"We have to fix this world now" : Hope, utopianism, and new modes of political agency in two contemporary Finnish young adult dystopias

Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (Eds) (2020). Narratives of fear and safety. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 115–135. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-359-014-4 “We have to fix this world now” Hope, utopianism, and new modes of political agency in two contemporary Finnish young adult dystopias Maria Laakso Tampere University ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6483-4347 Literature for children and juveniles is often considered utopian by nature. For many centuries, the Western tradition of children’s fiction has cherished the myth of childhood being an innocent, happy, and idyllic time. As Carrie Hintz and Elaine Ostry suggest in their introductory chapter to Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults (2003, 5), there are two reasons for the deeply rooted association between childhood and utopia in Western thinking. First, there is a long tradition of regarding childhood itself as utopian, as a space and time apart from adult Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 116 Maria Laakso life and all its worries. Secondly, the utopianism and utopian writing seem to play an important and unique function in the socialization and education of children. Considering this connection between childhood and utopianism, it is very interesting that a considerable amount of twenty-first century fiction addressing young readers involves antithetical themes: young adult (ya) literature has tended toward dystopian visions of the near future. World-famous and commercially successful crossover authors like Suzanne Collins and Veronica Roth have embedded the dystopia genre indelibly into contemporary western young adult fiction. Dystopian works always reflect our fears. The political landscape of our time is filled with horror visions of the future, such as climate change and huge economic crises, so it could be claimed that our cultural conversation has strong dystopian undertones. Some theorists even talk about the millennial obsession with the apocalypse (see, for example, Barton 2016, 5). Although often considered a negative and hopeless genre, dystopian works addressing young audiences also feature utopian tendencies and the hope for a better future. In particular, such works often depict young characters with the power to change society. In this article, I will take a closer look at hope, utopianism, and the new modes of agency that contemporary ya dystopias seem to offer to young readers. Literary scholars have already written much about the current popularity of ya dystopias. Indeed, anthologies have been published about the topic, such as Contemporary Dystopian Fiction for Young Adults (2013) and Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults (2003). Researchers have been keenly interested in international bestsellers and dystopian ya fiction published in English. However, the dystopian boom in many other Western language areas has been overlooked. For 117Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” example, the amount of contemporary dystopian fiction aimed at juvenile readers in the Nordic Countries has been remarkable. In this article, I consider Finnish contemporary ya dystopias, a genre that has seen pronounced growth over the last ten years. In general, the whole genre of dystopian fiction is relatively young in Finnish literature. There are some early examples, but the genre began to take off in the 1990s. Specifically ya dystopian literature entered the scene even later – mostly in the 2010s. Considering the relatively brief existence of Finnish ya dystopias, it is surprising that so many works have been published. Finnish authors such as Emmi Itäranta, Siiri Enoranta, Laura Lähteenmäki, Anu Holopainen, Salla Simukka, K. K. Alongi, and Siri Kolu have established the dystopia as a genre in Finnish ya literature. In addition, Finnish dystopias for child and pre-teen audiences have recently been published by Vuokko Hurme and Timo Parvela (with the Norwegian author Bjørn Sortland). So far, the only internationally known Finnish ya dystopia is Emmi Itäranta’s Memory of Water (2012), which is available to the international audience because the author wrote and published the book simultaneously in both English and Finnish. I will take a closer look at two Finnish ya novels: Siiri Enoranta’s Nokkosvallankumous (Nettle Revolution 2013) and K. K. Alongi’s Kevätuhrit (Spring Sacrifices 2015). Neither of these novels has been translated, and all quotations are my own translations. Enoranta’s Nettle Revolution is an example of dystopian ya fantasy. The novel describes a future world so contaminated that the sun no longer shines and the land is covered with endless clouds of pollution. Plants barely grow because of the lack of sunlight, and food scarcity is a major issue for ordinary people. To make matters worse, nuclear accidents have contaminated the land and water, making people sick. The authorities – the evil and corrupt Ministry – have long pretended to operate according Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 118 Maria Laakso to the rules and