started crying a

20
 little ... I hated hurting him. Most of the time, I could forget about it,

but the inexorable truth is this: They might be glad to have me around,

but I was the alpha and omega of my parents' suffering (116).

Instead of asking why her, the novel focuses on the world's fixation to leave a

mark behind and the humanity's fear of being forgotten. As Gus writes,

however, the answer might not lie in the obsession with life and leaving

something significant behind, as often people leave scars rather than good:

"Hazel knows the truth: We're as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it,

and we are not likely to do either" (312). John Green explores the idea that

whatever people do, they will always hurt someone, whether by living or dying

because "you don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man [the

writer], but you do have some say in who hurts you (313).

21
 2. Sudden death
There have been several books dealing with the sudden death of a child

published since the rise of the "new realism" in Children's literature, but Doris

Buchanan Smith's A Taste of Blackberries (1973) deserves special attention, as

it was one of the groundbreaking books to deal honestly with the sudden death

of a child and the effect it has on the friend of the dead boy. Smith won the

Georgia Children's Book Award for A Taste of Blackberries. The book was also a

Newberry Medal finalist and was named by the American Library Association as

a "Notable Book"of the year. Doris Buchanan Smith (1934-2002) is notable for

depicting serious topics such as sex, drug abuse, death, etc., which makes her

one of the pioneers of the "new realism" in Children's literature.

Katherine Paterson (born 1932), a Chinese born American writer, is

another important contributor in Children's literature. She has won two

Newberry Medals, two National Book Awards and also two international awards:

the. Hans Christian Andersen Award and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

Bridge to Terabithia (1977 Newberry Medal) is a story of two young children,

Jess and Leslie, who befriend each other and create their imaginary world,

where they spend a lot of time together, but they are separated by Leslie's

death. Although Paterson's story was inspired by true events, Bridge to

Terabithia is more than a bibliotherapeutic book that focuses on coming to

terms with a sudden death of a child. Paterson herself refuses Bridge to

Terabithia to be shelved as another "death" book, as she believes that books

should not be written only for therapeutic purposes, but also for artistic and

22
imaginative ones: "books like Bridge to Terabithia should not be used as a cure

for or fast solution to the problems children face. It is only when literature

stimulates readers to look within themselves and search their hearts for their

own solutions to problems that it is effective" (Chaston 239). Bridge to

Terabithia has been adapted to screen twice, in 1985 and 2007.

The third book that is going to be examined in this chapter is Alice

Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Alice Sebold (born 1963) is an American author,

who has written three books: Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002), and The

Almost Moon (2007). The Lovely Bones won her two awards: Book of the Year

and Bram Stoker Award. The novel deals with the impact of rape and murder of

a fourteen-year-old on the whole family.

The last novel examined is Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the

Mantelpiece. Although Annabel Pitcher (born 1982) is a British writer, her novel

was immediately published in the USA and translated into over twenty

languages. My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece is Pitcher's first novel and

received at least twenty-five nominations and won the 2012 Branford Boase

Award. Pitcher's first novel, narrated by a ten-year old boy Jamie, deals with

the effects of losing a child in a terrorist attack. Annabel Pitcher does not shy

away from depicting problematic social issues, as her second novel, Ketchup

Cloud, is narrated by a fifteen-year old girl communicating with a murderer on

Death Row.

2.1 The Narrator

The name of the narrator is never revealed in the short story A Taste of

Blackberries, the reader only learns that it is a little boy whose age is not

23
revealed either, only that he is the youngest of his family and his best friend

Jamie is the oldest in his family. As the vocabulary is restricted and sentences

and paragraphs are short, the estimated age of the narrator is between seven

and ten. As the target audience are children around ten years old, it is

understandable that the world of the narrator is very limited and focused on the

family life and the playground of small children, and apart from the problem of

losing best friend, the narrative does not touch any social issues.

Unlike in most books that explore the topic of death in different

circumstances, Bridge to Terabithia is a novel with an omnipresent narrator.

Such narrator gives the narrative objectivity, unlike other stories, where

everything is solely perceived from a personal view, without outside

perspective. The narrative focuses on the budding friendship of two preteens,

Jess and Leslie, who feel alienated from the rest of their classmates, so they

form an alliance and create an imaginary world where they spend a lot of time

playing and being heroes. Together with A Taste of Blackberries, it first depicts

the everyday lives of the two friends, then suddenly an accident occurs and a

protagonist has to deal with the loss of a loved one.

The narrator in The Lovely Bones is a fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon

who depicts her own story from "heaven". The story starts as she states that:

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I

was murdered on December 6, 1973 ... It was still back when people believed

things like that didn't happen" (1). While it could be argued that the novel

belongs to the fantasy genre, as it is depicts Susie's afterlife, however, the

narrator is watching her family dealing with her sudden death, murder

24
investigation, and trying to make sense of everything that happened, and it

realistically portrays the impact a murder can have on the marriage and the

family.

Jamie is the ten-year-old narrator in My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece,

who narrates the story five years after the death of his sister Rose. As the

terrorist attack happened when he was only five, Jamie does not remember his

sister Rose as much as her twin sister Jasmine does, and he does not fully

understand the effects it has on the whole family. Even though his sister is

dead, Jamie feels that her presence is haunting, and he only wishes that things

would get back to normal.

As these four "sudden death" books are targeting readership of

different age and the tales center around different types of sudden death, the

narrative and issues depicted differ significantly, although they have one thing

in common, coming to terms with the death of a loved one.

2.2 Adult characters

The role of parents in A Taste of Blackberries is one of protection and a

safe haven. After Jamie dies, the little protagonist feels better with his parents

than his friends: "I looked up at Mom and Dad. I wanted to stay with them

rather than sit with my friends, but I couldn't make the words come out" (Smith

70). Other than the understanding and protection, the parents' characters are

not developed. Understandably so, as the books is a sensitive narrative

targeting little children, offering therapy, if encountered with similar situation.

Adults are not the center of attention in Bridge to Terabithia, although

they occasionally provide help or comfort, as in case of Mrs. Myers, a teacher,

25
that Jess used to dislike: "So-I realize. If it's hard for me, how much harder it

must be for you [Jess]. Let's try to help each other, shall we" (Paterson 159).

The only adult playing an important role in Jess's life is Miss Edmunds, another

teacher, who takes him to Washington to see the National Gallery, which would

be Jess's perfect day had Laslie not died.

While adults usually play minor roles in the "death" books, in The Lovely

Bones, adults play a huge role. First of all, while in other books adults are

portrayed as relatively harmless, ignorant or insensitive towards feelings of

teenagers, The Lovely Bones points out the one type of adult that any parent

with children fears the most - the predator. Mr. Harvey, the family's neighbour,

seems to be harmless, until one day he kidnaps, rapes and murders Susie.

Susie is forced to watch her tragedy-stricken, mourning family living next to her

murderer without knowing the truth. Although Susie's father starts suspecting

him eventually, by the time evidence is found, Susie's murderer flees and

moves to another neighborhood.

Both in The Lovely Bones and in My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece the

parents of the diseased child are incapable of handling the tragedy, and their

marriage falls apart. Susie's father is so obsessed with catching the murderer,

he does not notice that his wife needs comfort, which she eventually finds in

detective Fenerman who is investigating their case as he is the only one calling

it by its name which helps her accept it:

"No one says it. No one in the neighborhood talks about it. People

call it the horrible tragedy' or some variation on that. I just want it to be

spoken out loud by somebody. To have it said aloud. I'm ready - I

26
 wasn't ready before ... Say it," she said. "Your daughter's murder." ...

She pulled Len in to her and slowly kissed him on the mouth (Sebold

143-144).

While it is the obsession with catching Susie's murderer that destroys the

marriage of Susie's parents, it is the alcoholism that destroys the marriage of

Jamie's parents: "Only the more he drank the less he could stick straight so the

next day he would have to do half of them [pictures of Rose] all over again.

That's probably when Mum started having The Affair" (Pitcher 11). Even after

Jamie's father comes to terms with Rose's death, his marriage is beyond

reprimandable.

2.3 Social Issues

While A Taste of Blackberries does not focus on any social issues, as the

book's focus is solely on the coming to terms with a friend's death, Bridge to

Terabithia touches upon bullying and social hierarchies at school. When Jess

meets Leslie for the first time she beats him at a race, and although his pride is

hurt, after she wins over his enemy, he is ready to forgive her, though he is not

willing to be seen with her, as she is different. But one day, after her story

about scuba-diving is read at school, he realizes he is a coward and he decides

to stand up to the bullies by helping Leslie:

After school Leslie got on the bus before he did and went straight to the

corner of the long backseat - right to the seventh grader' seats ... He

could see the seventh graders headed for the bus - the huge bossy

bosomy girls and the mean, skinny, narrow-eyed boys. They'd kill her

for sitting in their territory, He jumped up and ran to the back and

27
 grabbed Leslie by the arm. "You gotta come up to the regular seat,

Leslie" (Paterson 46).

Immediately after the incident, Jess and Leslie decide to create their own place

no one would know about and where no one could harm them, as they could

have any powers they wanted. Although Leslie and Jess are happy and satisfied

in their imaginary magic world, the reason why they feel they need their own

safe place is because they do not feel safe at school. The creation of their own

magic space leads to Leslie's death, which might be a way the author wanted to

point out how much bullying can be damaging to children.

