美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Teens Find The End Of The World So Appealing

 

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Here's a sample of some of the titles on the New York Times best-sellers list for young adults - "The Book of Dust," "Renegades," "War Cross." If you can't tell from the names, these books are all dystopian fiction. Elissa Nadworny of the NPR Ed team wanted to know why teenagers love these stories so much, so she went straight to the source.

ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE¹: The plots of young adult dystopia can be pretty amazing.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: They live underground somewhere, except they don't know they live underground.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #1: You get a vaccine² for delirium³ which prevents you from falling in love.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #1: Somehow, a bunch of various figures from history got put into the present day.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL #2: During the surgery to make you pretty, there are these lesions in your brain.

UNIDENTIFIED BOY #2: And once you do get sponsored by a company, you become part of this, like, elite⁴ clique⁵ of people. That one was really scary because it seemed like something that could actually happen.

NADWORNY: Those are teens from Holland, Mich., talking about the recent books they've read. I'm at their book club, which meets about once a month at the public library. Today, they're discussing "The House Of The Scorpion⁶" by Nancy Farmer. There's a drug lord, clones working in a field and, of course, a rebellion against the status quo. Seventeen-year-old Taylor Gort starts things off.

TAYLOR GORT: It's a question of how many moral ethic⁷ rules are you willing to break?

NADWORNY: Amanda Heidema, the librarian leading the discussion group, jumps in.

AMANDA HEIDEMA: Yeah. Is making a clone ethical⁸? Yeah.

NADWORNY: Will Anderson shakes his head.

WILL ANDERSON: No, I don't think it is. I don't think so.

NADWORNY: They discussed this for nearly an hour, flowing from clones to whether or not manipulation was evil...

ANDERSON: Playing God. And I don't like that.

NADWORNY: ...To how screwed up adults are. In fact, screwed up adults actually play a major role in a lot of young adult dystopian fiction.

ANDERSON: It tends to be a common, like, teen angst thing to be like, oh, the whole world's against me. Everything's so screwed up.

NADWORNY: Teenagers are cynical⁹, adds Aaron Yost, 16. And they should be.

AARON YOST: To be fair, they were kind of born into a world that's - their parents kind of really messed up.

NADWORNY: Everyone here agrees dystopia is super relatable. That's kind of what makes it scary and really good. Think of it like this. Teen readers themselves are characters in a strange land. Rules don't make sense. School doesn't even make sense.

JON OSTENSON: Their parents impose curfews, and nobody lets them drive until they're 16 whether they're ready or not.

NADWORNY: Jon Ostenson studies young adult dystopian literature at Brigham Young University in Utah.

OSTENSON: They see echoes of the world that they know.

NADWORNY: He says these books don't always have happy endings, and they're all about consequences.

OSTENSON: The hallmark of moving from childhood to adulthood¹⁰ is that you start to recognize that things are not black and white and that there's a lot of moral and ethical gray area out there.

NADWORNY: Which makes dystopian fiction perfect for the developing adolescent brain, says Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University.

LAURENCE STEINBERG: It isn't so much rebellion, but it is questioning.

NADWORNY: As the brain develops, so does executive function skills, understanding argument, logical reasoning and hypotheticals. That's coupled with this intense arousability (ph) - so many new emotions, stronger emotions than when they were younger.

STEINBERG: When teenagers feel sad, one of the things that they often do is to put themselves in situations where they feel even sadder.

NADWORNY: They listen to sad music. They watch mellow¹¹ dramatic TV shows. And dystopian novels, they have all that and big emotional ideas like justice, fairness, loyalty¹² and mortality.

STEINBERG: The fact that it's fiction allows kids to flirt¹³ with those kinds of questions without really doing anything that might get them into trouble.

NADWORNY: And I think teachers and parents can probably be grateful for that. Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Holland, Mich.

(SOUNDBITE OF HARALD KINDSETH'S "KEFI")

1 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

2 vaccine   

n.牛痘苗，疫苗；adj.牛痘的，疫苗的

参考例句：

• The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives.脊髓灰质炎疫苗挽救了数以百万计的生命。
• She takes a vaccine against influenza every fall.她每年秋季接种流感疫苗。

3 delirium   

n. 神智昏迷,说胡话;极度兴奋

参考例句：

• In her delirium, she had fallen to the floor several times. 她在神志不清的状态下几次摔倒在地上。
• For the next nine months, Job was in constant delirium.接下来的九个月，约伯处于持续精神错乱的状态。

4 elite   

n.精英阶层；实力集团；adj.杰出的，卓越的

参考例句：

• The power elite inside the government is controlling foreign policy.政府内部的一群握有实权的精英控制着对外政策。
• We have a political elite in this country.我们国家有一群政治精英。

5 clique   

n.朋党派系，小集团

参考例句：

• The reactionary ruling clique was torn by internal strife.反动统治集团内部勾心斗角，四分五裂。
• If the renegade clique of that country were in power,it would have meant serious disaster for the people.如果那个国家的叛徒集团一得势，人民就要遭殃。

6 scorpion   

n.蝎子，心黑的人，蝎子鞭

参考例句：

• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。
• The scorpion has a sting that can be deadly.蝎子有可以致命的螫针。

7 ethic   

n.道德标准，行为准则

参考例句：

• They instilled the work ethic into their children.他们在孩子们的心中注入了职业道德的理念。
• The connotation of education ethic is rooted in human nature's mobility.教育伦理的内涵根源于人本性的变动性。

8 ethical   

adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to get the youth to have a high ethical concept.必须使青年具有高度的道德观念。
• It was a debate which aroused fervent ethical arguments.那是一场引发强烈的伦理道德争论的辩论。

9 cynical   

adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的

参考例句：

• The enormous difficulty makes him cynical about the feasibility of the idea.由于困难很大，他对这个主意是否可行持怀疑态度。
• He was cynical that any good could come of democracy.他不相信民主会带来什么好处。

10 adulthood   

n.成年，成人期

参考例句：

• Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
• Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。

11 mellow   

adj.柔和的；熟透的；v.变柔和；(使)成熟

参考例句：

• These apples are mellow at this time of year.每年这时节，苹果就熟透了。
• The colours become mellow as the sun went down.当太阳落山时，色彩变得柔和了。

12 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

13 flirt   

v.调情，挑逗，调戏；n.调情者，卖俏者

参考例句：

• He used to flirt with every girl he met.过去他总是看到一个姑娘便跟她调情。
• He watched the stranger flirt with his girlfriend and got fighting mad.看着那个陌生人和他女朋友调情，他都要抓狂了。