In The Lovely Bones, Sebold depicts the problem of racism people of

color face when under investigation. When police is looking into suspects they

treat a boy, who had a crush on Susie, unfairly:

I watched my family and knew they knew. It wasn't Ray Singh. The

police descended on his house, leaning heavily on him, insinuating

things. They were fueled by the guilt they read into Ray's dark skin, by

the rage they felt at his manner, and by his beautiful yet too exotic and

unavailable mother. (Sebold 22).

Even Susie's father is guilty of being ignorant when he visits Ray's family and

explains that he means no harm, as the discussion between him and Ray's

mother turns to the event when police was almost harassing them:

"I imagine it has been hard for him," my father said. "No, I won't allow

that," she said sternly and placed her cup back on the tray. "You cannot

have sympathy for Ray or for us ... You have lost your daughter and

28
 have come here for some purpose. I will allow you that and that only,

but trying to understand our lives, no."

Ray's mother does not allow Suzie's father to feel sorry for them, because she

knows that as a white man, he can never fully understand what people of color

go through.

While Sebold focuses more on the acceptance of one's death than on

other issues, e.g. racism, Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece focuses

on the impact of the death of a loved one as much as she focuses on the

depiction and perception of Muslims in society. When ten-year-old Jamie

attends new school for the first time, the teacher sits him down next to the only

Muslim at school. Jamie wants to shout "Muslims killed my sister" (Pitcher 25).

At first, he is influenced by what he has been told by his father and the society.

That one Muslim equals all Muslims and he treats Sunya with disrespect. He

quickly finds out that his father's statements, such as "Muslims infect this

country like a disease" are not true as he observes: "They [Muslims] are not

contagious and they don't give you red spots like chicken pox, and as far as I

know, they don't even cause a temperature" (35).

Sunya teaches him that religion is not the only thing she should

identified as: "Then she said Well, you should understand because we are the

same. I stopped walking and spoke clearly. I am not a Muslim. Sunya's laughter

tinkled like the bracelets on her wrist. No, she said, but you are a superhero"

(35). Soon they become friends, as Jamie learns that terrorists killed his sister,

not "Muslims". Although their friendship is threatened after Jamie's father

creates a scene where he shouts at Sunya's family, but they overcome their

29
differences, as unlike their parents, they see beyond one's religion: "I should've

felt guilty that I was letting a Muslim near our house when he [father] was at

the building site. But I didn't. Sunya's mum doesn't like me. Dad doesn't like

Sunya. But just 'cos they're grown-ups, doesn't mean they're always right"

(217).

2.4 The Depiction of Death and the Acceptance

Jamie's death is sudden, as he dies of an allergic reaction to bee's sting.

The nameless narrator is shocked and immediately feels guilty, as he thought

that Jamie was pretending, when he fell on the ground: "I shouldn't have left. I

should have helped him. But how could I know? I swallowed. I thought I was

going to be sick" (Smith 40). Immediately after, the narrator starts reflecting

upon the meaning of death: "What kind of things could you do when you were

dead? Or was dead just plain dead and that's all (42). The narrator cannot

imagine the world without Jamie in it the evening Jamie dies: "No more Jamie.

Who would we have to make us laugh anymore" (44). The relief comes only

weeks after Jamie's death, when the narrator remembers that Jamie and he

used to pick blackberries together, so he decides to take a basket of

blackberries to his mother: "Joy burst within me and I blinked the stinging out

of my eyes. I knew she [Jamie's mother] understood everything I wanted to tell

her... In my relief I felt that Jamie, too, was glad the main sadness was over"

(84-85).

The bibliotherapy is not the whole point of Bridge to Terabithia, even

though it is a part of it. Unlike most of the "death" books, death is omnipresent,

30
as the two protagonist do not shy away from talking about death, rather they

are fascinated by it. The first time the two children mention death is when

Leslie talks about Moby Dick and tells the whole story to Jess, who is

fascinated: "Leslie began to spin out a wonderful story about a whale and a

crazy sea captain who was bent on killing it. His [Jess's] fingers itched to try to

draw it on paper" (25). For the first time through the story of Ahab, Jess

becomes acquainted with death as an obsession and Ahab's willingness to

destroy everything even himself to get the whale. The story is so captivating

that Jess wants to put it on paper. Next death story that Leslie mentions is the

one of Hamlet, a revenge story. Again, Jess seems fascinated so much that he

wants to portray the death somehow: "In his head he drew the shadowy castle

with the tortured prince pacing the parapets. How could you make a ghost

come out of the fog" (31). Though Leslie introduces death as an obsession or a

revenge to Jesse, when Jesse takes her to church during Easter, it is his time to

introduce the biblical story of the death of Jesus which Leslie does not see as

many other Christians there, she does not see it as a cautionary tale for the

people or that it is people's fault that Christ had to die, in her eyes the story is

wonderful: "It's really kind of a beautiful story-like Abraham Lincoln or Socrates

- or Asian" (50). Here she makes the connection to Narnia stories, where the

Asian sacrifices himself to save others from the white witch. Although Jesse is

acquainted with different types of death and knows that death can symbolize

revenge, obsession, and sacrifice, it is not until he encounters the real death,

he begins to understand that it can symbolize many things but the main thing is

that it is inevitable and that one needs to make peace with it.

31
 The Lonely Bones is also a story of acceptance of one's death. When

Susie is taken away from her family, everybody is devastated, including Susie

herself. While Susie's acceptance and happiness happen, after she returns to

earth and possesses the body of her best friend to experience what has been

taken away from her: sex and intimacy with her first love, family's acceptance

of Susie's death is real. Every member of the family must realize that in order to

be truly happy they need to move on with their lives. Once they accept it, the

marriage of Susie's parents can be repaired and Susie's sister realizes that she

deserves a happy life.

As the narrator Jamie was only five-years old when his sister Rose died

in the terrorist attack, he cannot fully comprehend why his family is so affected

and dysfunctional five years later. He has a hard time understanding why his

father cannot let go of Rose's ashes, and why he drinks and neglects the family.

Only after Jamie's beloved cat Roger dies, is Jamie capable of understanding.

He goes through the stages of grief he has seen his father go through: hurt,

anger, denial, grief. This experience allows the father and son bond:

Dad pulled me to my feet and gave me the first hug that I can

remember. It was strong and tight and safe and I pushed my face into

his chest. My shoulders shook and my breath came in gasps and my

tears made his t-shirt wet. He didn't tell me to Sssh and he didn't say

Calm down and he didn't ask What's wrong. He knew it hurt too much

to say out loud (Pitcher 201)

32
Not only the two bond, but finally, the father is capable of letting go of Rose's

ashes. Together with Jamie, they say good-bye to their loved ones and

together they started something new - a family:

When we finished our tea we just sort of stared at each other.

Something big had happened to us that morning. Everything was

different. And even though my tummy ached and my heart ached and

my throat ached and the tears kept falling, I knew that the change

wasn't all bad. That something good had happened too. Jas still didn't

eat. Dad still drank. But we stayed together all day (205).

33
34
 3. Suicide books
Although issues such as substance abuse, abortion, sex, depression,

self-harm, and suicide have been addressed at schools and homes for decades

(nowadays more than ever, perhaps), their depiction in youth literature has not

always been welcome. Attitudes towards depictions of self-harm, depression or

suicide have been slowly changing despite the ongoing debate whether these

issues should be depicted in children's and juvenile literature at all. This debate

among adults on what is suitable for children has roots in the nineteenth

century, when educationalists focused on the way in which the stories could

potentially prevent children from growing up to be rational and capable adults,

and has shifted to the current concern about how the materials for children

could be potentially more harmful rather than helpful to them (Reynolds 88-89).

Despite the urge to protect youngsters from reading about difficult

topics, not only do these young people show interest in reading fiction about

death (as Caroline Hunt in her article from 1991 observes, "these excellent

books [sudden death by accident], however, are far less popular with

adolescent readers than the most common kind of "sudden death" tale: the

"suicide book") - these books also prove to be useful to them when being

encountered with a similar situation (244). These works have been used to help

their readers cope with such situations and, in fact, children's books about

dying have been incorporated into hospital libraries and are used as

35
bibliotherapy . They have changed the views of adults on the appropriateness
4

of these topics in literature enough for Kenneth Kid to note that there "seems

to be a consensus now that children's literature is the most rather than the

least appropriate forum for trauma work" (qtd in Reynolds, 89). There have

always been critics, writers who defended the portrayal of issues such as self-

harm, death, sex, drug abuse, suicide, etc and thought it rather therapeutic

than harmful because, as Reynolds points out,

[b]y making it possible for children to encounter such emotions and

situations [dark emotions, damaged lives, disturbed behaviours] on the

page, these works are not only reshaping children's literature, but also

creating opportunities for young people to gain insights into themselves

and those around them that may have positive long-term social and

emotional benefits (89).

Opinions such as this one and the demand on the part of children and

teenagers for literature depicting these issues are closely connected with the

increasing or decreasing numbers of children committing the acts of self-harm,

suicide, drug abuse, abortion, etc. Indeed, the correlation between teenage

suicide rates and the demand for the novels dealing with this issue seems to be

too close to be coincidental. The increase in teenage suicide from the 1970s

until 1988 is followed by the rise of suicide novels published in the United

States . In the 1980s and early 1990s, the US saw the apex in publication of
5

suicide books, such as Tunnel Vision by Fran Arric (1981), Notes for Another

4
Walker, M a r y Edith, and Judith Jones. Bulletin of Medical Library Association(19&6): 16-
18. Web. 16 Feb. 2016.
5
C h i l d Trends DataBank states that between 1970s and 1988 the suicide rate increased from 6
to 11 per 100,000 population among ages 15-19.

36
Life by Child Trends (1988), The Year It Rained(1985), Judith Guest's Ordinary

People (1989), Zibby Oneal's The Language of Goldfish (1980), Remembering

the Good Times by Richard Peck (1980), Blindfold (1989) by Sandra McCuaig , 6

So Long at the Fair (1990) by Hadley Irwin, and many others.

Although Caroline Hunt is wrong in stating that the "narrative focus in

fictional suicide books remains firmly on the survivors", as some of the

aforementioned books do focus on the teenagers after the suicidal attempt, she

is right in saying that "the suicide [...] is largely a plot device to enable the real

protagonists to grow and mature" (244). None of these books ends on a

hopeless note; the main characters and people around them grow and learn

from the tragic circumstances.

After the period when the suicide rate was increasing, a period came of a

significant decrease in suicide. Between 1990 and 2003, the suicide rate,

according to Centers for Diseases and Control, declined by 28.5 %. From 2003

to 2004, however, the rate increased again by 8.0 %, which was the largest

increase in suicide rate ever recorded. In the next three years, the rate was

again declining, but from 2007, it has been slowly increasing.

The first decade of the 2000s saw the boost in publication of YA suicide

novel, with books such as Trigger (2006), followed by Thirteen Reasons Why

(2007), You Know Where to Find Me (2008), Suicide Notes (2008), to name just

a few. Stories narrated by a person who attempted suicide, such as in Trigger,

where a popular and successful boy regains consciousness in a hospital after

attempting suicide, but, unlike the boy in Suicide Notes, he has to bear

5
Though the author is Australian, the book was immediately published in the US.

37
consequences of his choice to kill himself because the suicide attempt harmed

his health significantly. Suicide Notes, on the other hand, touches upon the

topic of suicide in LGBT youth. Although nowadays, the narrative focus of the

suicide novels is still mostly on the suicidal teenager (or his/her family and

friends), it could be said that there is a new YA suicide book published every

month and a new tendency in narration has appeared in recent years - to

narrate the story through the eyes of a teenager who is about to attempt the

act. The last year saw the publication of two such novels which met with a

positive critical response - Jasmine Warga's My Heart and Other Black Holes

and Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places.

The present chapter focuses on five YA suicide novels published in the

last 50 years and traces the development of portraying suicide in Blindfold, So

Long at the Fair, Suicide Notes, My Heart and Other Black Holes, and All the

Bright Places and analyzes the narrators and the portrayal of characters, social

issues presented, looks into the questions of the meaning of life and the

questions of life after death in connection with suicide attempts of young people

presented in the novels. Finally, it also examines the romance and its role in the

life of the suicidal children/teenagers.

3.1. The portrayal of characters

In spite of the fact that, with the rise of "new realism", the topics

previously considered taboo in YA literature were presented more and more

frequently, the quality of the material was not always particularly high and was

very uneven. New Realism thus brought about the "Problem Novel", whose

38
narration and portrayal of characters has been characterized by Sheila Egoff as

the following:

• The narrative is almost always in the first person and its

confessional tone is rigorously self-centred.

• The role of the parent in the problem novel is one of failure.

Adults are usually shown to be insensitive to anything outside the

norm.

• Partial or temporary release from the anxieties of young adults is

received in an association with an unconventional adult outside

the family (Gamble 177).

The present subchapter shall examine the aforementioned novels and attempt

to determine whether there has been any development in the depiction of

young adults and adults in the "suicide books" from the rise of the "new

realism" up until nowadays.

3.1.1 The Narrator

All the five novels are indeed presented in the first person narrative,

with the exception of So Long at the Fair, where the first part is in the third

person narrative. These characteristic signs of a problem novel that are stated

in the attachment are especially present in the novels from the 1980s and some

persist even nowadays, although, as Egoff herself in a 1988 interview says,

"The problem novels are much better now because they don't concentrate

exclusively on one problem anymore. In other words, a little bit more is going

on in the protagonists' lives" (web).

39
 In the first two novels, Blindfold and So Long at the Fair, which are

perfect representatives of the problem novel, stories are almost exclusively

centered on the narrator and the portrayal of other characters than teenagers

lacks complexity. Moreover, the novels are narrated by the friends of the

children who committed suicide. The act is done and cannot be reversed. As

the narrator of Blindfold, a young girl named Sally, unveils the story through

therapy sessions, the tone of the book is confessional as she is blamed for the

events, thus she is searching for the truth inside her and tries to make sense

of, and come to terms with, those events. As we have already mentioned, So

Long at the Fair is rather exceptional in starting with an omniscient narrator.

The first third of the story shows the book's young protagonist, who is trying to

be someone else. The mode of this section is not confessional at all, as it

focuses on the world, i.e., a "fair", where the young protagonist does not

belong. The rest of the book is narrated by Sally's friend named Joel, although

he is not confessing to anything and feels rather angry than guilty: he narrates

the story to introduce his best friend and also tries to make sense of why

Ashley would commit suicide.

In Suicide Notes, published almost two decades after Blindfold and So

Long at the Fair, the role of the narrator shifts to the child who actually

attempts suicide, but survives and slowly unveils the story from his perspective.

Although the young protagonist wakes up in the psychiatric ward after the

event, he does not reveal his reasons immediately, as he is in denial that he

would need professional help and that he even attempted suicide; the journey

to the discovery for the reasons why he wanted to kill himself is, again, rather

40
self-centred and has a strong confessional tone, as the narrator keeps

discovering his reasons in therapy sessions. Eventually, the narrator learns a lot

about himself and finds reasons for living, realizing the impact which his

selfishness has had on others.

Unlike in these stories, the narrator of a 2015 bestseller entitled My

Heart and Other Black Holes is no longer a friend of a suicidal person or

someone about to commit suicide after an attempted murder assault, but a

teenager who is planning her own suicide. From the very beginning of the

book, it is clear that the protagonist is planning to kill herself, as the planned

date for the suicide is revealed, the subtitles of all the chapters mentioning the

number of days left to the day. Again, the tone of the book is confessional, the

narrator often recalls the past and is trying to justify her decision. By the end of

the book, however, she no longer focuses solely on herself and her attention

shifts to her suicide partner, with whom she has fallen in love.

Contrary to with the previous four books, All the Bright Places has two

narrators. Unlike protagonists of My Heart and Other Black Holes, Violet and

Finch do not start their narrative with a suicide plan: they actually meet at a

bell tower and their relationship (and their story) starts from there. In the

course of the novel, both narrators reveal to each other the reasons why they

ended up at the tower and they confess their past "crimes", too. Violet's story is

the one of survivor's guilt, as she survives an accident in which her sister dies,

while the story of Finch is one of someone suffering from depression. The

subtitles of the chapters narrated by Violet count the days to her graduation, as

Violet wants to finish her high school studies and start anew - her story is one

41
of hope. Finch on the other hand, counts the days he feels alive and lives in

constant fear of its end. Similarly to My Heart and Other Black Holes, the self-

centred narrative of both of the heroes shifts to focusing on the other person:

successfully on the part of the girl, whereas the male protagonist cannot escape

his fate. Unlike in Warga's novel, the girl does not manage to save the boy.

3.1.2. The Portrayal of Adults

Sheila Egoff characterizes the role of parents in problem novels as one

of failure, and this is indeed true in Sandra McCuaig's Blindfold. From the

beginning of the novel, the parents and other adults are portrayed as not

understanding the young protagonist and casting the blame on the young

mourner: "Tessa (that is what I call my mum) is secretive these days. She kind

of blames me for what happened. She says I've got the answers everybody

needs to know. But really I don't understand why it happened any more she

does" (McCuaig, 1). The reader has, at this point of the story, no idea about

what has happened, but they immediately know that the adults think it is the

protagonist's fault. Almost every time when an adult character is mentioned or

speaks, a degree of blame is present as well. When Sally's mother explains her

daughter's problem to the psychiatrist, she almost says that the problems are

her daughter's fault, but the doctor stops her by standing up. The role of Sally's

father, too, is one of failure because he has left the family and is not present in

his daughter's life.

Even when the police gets involved after the protagonist's runaway,

they barely show understanding towards the girl, rather pointing out that she is

42
behaving terribly: "Your mother is near a nervous breakdown with your truant

behaviour. She doesn't deserve someone like you" (22). Moreover, it is the

parents of the dead boys who blame the girl the most. When Sally recalls how

Mrs. Goldstein shouted at her "You killed them, they died for you, you must be

wicked" (27), her reaction to Dr. Jago's question whether it made her angry is

understandable: "What do you think? Have a guess. You are supposed to know

why we do what we do why human beings are such animals, why they have to

get revenge, get someone - doesn't matter who - just so they can prove to

themselves that what happened wasn't their fault" (28). Although Sally is

stressed by the constant blaming and her reactions are often inappropriate, she

is aware of the fact that people behave in this manner in order not to feel guilty

themselves for the part they played in the tragedy.

The character of Dr. Jago, the novel's psychiatrist, serves as the agent

for unveiling the story but, at the same time, he offers certain help to the

grieving youngster. He plays the stereotypical role of an analyst helping Sally

with her anxieties and many times Sally feels he is not helping: "Honestly, I

don't know why psychiatrists are credited with helping people. They are

charlatans, frauds" (36). At one point, she even tells this to his face. In the end,

however, he does help her because she slowly recounts the previous events,

which gives her some peace, although she fully comes to terms with the suicide

only after it has been revealed that it was an accident.

The only adult from which Sally does not feel alienated is a local mad

man whom she calls "Lifesaver". Whenever she feels lonely, she approaches

43
him and talks with him as he is the only person who treats her as an adult and

does not lay the blame for what happened on Sally. One day he suddenly says:

They say that one of those two boys that suicided near that lighthouse

was blind, but they were both short-sighted, impatient little buggers

hellbent on reaching heaven. Their action was selfish - they must have

destroyed the souls of so many loved ones who are doing their time on

earth. What's the world coming to when kids take on God's job? (18).

Lifesaver, although considered a mere fool, is actually the only one

understanding the true character of the past events and knowing that Sally can

hardly be blamed for what has happened.

Unlike in Blindfold, parents are barely mentioned in So Long at the Fair,

and only the parents of the young protagonist Joel are playing any part in the

novel. The parents of the deceased girl are only briefly mentioned as friends of

Joel's parents and their parenthood is never mentioned. At one point, Joel

mentions that Ashley's parents are "a bit hard to like" (67), although Joel's

parents never seem to notice, as they usually go to clubs together. Joel's

parents, on the other hand, are portrayed as typical upper middle class. They

do not seem to neglect their son and they show interest in his life. In contrast

with the clear failure of the parents in Blindfold, in So Long at the Fair their

responsibility for the death of the young Ashley is never mentioned.

As the child in Suicide Notes survives, having been saved by his family,

neither guilt nor blame are present as much as in Blindfold. His parents are not

portrayed as failing in their role: they worry and are not denying the fact that

their child has a problem. They place him in the psychiatric ward and regularly

44
attend therapeutic sessions, trying to figure out how they can be helpful. When

their son eventually reveals that he is gay, they need a little time to process the

information, but, in the end, they do show understanding and care:

There was some yelling, a little crying, and finally a big family hug,

which is a miracle all on its own. By the time my parents left, I think

they were starting to understand that this isn't just some phase I'm

going through. (Ford, 287)

However, it is his sister Amanda he feels most comfortable with as she treats

him normally, unlike his parents of other people.

As in Blindfold, there is an adult figure in Suicide Notes, the therapist

archetype, who serves as an agent for unveiling the story, but also helping the

protagonist come to terms with the events and heal the mind and the soul. The

relationship between the therapist and the teenager follows the same pattern

as in Blindfold, the child perceives the psychiatrist as unnecessary, useless, and

makes fun of him all the time (giving him, for instance, the nickname "Cat

Poop"). The therapist, however, does his job successfully, gaining Jeff's trust

which leads to healing and respect from the young boy as in the end: "I had my

last session with Cat Poop - I mean, Dr. Katzrupus - this morning. Only it turns

out it wasn't my last one. I'll be seeing him once a week. I am okay with that"

(292).

As My Heart and Other Black Holes is narrated in the first person as

well, the portrayal of adults is once again subjective. Nevertheless, the adult

characters play a larger role in the life of the suicidal teenagers in the novel. As

the heroine Aysel partners up with another teenager, a young boy Roman, to

45
commit suicide, there are two couples of parents presented in the novel. It

could be said that the role of Aysel's parents is one of failure; nevertheless,

Aysel offers a sympathetic and understanding picture of them. Her parents are

divorced but the divorce itself does not seem to be a problem; instead, a

breaking point in Aysel's life is her father's crime. As she later reveals, Aysel's

father is locked up for committing murder, so he is not present in his daughter's

life per se, although his impact on it is enormous. As it turns out that he suffers

from a mental illness, Aysel's does not blame him for what he did - she is more

afraid that the same might happen to her, which is one of the reasons she is

planning to take her own life. Aysel's mum, on the other hand, is present in her

life; however, she fails to connect with her daughter and does not know how to

deal with the whole situation that happened with Aysel's father. She cannot

even look at Aysel without being reminded of her father:

Before my father's crime, my mother used to look at me with a

combination of love and longing, like I was a mirror into her past life, a

bittersweet memory [...] It was almost like I was her permanent bruise.

Not a painful bruise, but a tender one made of melancholy memories

[...] That all changed three years ago [...] I've gone from being a bruise

to an open festering wound. (20)

Her mother fails to deal with the situation appropriately and talk to her

daughter about it as "she's been pretending like it never happened" (21),

leading Aysel to believe that her mother, too, fears that she, Aysel, could be as

dangerous as her father, which provides her with yet another reason to commit

suicide.

46
 It is not until after Aysel's decision not to kill herself that the two finally

talk and come to a mutual understanding. Aysel tells her mother that she is not

her father (which her mother confirms), adding, however, that she is sad all the

time just as he used to be. The two women realize that they were both afraid to

talk to each other about it: Aysel was afraid she would be turned away,

whereas her mother was scared would not know how to sooth her daughter.

They both realize that they can talk to each other, and Aysel's mother finally

takes up the role of a responsible parent and offers Aysel a solution .

The parents of Roman, Aysel's suicide partner, are in many respects

opposite to Aysel's. Whereas Aysel's mother seems not to care too much about

her daughter's life and does not talk to her about her problems related to her

father, Roman's parents take care of their son, send him to therapy and are

overprotective as, having lost one child, they do not want to lose another.

Roman's mother shows interest in Aysel, takes time to make her feel

comfortable and welcome, as she is happy that her son has a new friend and is

"getting better" which is "more than my own [Aysel's] mother has ever done".

Roman's parents are making an effort to help their son and be good parents,

without showing that they, too, suffer (although they cannot hide it completely

and Roman knows that his mother cries herself to sleep everyday). Nor do they

blame their son for his sister's death; despite their efforts, however, they are

unable to see that they are failing in saving their son:

It's my fault. I've [Roman's mother] told him that a thousand times. I'm

the one who left him alone with her. That was too much responsibility

for a sixteen-year-old [...] when Roman went to see a counselor, I went

47
 with him. And over and over again, we discussed how his dad and I

were the responsible ones, not him, but he would never listen. (284)

In All the bright Places, there are two types of parents portrayed: exemplary

and failing ones. Violet's parents are exemplary, while Finch's fail in their job.

Finch's parents' divorcement and the fact that the relationship between Finch

and his father is broken cause numerous problems to the protagonist; thus he

tends to talk about his parents more than Violet. The first mention of his mother

comes in the context of swear words, as, according to Finch, "mom taught us to

early to spell that word [fuck] (if we must use it) or, better yet, not spell it, and,

sadly, this has stuck" (Niven 5). Although Finch's mother does seem to be

interested in her children, as she asks them about their days at school regularly,

when they answer, she only half pays attention. She is depicted as broken by

being left by her husband for another woman, which has terrible consequences

for Finch as, so as to relieve her burden, he does not tell her almost anything

and pretends that everything is fine when he feels depressed:

Ever since my dad left, she's tried really hard to be the cool parent. Still,

I feel bad for her, because she loves him, even though, at his core, he's

selfish and rotten, and even though he left her for a woman named

Rosemarie [...] and because of something she said to me the day he

left: 'I never expected to be single at forty'. It was the way she said it

more than the words themselves. She made it sound so final. Ever since

then, I've done what I could to be pleasant and quiet, making myself as

small and unseen as possible - which includes pretending to go to

48
 school when I am asleep, as in the Asleep - so that I don't add to the

burden. (39)

Finch's mother even tries to understand her son's state, attributing it, however,

to his dad. Finch's dad is not present in his life daily, and whenever he comes

to visit him, the two usually argue and sometimes the father even beats him.

The negligence on the part of his parents eventually makes it easier for Finch to

commit suicide, as they both fail to notice the signs of serious depression.

Violet's parents, on the other hand, are caring and understanding and

have a good relationship with their daughter. Although Violet does not tell them

everything (just as any other teenager) and sometimes they argue, they do not

fail their daughter. At the end, when Finch goes missing, they are the ones

acting responsibly and taking the situation seriously, even though it is already

too late.

The only adult other than Finch's parents who is genuinely concerned

about the boy and tries to help him is the school counselor, Mr. Embry.

Similarly to Suicide Notes and Blindfold, the protagonist makes fun of him, even

giving Mr. Embry a nickname - Embryo; in the end, however, he is the only one

who offers Finch a solution to his problem. He names Finch's condition - bipolar

disorder - and talks to Finch about it; however, Finch does not see naming the

problem as a solution - for him, it is a damnation. Mr. Embry tries to call Finch's

mother but, unfortunately, the voice message left for her is found by Finch,

who deletes it. Unlike in other novels with the character of a healer, Mr. Embry

fails at healing the hero of the story.

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As we can see, since the rise of the "new realism" in the 1960s, the first person

narrator has not changed and, indeed, it is self-centered, but the change of the

narrator from a survivor after suicide who is just trying to piece together why

the friend takes their life, through the narrator surviving their attempt, to

narrators before the attempt allows bigger character development. In Blindfold

and So Long at the Fair, characters merely come to terms with what has

happened and they partly heal, meanwhile in Suicide Notes, My Heart and

Other Black Holesand All the Bright Places, characters learn important lessons

thanks to which they grow they are growing more.

As all the narrators are teenagers, parents are not their primary focus,

especially in Blindfold, So Long at the Fair, and Suicide Notes. Nevertheless, the

role of the parent has undergone some changes: from a straightforward failure

{Blindfold), to the depiction of various types of parents - caring and good, or

troubled and failing. Generally, we have observed that parents, although their

role still remains secondary, are no longer portrayed as black and white, and

that authors tend to show sympathy towards them. Other adults in the lives of

the protagonists are usually psychiatrist or counselors, which does not change

much, in Blindfolded Suicide Notes. Psychiatrists indeed do offer solutions and

release from the anxieties young adults are having; in the latest novels, My

Heart and Other Black Holes and All the Bright Places, however, this release is

received by befriending another young person. Additionally, Blindfold has a very

unconventional character - a madman of the town - to whom the heroine

usually goes when troubled by something and he always helps her.

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 3.2. Social Issues

The only social issue upon which Blindfold touches is the physical

disadvantage, i.e. blindness, of Joel, one of the suicides. People around Joel

tend to draw attention to his blindness, which he hates because he does not

like being considered handicapped. More importantly, Sally, the narrator, at one

point feels guilty after tripping Joel up for talking badly about her mum because

of his blindness, but at the point of doing it, she forgets about it and treats him

as she would treat others for the same thing. The portrayal of Mr and Mrs

Goldstein is again one of failure, as they put a huge responsibility on Joel's

brother Benji, who has to take care of him and bring him home safely every

day. And it is also due to this responsibility that Benji feels like he "can't take

anything Joel wants. It wouldn't be right. He started off with so much less.

Sometimes I [Benji] feel guilty. I shouldn't go on dancing if he can only

stumble" (162). People in Blindfold mostly fail to treat the handicapped person

appropriately, which in the end is one of the reasons both young boys commit

suicide.

So Long at the Fair does not dwell on portraying social issues in detail;

apart from Ashley, no one seems to be interested in them and they are easily

dismissed by adults as unimportant. At the beginning of the novel, when Joel is

at the fair trying to forget about Ashley's suicide, he mentions that he is upper

middle class and realizes that up until that point, he had been so comfortable in

his environment that he never gave any thought to other, less fortunate people.

He only thinks about it when trying to blend in and reinvent himself with circus

people:

51
 At first this State Fair thing was just a game to escape for a night from

being who he was, but now people were depending upon him -

depending on him to wash the dishes and... pigs! He was glad his

parents were gone. They would never understand. Ashley might have,

but he would never be able to tell her. (Irwin, 32)

When Joel starts reminiscing over the days when Ashley lived, he recalls how

Ashley used to fight to save animals, how she would protest against keeping

animals in cages or killing them for fur, etc.; her acts are depicted as a "phase",

just as her parents do. Joel himself laughs at her not wanting to dissect frogs:

for him, Ashley's fight for animal rights does not seem important enough. At a

later point of her life, Ashley switches from saving animals to protecting people,

her last project involving helping dropout students with studying. In the whole

community, she is the only one to care about them: When she talks about the

students with Joel, he proves that he does not have understanding for Ashley

or her passion, as he expresses that he does not want to talk about it: "Since

everything is so wonderful, how about a celebrations? But only if you promise

not to talk about drop-ins and dropouts" (139). In comparison with Blindfold,

more thought is given to social issues, but they are not stressed enough as the

protagonist of the novel does not realize the role which the issues play in his

friend's life.

One of the major social issues depicted in Suicide Notes is the

perception of people admitted into the psychiatric ward. The novel does not

explore them in the general perspective of the whole society; it only addresses

the topic through the eyes of the protagonist, who feels hostility towards the

52
ward from the beginning. He also perceives people there as insane and refuses

to be put in the same basket with them: "I [Jeff] am in the mental ward. You

know, where they keep the people who have sixteen imaginary friends living in

their heads and can't stop picking invisible bugs off their bodies. Whackos. Nut-

jobs. Total losers. I'm not crazy. I don't see what the big deal is about what

happened" (7). Even when he meets other teenagers who either attempted to

commit suicide; or were abused and thus retaliated against their abusers by

setting them on fire; young people who witnessed their family murdered; at

first, he distances himself from them and thinks he does not belong in their

company. But soon he befriends one of the girls, Sadie, who also attempted

suicide and through the friendship, and with the help of the therapists, he starts

realizing that his first impressions about people admitted to the mental ward

were wrong and that the problems which other youngsters are facing are real;

indeed, he finds out that self-harm, revenge, and suicide sometimes seem the

only option to either attract attention of parents, who doe not seem to be

invested in lives of their children, and realizes that he and his problems are not

that different from his fellow patients.

Michael Thomas Ford touches upon many social issues such as abuse,

self-harm or parents not caring for their children, mainly through minor

characters appearing in the novel. The major issue in which the author is

interested is sexuality and its exploration through unveiling the story of the

protagonist. Jeff's sexuality is uncovered through a series of events. At first,

when Jeff mentions his best friend Allie for the first time, it is suggested that

she might be more than just a friend. When he befriends Sally, those two talk

53
about everything and do not shy away from talking even about sexuality.

During a game which Sally and Jeff like to play, the game where they watch TV

on mute and come up with their own dialogue, Jeff makes the picture a lesbian

story. It is the first hint that the actual back story might be a more than a

romance with Allie. When Jeff at one point accidentally catches one of the kids,

Rankin, masturbating, he seems to be unable to stop watching him. Rankin

sees him, but does not stop; the next day, in a conversation with Jeff, he

confides in him that he does not want to be a football player but his father

would disinherit him if he stopped. When Jeff tells Sadie about the incident,

considering Rankin's situation weird, she does not view it extraordinary and

points out how boys are afraid to be called gay: "Guys are so fucked up. You

get all freaked out about people thinking you're gay if you look at each other"

(166). Ford does not shy away from exploring sexuality in details. In the end,

he normalizes the exploration of one's sexuality and also homosexuality and its

acceptance.

Other than suicide, Jasmine Warga examines several social issues in My

Heart and Other Black Holes. One of them is the experience of immigrants in

the USA. Although Warga does not go into much detail, she discusses

presumptions which people have about immigrants, such as that they keep in

touch with their culture and preserve it, which at times creates uncomfortable

situations for Aysel, as she is of Turkish origin. When she meets Roman's

parents, his mother automatically thinks that she should make a typical Turkish

dinner for her and then ask if she managed to cook it properly, even though

54
Aysel in fact has tried Turkish food only on a few occasions and has no idea

how it should be cooked.

More importantly, Warga addresses mental illness and depression as a

problem in society and, during the story of Ashley and Roman, the author

points out the importance of dealing with these issues; in the author's note at

the end of the novel, she even emphasizes the importance to accept and

discuss depression and not to stigmatize it. From the beginning, Aysel knows

that she is similar to her father (who suffers from unspecified mental illness

that eventually leads to him murdering a local teenage boy) as she feels sad all

the time. She is worried that she could end up like him, turning mad and killing

someone, so she is determined to take her life before it happens:

I want to say that I know for sure that I'm different from my dad. That

my heart beats in a different rhythm, my blood pulses at a different

speed. But I'm not sure. Maybe the sadness comes just before insanity.

Maybe he and I share the same potential energy. All I know is that I'm

not going to stick around to find out if I become a monster like my dad.

(27)

As the author indicates, the ultimate reason why the main protagonist of her

novel plans to kill herself is the fact that she is not willing to share her worries

with anyone, including her closest family members. Since Aysel is worried she

could not find the courage to kill herself alone, she partners up with a boy from

a nearby town called Roman. Through a series of events, and through the

friendship with Roman, she finds that there is some happiness in her after all

and finds something to live for. As soon as she finds that one reason to live,

55
she decides to talk to her mother and "be stronger than my sadness" (266).

Aysel ultimately realizes that, in order to live, she needs to share the problem

with someone and seek help.

Roman, too, suffers from depression, which stems from the guilt he

feels over his sister's death. His depression and guilt are so strong that, unlike

Aysel, he does attempt to commit suicide, even though he likes Aysel, who, in

the end, saves his life. Whether the depression is inherited or resulting from

guilt and traumatizing events, Warga stresses the importance to talk about it

with someone, as it might save lives.

Jennifer Niven is in agreement with Jasmine Warga when discussing

depression and its stigma in present day. She depicts the stigma of a mental

illness when Finch, one of the narrators learns that his condition is called

bipolar disorder. Finch knows that his father has the same conditions and that

he cannot really blame him for hitting his son and wife. He acknowledges the

seriousness of the diagnosis; however, rather that seeing the identification of

his problem as a path to solution, he feels labelled, stigmatized. Unfortunately,

Finch does not see naming the problem a solution, he rather feels labeled:

The thing I know about bipolar disorder is that it's a label. One you give

crazy people. I know this because I've taken junior-year psychology and

I've seen movies and I've watched my father in action for almost

eighteen years, even though you could never slap a label on him

because he would kill you. Labels like 'bipolar' say This is why you are

the way you are. This is who you are. They explain people away as

illnesses. (271-72)

56
 Because of the stigma of the mental illness, Finch feels like he does not

deserve to be loved: "I am broken, I am a fraud. I am impossible to love"

(278).

Together with the depiction of mental illness, Niven also discusses

bullying at schools. When Finch is "awake", i.e., not having episodes of

darkness, he keeps "reinventing" himself, as if trying to find out who he really

is, which ultimately earns him the nickname Freak. For most of the time, he

does not mind being called Freak, but after being told about the illness, he

reacts by attacking the bully. Although teenagers at school do not have any

idea about Finch's condition, Niven depicts that bullying anyone who does not

fall under the "normal" can have terrible consequences on a young mind, as,

immediately after the incident, the hero feels like he "is disappearing. Maybe I

am already gone" (277).

Another important issue which Niven addresses is therapy after

surviving an accident in which someone close dies. After the tragic death of

Violet's sister Eleanor, Violet has a difficulty adjusting to life; one day when she

feels guilty for her sister's death, she visits a bell tower at the school. She is

seeing her school counselor with whom she talks about the whole accident and

her future, which is difficult for her as most days she feels too guilty to think

about it: "The thing is, there are good days and bad days. I feel almost guilty

saying they aren't all bad. Something catches me off guard - a TV show, a

funny one-liner from my dad, a comment in class - and I laugh like nothing has

ever happened. I feel normal again, whatever that is" (24). Through friendship,

and eventually romance, with Finch, she slowly starts living again and allows

57
herself to feel happy. Similarly to Warga, Niven thus stresses the importance of

talking about, and normalizing, these issues, as t it leads to healing.

In the characterization of the "problem novel", Sheila Egoff mentions

that "titles often indicate that the author started with a problem in mind rather

than the idea for a plot or character" (Gamble). This can be seen when we look

at the depiction of social issues and the portrayal of characters in the discussed

texts. In Blindfold'and So Long at the Fair, it is very clear that the authors truly

started with a problem rather than a plot. Both the novels are about trying to

find out why these suicides happened, they touch upon only one or two other

social issues and the characters never have a chance to grow too much. In

Suicide Notes, the significant increase in the importance of other social issues

apart from suicide can be seen. The novel is no longer only about finding out

how selfish the suicide is or that nothing is so bad to be worth losing one's life;

it also focuses on the exploration of sexuality and coming to terms with who the

person is. Similarly, My Heart and Other Black Holes and All the Bright Places

do not only focus solely on suicide, they also stress the importance of

normalizing depression and mental illness, and the protagonist rather have to

find out about it themselves.

4.3. Romance

Romance plays a huge part of the life of the young trio in Blindfold.

When the reader first learns about the suicide of the two boys, it is suggested

that they committed it because they both had been in love with the same girl.

As the story unfolds, it is unveiled that the romance between Sally and the non-

58
handicapped of the brothers developed, but from Benji, Sally learns that the

blind brother has feelings for her; but as Benji feels guilty for being the healthy

one, he thinks that "Flame [Sally] you're a blind man's light at the end of his

dark tunnel. I must not take that hope, or enjoy your love when it is what my

brother wants most" (163). As the chldren do not seem to have someone adult

to talk about these issues, they never learn how to handle this kind of guilt and

since the adults in the novel fail to recognize the importance to talk about it

with the children and take the responsibility to educate young people, the

suicide becomes inevitable.

Although romance is present in the lives of Ashley and Joel, especially

on Joel's part, it does not play part in the suicide at all. Joel feels guilty for

neglecting his best friend Ashley when dating Triss and expresses that if he

could do things differently as

though we [Joel and Ashley] never talked about it because there was

no reason to bother, we both figured that sooner or later, some time in

the far future after we'd done college routine and gotten into serious

business of living, we'd just sort of naturally spend the rest of our lives

together. (79)

Although Suicide Notes deals with sexuality more than romance,

romance is still an integral part of the story, because it turns out that Jeff

attempts to commit suicide because of unrequited love, not because he is afraid

to come out as gay or because he is not accepted by society: "No one ever tells

you that when your heart breaks, you can feel it. But you can. It feels like

59
something has crumbled inside you and the pieces are falling into your

stomach. It hurts more than any punch could. You stop breathing and for a

while you can't remember how" (244). He is suffering because he cannot have

his best friend's boyfriend. At one point, he kisses him, which surprises the

boyfriend and then he tells Allie about the incident, which makes Allie angry,

because she is hurt that Jeff did not confide in her. These all lead to his

attempt.

In Jasmine Warga's My Heart and Other Black Holes romance, plays an

even bigger bigger role. After Roman and Aysel team up and start getting to

know each other and each other's families, deeper feelings develop between

the two of them. Nevertheless, this does not change anything for Roman: "But

the most confusing thing is that me [Roman] being confused about seeing you

[Aysel] happy doesn't change anything" (187); for Aysel, however, everything

changes. Although it cannot be said that the sudden happiness caused by

Roman's presence in her life is the only reason why she ultimately changes her

mind and decides to live rather than die, as she continually keeps doubting she

could be exactly like her father so whenever she thinks she could be different,

she is not sure about the suicide. Nevertheless, it is the final reason for her not

to end her life as she hopes she could save Roman and be happy with him: "I

wish he would want my help [...] I need to figure out some way to turn him

around. To turn him all the way around" (263).

Even though Violet does not save Finch from committing suicide in All

the Bright Places, their relationship plays a huge part in helping her with her

survivor's remorse. When Finch and Violet start working on a school project,

60
she is not very happy about it, but she slowly becomes very interested in it and

while doing all the wandering to interesting Indiana sites, the friendship

between the two develops. Violet and her sister both had a website, as they

were both writers, but after Eleanor's death, Violet abandons writing. No one

can force or talk her into writing, or even being interested in literature until

Finch comes along and writes her a part from Virginia Woolf's suicide letter.

Then slowly, after being with Finch and talking about life, she finally realizes

that she deserves happiness. Ultimately, she opens to the idea of writing again

and she wants to start a new magazine called Germ: "Germ - noun \' jarm\ the

origin of something; a thing that may serve as the basis for further growth and

development" (323). For Violet, starting a magazine means not only starting

anew; it is a means for her further development and future life. In the letter

which she writes after Finch commits suicide, she confesses what he has done

for her:

Do you know my life is forever changed now? I used to think that was

true because you came into it and showed me Indiana and, in doing

that, forced me out of my room into the world. Even when we weren't

wandering, even from the floor of your closet, you showed the world to

me. I didn't know that my life forever changing would be because you

loved me and then left, and in such final way. (353)

As we have observed, the importance and roles of romance within the

discussed novels, too, underwent a notable development. In Blindfold, it is a

core of the relationship among the trio of the main protagonists; in So Long at

61
the Fair, it does not play any role in the suicide; while in Suicide Notes, it is,

together with the rejection, the reason the protagonist attempts suicide.

Meanwhile, in My Heart and Other Black Holes and All the Bright Places, it plays

a huge role in saving either one or both the protagonists.

3.4. Life after Death

The topic of life after death is present in all the books about suicide

with the exception of So Long at the Fair. In Blindfold, it is the core

conversation and relationship between the young trio, as Sally meets Joel

during the debate, which turns out to have been about life after death. He is

fascinated with the topic of life and death and spirituality in general. His

obsession with spirituality drives the trio to have a seance where they get a

seemingly incomprehensible message, but eventually Joel cracks the code and

it leads to the death of both boys. Although the children enter the world of

occultism, the heroine Sally of the story is driven by the guilt of trying occult

practices: "Oh I hope Tessa does not find out: this [seance] would not get her

blessing, 'cos it would not get God's blessing. At least I don't think this sort of

thing is encouraged by Father John. I wonder if I have to confess it? I think I

will pretend I did not know it was bad" (109).

So Long at the Fair discusses neither life after death nor Christian

notions of it. In So long at the Fair, death is always portrayed as something

final. When Ashley and Joel are dissecting the frogs and she is very much

against it, she expresses her belief that death is final: "It's that we are breaking

a chain. A chain of life. And everything depends on everything else and when

62
you take out one link, no matter how small it is, then you've wiped out

something that nobody can ever put back together" (66). Even Joel takes death

as final when thinking about what Ashley has done: "Hadn't Ashley known that

death was final? The End. Period" (148). Unlike children in Blindfold, they never

discuss life after death nor are they interested in spirituality.

The protagonist of Suicide Notes meditates about life after death only

once, and although he is talking about Christian notion of Heaven and Hell, he

does not conforms to the norms of the religion like the protagonist in Blindfold.

When he wakes up after the attempt, he is thinking about where he is and

starts meditating on a topic of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell and decides that

he would rather pick Hell as "the people there would be more interesting" (5).

Later on, the children often discuss death, but never any life beyond.

Although traditional Christian church is mentioned in My Heart and

Other Black Holes, when Roman's mother is inquiring about Aysel, whenever

the teenagers mention life after death, none of them refers to the traditional

notion of eternity. When talking about the act of suicide and being scared of it,

Roman and Aysel bring up the question of life after death. Aysel suggests it can

be worse than life on earth, Roman feels that nothing can be worse which

emphasizes the guilt and depression he feels. Every time Aysel starts discussing

life after death, it makes Roman uncomfortable, because she believes in the

energy of the universe and "if energy can't ever be created or destroyed, only

transferred, what do you think happens to people's energy once they die"

(100)? Roman does not like her reasoning as he cannot see the energy of his

dead sister anywhere; he feels that whenever she brings up the subject of

63
universe and its potential energy, she starts doubting her decision to commit

suicide as "I [Aysel] wonder if joy has potential energy. Or if there is potential

energy that leads to joy" (181). Elaborating her theories help her decide to live

instead of dying.

Violet and Finch do not really talk about life after death, they mostly

mention life. For them, death is just the final moment. They never mention

Christian notions of afterlife; they rather talk about different concepts. In one of

the conversations with Violet's parents, Finch mentions For Whom the Bell Tolls,

where the hero believes only in living now, as no one knows when they are

going to die. Subsequently, Violet's dad mentions that early Hindus believed in

"living life to the fullest. Instead of aspiring to immortality, they aspired to living

a healthy full life" (194).

In the depiction of life after death, the tendency towards abandoning

the Christian notion of afterlife can be observed. While in Blindfold the heroine

is conflicted with the guilt of stepping into the occult world, in Suicide Notes the

hero does think in Christian notions, but he picks Hell, in the novels of 2015 the

Christian notion of eternity is never mentioned; instead, Eastern or modern

beliefs are discussed.

3.5. Suicide

The first mention if suicide in Blindfold assumes the form of a

newspaper's catchy article, "YOUNG BROTHERS JUMP TO DEATHS: LOVED

SAME GIRL" (7). The society's tendency to blame someone, anyone, for

something that cannot be rationally explained is present from the beginning.

64
The whole story unfolding for the reader is the story of trying to make sense of

the events that occurred. Only a handful of people understand that the suicide

is not Sally's fault (the mad Lifesaver, as previously mentioned, and her

psychiatrist, who knows that these things happen), and unless people talk

about their feelings and try to get help, they would suffer endlessly: "I know it

doesn't seem fair that your friends took their lives unnecessarily... you know

and I know they didn't need to do it. Nothing is that bad... together we might

be able to see some reasons for what happened to them and what is happening

to you now, and to your mum, and to their relatives" (24). From the beginning

of the story, the reader learns that suicide is unnecessary and it is an act that

harms others and that it only leaves guilt for the people left behind. As the

story unfolds, we learn about the relationship between the children, their

beliefs, faults, and experience; by the end of the book, it is unveiled that the

suicide was an accident of misinterpreting the good advice which Benji and

Sally try to send Joel to make him stop searching for answers in spiritual life.

But when they type the message some letters are missing and when he collects

them and rearranges their order, he interprets the message to jump and kill

himself. In the end, they all learn that it was an accident and the blame is not

on Sally or anyone and that their deaths were indeed unnecessary.

So Long at the Fair\s not a story of blame; no one blames the novel's

protagonist, Joel, not even blame himself: he rather wants to forget. When at

the fair, however, he keeps remembering and wonders why his friend did such

a thing. He is rather blaming Ashley for not telling him about her feelings and

he feels angry and helpless: "The strength of his anger and the utter emptiness

65
of the house paralyzed him for a moment" (56). It is never made clear in the

novel why Ashley killed herself; it is rather a question of whys and assumptions

based on her obsessions with different causes and trying to find purpose in life.

She commits suicide after her last project, when local papers, instead of

focusing on the progress of the dropouts, present Ashley as a saviour of the

students, which seems to be the last straw for her. But as in many cases of

suicide in real life, people in her life are left wondering. Just as in Blindfold,

suicide is rendered selfish and Joel believes that if Ashley had approached

someone about her problems, her death could have been avoided: "Ashley, you

didn't have to do it! And you didn't do it just to yourself! You killed a part of

me. It was selfish! Ashley, it was dumb! Why couldn't you wait for tomorrow?"

(148) Similarly to Blindfold, the focus is also on the family and friends of the

deceased and how the selfishness of the act affects and destroys them as well.

From the beginning of Suicide Notes, suicide is portrayed as a serious

problem that needs treatment. When Jeff wakes up after his suicide attempt,

his therapist clearly states that Jeff needs help: "You're in the psychiatric ward

because you attempted to commit suicide. You may think you're fine, but you're

not. If you don't want to talk about it right now, that's your decision. You have

forty-three more days to talk about it" (15). Jeff, however, does not consider

his acts as that serious and believes he does not belong to the psychiatric ward.

Only later does he realize that he indeed needs help and when he befriends

Sadie, another teenager who attempted to commit suicide, he quickly

recognizes the gravity of suicide and the consequences which it has on the

people who know and love the person who kill themselves. At first, he believes

66
it is a free choice of the person and there is nothing wrong about it: "That

sounds so weird: 'kill yourself. It makes it sound like you tried to murder

someone, only that someone is you. But killing someone is wrong, and I don't

think suicide is. It's my life, right? I should be able to end it if I want to. I don't

think it is a sin" (64). At one point, when he ponders about it, he gets angry

that his parents prevented him from killing himself. Even though Jeff finds out

why he attempted to commit suicide, it is not until Sadie kills herself that he is

fully capable of understanding the impact of such an act: "Then I got mad.

Really mad. 'Who does she thinks she is?' I asked Cat Poop. 'She goes and kills

herself and all she has to say about it is 'See you on the other side'? That is

completely fucked up" (266). He's afraid that he himself might have been the

reason of his friend's death and feels guilty: "I was afraid that it was because I

didn't sleep with her" (266). While the protagonist does not understand what

the others felt after his attempt or they would feel if he succeeded, throughout

his journey he learns the effect suicide has on the others.

In My Heart and Other Black Holes, both Aysel and Roman feel

desperate and want to end their lives; however, they both know they do not

have the courage to do it on their own so they team up through a website

called "Suicide Partners". Unlike Blindfold or Suicide Notes, the novel My Heart

and Other Black Holes does not state that suicide is a selfish thing at the

beginning; nor is there a psychiatrist or an odd adult to tell the suicides (Aysel

starts going to therapy toward the end of the novel, as she realizes that suicide

is not a solution and she needs help). On the contrary, the heroine believes that

her suicide would be a selfless act towards her mother: "Without me, my mom

67
won't have to stay up at night, worrying that the criminal gene, the murderer

gene was passed to me..." (27) Only when she meets Roman and his parents

and learns about their tragedy, she starts feeling guilty that Roman's parents

would lose another child. Aysel comes to the conclusion that to live is better

than to die, and asks Roman to find something to live for too, as "there's so

much waiting for you [Roman]. There's much more for you to discover and

experience. And you deserve it, you might not think you do, but you do" (293).

My Heart and Other Black Holes does not center on the selfishness of suicide as

much as the three previous novels; it rather emphasises that there is always

something better awaiting and everyone deserves to be happy, regardless of

how they feel.

Although Finch thinks about life and death and suicide often, it is never

clearly stated that suicide is a selfish act in All the Bright Places. Rather than

warning about the selfishness of the act, Niven focuses on dangers of

depression and the way in which it affects young mind(s). Via Finch's research

on suicide, Niven rather uses suicide rates and the ways people commit suicide

in different parts of world. When Finch dies, Violet experiences what all the

survivors in other novels experience as well:

Where are you? And why did you go? I guess I'll never know this. Was

it because I made you mad? Because I tried to help? Because I didn't

answer when you threw rocks at my window? What if I had answered?

What would you have said to me? Would I have been able to talk you

into staying or talk you out of doing what you did? Or would that have

happened anyway? (353)

68
What Niven brings new to the depiction of suicide is the fact that it sometimes

happens and, as much as it might be selfish towards the survivors, some

people cannot be saved, as suicide is the only solution for them. Niven does not

condemn the protagonist: his death is not as final as it is suggested in other

novels as it is depicted in the epitaph Violet which writes for him after she

comes to terms with his death: "Theodore Finch - I was alive. I burned

brightly. And then I died, but not really. Because someone like me cannot, will

not, die like everyone else. I linger like the legends of the Blue Hole. I will

always be here, in the offerings and people I leave behind" (378).

The novels Blindfold and So Long at the Fair have two things in

common. They both characterize suicide as very selfish and both protagonists

are trying to figure out the reasons why their friends committed suicide. Both

novels are about digging into the past and healing in present; but neither,

however, creates space for character development. Indeed, in spite of the fact

that the characters heal and mature, the endings of the novels clearly indicate

that the message is more important than character development. Suicide Notes,

despite its title, does not entirely focus on the issue of suicide itself. It is said

that the suicide is selfish and final, the importance of self-growth and self-

discovery play an equal part. My Heart and Other Black Holes and All the Bright

Places are very similar in having each two protagonists on the verge of

committing the act of suicide; furthermore, both of the novels stress the

importance to talk about depression and mental illness before it is too late.

Moreover, Jennifer Niven manages to show sympathy towards the person

69
committing suicide. She does not even judge him, as she understands that for

some people it is the only solution and their death does not mean they never

lived or left something remarkable behind. It can be concluded that novels

portraying suicide nowadays show more understanding, but, at the same time,

point out that there is a solution to every problem and issues, such as mental

illness and depression, and that suicide should not be stigmatized.

70
 Conclusion
The aim of the thesis was to determine whether the portrayal of the

death of a child and a teenager has developed throughout the last five decades.

The first chapter focused on the books, that portray children and

teenagers dying from a terminal illness. It has been determined that there are

three types of narratives in the "disease" books, the "dead athlete", "dead

relative", and "goodbye" books. Each of the type focuses on different aspects of

the disease. While "dead athlete" books portray the dying child as almost a

saint, "dead relative" books focus on the family aspect and the relationships

between sister. There are two "dead relative" books depicted in the chapter A

Summer to Die (1977) and Kira-Kira (2004), and their analysis confirms that

there, indeed, has been some development in the "dead relative"books, as

Kadohata's sister relationship in Kira-Kira is richer and more developed, and

there is a character development in adult characters unlike in A Summer to Die.

Kira-Kira is the only novel that depicts financial difficulties one faces when being

treated for terminal illness. However, as the popularity of John Green novel The

Fault in our Stars and the emergence of authors following his style of writing

suggest, young readers nowadays are mostly interested in the good-bye books

of Green's making, as he seems to be the only one to treat them not inferior to

adults, but as sharp-witted, well-read, smart young people who are unafraid to

ask and face answers to questions, adults are often afraid to even ask.

The second chapter focused on the "sudden death" books with one of

the first books depicting the loss of a friend realistically ever written: A Taste of

71
Blackberries. While the story is sensitively written, it is simply only about

acceptance of the death and its value is more therapeutic than aesthetic.

However, one of the iconic novels dealing with the accidental death of a child,

Bridge to Terabithia, has both therapeutic and aesthetic value, even though it

was written in the same decade as A Taste of Blackberries. While these books

were seen as controversial in the depicting of the death of a child at the time

they were published, nowadays, there is an emergence of "sudden death" tales

as people have acknowledged that bad things happen even to children. The

demand for books dealing with contemporary issues, such as rape, murder,

terrorism might be higher than ever, as in the nowadays era of Internet access

to news all over the world, children and teenagers are exposed to these issues

and often need to learn how to react. Annabel Pitcher's My Sister Lives on the

Mantelpiece cleverly deals with one of the contemporary issues: islamophobia.

Pitcher does not force the view, that people should look at each other as

humans rather than their religion, especially when it is the religion of people of

color, but wittily, through the eyes of the ten-year-old boy she suggests that a

Muslim should be called a Muslim, and a terrorist should be called a terrorist

and being Muslim does not mean being a terrorist on most occasions. While she

tackles a controversial topic of islamophobia, she also manages to use the

therapeutic value of coming to terms with death.

In the third chapter, the topic of suicide is discussed. Arguably, the

development of the portrayal of the "death books" is most visible in the "suicide

books". While during the rise of "new realism" the focus of suicide books was

mainly on its therapeutic value, and the suicide had been marked as

72
unnecessary and avoidable, the novels nowadays do not see the suicide as

black and white, but rather offer sympathetic view, without encouraging it. In

Suicide Notes, My Heart and Other Black Holes and All the Bright Places, the

importance of de-stigmatization of mental illness is emphasized.

To summarize, the portrayal of death nowadays has become a platform

for discussion about the contemporary social issues, rather than taboo. Often

the death is a means of indicating that there are still taboo topics in the society

that are in need of a further discussion. The overall popularity and demand of

these books shows that the society realizes that the issues such as

islamophobia, mental illness, treatment of cancer patients, murder have not

been solved yet and there is a need to talk about them.

73
 The attachment
• Problem novels are about externals, how things look rather than how things

are. They differ from realistic novels in their limited aims. Titles often indicate

that the author started with a problem in mind rather than the idea for a plot or

character.

• The protagonist is laden with grievances and anxieties which grow out of some

form of alienation from the adult world, to which s/he is usually hostile.

• Partial or temporary release from these anxieties is received in an association

with an unconventional adult outside the family.

• The narrative is almost always in the first person and its confessional tone is

rigorously self-centered.

• The vocabulary is limited and the observations are restricted by the pretence

that an 'ordinary' child is the narrator.

• Sentences and paragraphs are short.

• Locutions are colloquial and the language is flat and without nuance.

• There is an obligatory inclusion of expletives.

• Sex is discussed openly.

• The setting is urban.

• The role of the parent in the problem novel is one of failure. Adults are usually

shown to be insensitive to anything outside the norm.

• Endings of the problem novels can be most revealing: 'A consideration of the

endings alone strengthens the impression that it is the problems themselves -

or rather the cool anecdotal explication of them - that are the raison d'etre of

74
problem novels, for psychologically convincing resolutions seem to be neither

required nor demanded by the conventions of the genre.' (Gamble 177-178)

75
 Bibliography
Apseloff, Marilyn Fain. "Death in Adolescent Literature: Suicide." Children's

Literature Association Quarterly ISA (1991): 234-38. Project MUSE

[Johns Hopkins UP]. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Berger, Paula S.. "Suicide in Young Adult Literature". The High School Journal

70.1 (1986): 14-19. Web...

Butler, Francelia. "Death in Children's Literature." Children's Literature \ (1972):

104-24. Project MUSE [Johns Hopkins UP]. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.

Chaston, Joel D. "The Other Deaths in Bridge to Terabithia." Children's

Literature Association Quarterly'4th ser. 16 (1991): 238-41. Muse. Web.

19 Oct. 2014

Ford, Michael Thomas. Suicide Notes. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.

Hunt, Caroline C. "Dead Athletes and Other Martyrs." Children's Literature

Association Quarterly'16.4 (1991): 241-45. Project MUSE [Johns Hopkins

UP] Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Gamble, Nikki. Exploring Children's Literature: Reading with Pleasure and

Purpose. London: Sage Pub, 2013. Print.

Gibson, Lois Rauch, and Laura M. Zaldman. "Death in Children's Literature:

Taboo or Not Taboo." Children's Literature Association Quarterly^ ser.

16 (1991): 23-234. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.

Green, John. The Fault in Our Stars. London: Penguin, 2012. Print.

Hurwin, Davida Wills. A Time for Dancing. New York: Hachette, 2009. Print.

Irwin, Hadley. So Long at the Fair. New York: Avon, 1988. Print.

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Jacobs, A. J. "Uneven Field." The New York Times. The New York Times, 11

May 2013. Web. 5 Nov. 2016.

Kadohata, Cynthia. Kira-Kira. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.

Lowry, Lois. A Summer to Die. New York: Random House, 1977. Print.

McCuaig, Sandra. Blindfold. New York: Holiday House, 1989. Print.

Paterson, Katherine. Bridge to Terabithia. New York: HarperCollins, 1977. Print.

Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places. N.p.: Random House, 2015. Print.

Pitcher, Annabel. My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece. London: Hachette UK,

2012. Print.

Reynolds, Kimberley. "Self-harm, Silence, and Survival: Despair and Trauma in

Children's Literature." Radical Children's Literature. Hampshire: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2007. 88-113. Print/

Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones. London: Macmillan, 2012. Print.

Simon, Rachel. "John Green Defends 'The Fault in Our Stars' Dialogue & Gets

Us Even More Excited for the Movie." Bustle. N.p., 27 May 2014. Web. 5

Nov. 2016.

Smith, Doris Buchanan. A Taste of Blackberries. New York: HarperCollins, 1973.

Print.

"Outspoken Critic And Champion Of Children's Literature." Interview by Mary

Hamilton. Aurora. N.p., 1988. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Warga, Jasmine. My Heart and Other Black Holes. New York: HarperCollins,

2015. Print.

77
78
 Summary
The present thesis concentrates on the depiction of the death in

Literature for Children and Young adults. Its main concern is to analyze and

determine whether there have been some changes on portraying death from

the rise of "new realism" tracing it until nowadays. First of all, the thesis

determines the problem "new realism" books faces and analyzes whether there

have been some changes. The first chapter analyzes the portrayal of death in

"disease" books as it addresses the depiction of the narrators, adult characters,

social issues and disease and death. Then it focuses on the "sudden death"

books also focusing on the depiction of aforementioned features apart from

disease. The last chapter analyzes the changes in the attitude of depicting

suicide.

79
 Resumé
Tato práce se zaměřuje na zobrazování smrti v literatuře pro děti a

mládež. Hlavním předmětem této práce je analyzovat a určit, jestli

v zobrazování smrti nastaly změny od vzestupu nového realismu až podnes.

Nejdříve práce určí, jaké problémy nastaly v knihách nového realizmu a pak

určuje, jestli se něco změnilo. První kapitola analyzuje zobrazování smrti

v knížkách, kde má dítě diagnostikovánu smrtelnou nemoc a srovnává zobrazení

vypravěčů, dospělých postav, společenských problémů, nemoci a smrti. Další

kapitola se soustředí na zobrazování náhlé smrti a také rozebírá výše zmíněné

kategorie, kromě nemoci. Poslední kapitola analyzuje změny v postoji

zobrazování sebevraždy v knihách pro děti a mládež.

80