principles of democracy, but in reality, they have allied themselves with the unscrupulous “perinists,” who wish to rule the world uncontested. In the novel, nation states have collapsed, and the world is dominated by a totalitarian regime, though many rebel organizations fight against it. K. K. Alongi’s Spring Sacrifices is more of a post-apocalypse, and compared to Enoranta’s fantasy novel, Spring Sacrifices is very realistic. It is set in Helsinki – the capital of Finland – in the near future. One seemingly ordinary day, almost everyone in Helsinki, Finland, and apparently the whole world mysteriously dies. Only a few teenagers survive. Dystopian worlds, especially in the post-disaster stories that both Nettle Revolution and Spring Sacrifices represent, are often dark and gloomy. Nevertheless, they also convey hope for a better future or opportunities for the young protagonists to change the damaged world they inherit. In both novels, the young characters have both the opportunity and the obligation to change the ruined world around them. Scholars of dystopian fiction seem to agree that in the case of ya dystopias, the element of hope is a necessity. As Alexa Weik Von Mossner (2013, 70) writes, the young reader expects and needs stories that at least promise the possibility of a better world. I would not claim that this is something young readers themselves need, but rather something that we adults (want to) believe that adolescents need. However, a certain amount of hopefulness seems to be distinctive to ya dystopias as a genre. 119Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” ya dystopias falling between the dystopia/utopia dichotomy Dystopian fiction brings our greatest fears to life and lets us experience terrifying visions of future trough experience of fictive characters. Dystopian literature is often opposed to utopian fiction. M. Keith Booker (1994, 3) defines dystopia as literature that positions itself in opposition to utopian thought and warns against the potential negative results of arrant utopianism. He notes that dystopian literature constitutes a critique toward existing conditions or political systems in two ways. Firstly, it extends those conditions or systems into different contexts that more clearly reveal their flaws, and secondly, it critically examines the utopian premises upon which those conditions or systems are based. Booker’s definition covers important aspects of dystopian fiction and it is a good definition for classical dystopian literature (about classical dystopia, see, for example, Moylan 2000, 121). Contemporary dystopian fiction, however, seems to be a more open genre that often borrows from other literary traditions. Many theorists (like Bradford et al. 2008; Day et al. 2014, 8) have classified the dystopia as a mode rather than a genre, meaning dystopian features may appear in texts that would more generally be considered to represent broader genres. In ya dystopias, for example, certain generic features of young adult literature intermix with the generic features of dystopia. When it comes to ya dystopias, the most problematic aspect of Booker’s definition is its apparent exclusion of the apocalypse or post-apocalypse from the umbrella term of “dystopian literature.” Apocalyptic works portray the end of the world, so they are eschatological narratives. Eschatology in a theologian sense refers to the end of the world, the end of the time, or the ultimate destiny of humanity. Outside eschatological religious narrative Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 120 Maria Laakso texts, apocalypses hardly ever portray the end of the entire world. In modern apocalyptic narratives, the apocalypse is more likely to be some form of catastrophe (Heffernan 2008, 6). Postapocalyptic fiction tells stories that depict life after the apocalypse or great catastrophe. As a genre, post-apocalyptic fiction therefore depicts human survival after some great catastrophe. These kinds of stories do not fit into Booker’s definition, since the cause of the bad and terrifying future depicted in post-apocalyptic narratives may not be caused by “arrant utopianism” but rather by the pure recklessness, extravagance, or irresponsibility of humankind – or just by uncontrollable natural forces. Therefore, I consider contemporary dystopia as an open genre, that explores fearful visions of future. In Finnish contemporary ya dystopia, the cause of the suffering in the fictive world is most often some kind of climatic or ecological catastrophe. In Alongi’s novel, the cause of the epidemic is not revealed in the first book of the trilogy. In Nettle Revolution, however, it is clear that ecocide and food shortages have created a power vacuum, leading to an unequal and totalitarian society. These kinds of ecological themes are also common in contemporary dystopian ya fiction in other European cultures. Our current climatic and ecological fears seem to make the post-apocalypse the more current and topical genre than the classic societal dystopia when considering humankind’s future in the face of climate change. This does not mean that dystopian ya novels do not utilize the generic repertoire of the classic dystopian tradition, where an evil, corrupt, and unequal society lies at the center of the narrative. The same story can be a post-apocalypse and a societal dystopia, as we will later see. In this article, I use the broader understanding of dystopian fiction, meaning stories that depict a grim, corrupt, and fearful future. 121Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” Here, I understand the apocalypse and the post-apocalypse as subgenres of dystopian fiction. Nevertheless, the connection between utopia and dystopia in Booker’s definition is very important. The concepts are often understood as simple binary oppositions of each other. Tom Moylan (2000, 122) has argued, however, that dystopias are located on a spectrum ranging from utopia to anti-utopia. A dystopia is not the reverse of a utopia. Often a dystopia extends a utopia to its extreme, and every dystopian society has some utopian undertones. The dystopia is therefore more of a liminal genre (Moylan 2000, 122; Basu et al. 2013, 2; Day 2014, 9). This is especially important in ya dystopias, which seem to include more hope than dystopias aimed at adult readers. Enoranta’s Nettle Revolution utilizes the conceptions of utopia and dystopia in a clever way. The novel has a structure based on two parallel worlds. Most of the narration concentrates on the dystopian present of the novel, but the two protagonists and firstperson narrators – Vayu and Dharan – are able to visit a place they call paradise. This parallel universe is a kind of pastoral idyll, where there is a flowery summer, the fields are fertile, and people live in the sort of abundance that the inhabitants of the primary world could scarcely comprehend: The city was surrounded by a zone, up to a hundred meters wide, filled with such a flaming color that I found it difficult to breath, and I did not instantly understand what they were: flowers, millions of different flowers, every color that could be imagined. I just had to guess it would smell like that in the garden of the gods. We stared at it for a long time in astonishment, but we didn’t talk about it yet. We would not go there yet. Not now. The free land, wind, grass, water, and both of us understood that everything there was built with respect for nature, not to its cost. (Nettle Revolution, 109) Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 122 Maria Laakso The depiction resembles a mythical story of a paradise lost. In the fictional world of the novel, this secondary world shows the planet as it would have been in the present moment if humanity had not destroyed the Earth. The parallelism between these two worlds interestingly thematizes time, history, and causality, which are all important themes in the dystopian genre. This parallel structure between the two fictive worlds also seems to question the strict dichotomy between utopia and dystopia. New political agency of adolescents in ya dystopias Many theorists have noted that ya dystopias often utilize some elements of the bildungsroman genre (see Lauer 2013, 44; Hintz 2002, 255). This is only natural when considering adolescent literature as a whole, as it has its origins in this genre. However, when we compare the two traditions of dystopian fiction and the classic bildungsroman, we notice that the actual ethos is profoundly different when it comes to the relationship between the young protagonist(s) and society. In the classical bildungsroman, the young – usually male – protagonist discovers himself and his social role often through hard experiences of the realities of the world (Lauer 2013, 45). By contrast, in traditional dystopian ya fiction, society is so bad that children or teenagers cannot rely on the adults already in power. Their task is no to adapt to the society around them, but to change it. I find this difference important: dystopian fiction for young readers is often subversive by nature. The bildungsroman traditionally depicts a young protagonist’s development from childhood toward adulthood and all the responsibilities adults have in society. This is the fundamental 123Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” idea behind the whole concept of growing up. Dystopian ya fiction, however, seems to challenge the ideology of children learning from the adults and becoming fully authorized members of society. In ya dystopias, adolescent heroes learn that adults in authority are not necessarily good or trustworthy, and they must take matters in their own hands (Lauer 2013, 46). In the post-apocalyptic reality of Spring Sacrifices, all the adults are dead, only teenagers (and not even all of them) are left alive. There exists an important difference between older and younger teenagers. Teenagers over 17 years old have transformed. They look the same, but they have started to act aggressively. They torture and kill everyone they see. The teenagers closer to adulthood are therefore dangerous and sick, and the young protagonists have no one other than their same-age peers to trust. In the dystopian world of Nettle Revolution, few people live long enough to grow old. People tend to die when they reach adulthood due to radiation poisoning and starvation; only the ruling powers have enough supplies to stay sufficiently healthy to live to old age. Therefore, adolescents at least partially hold power in both fictional worlds. This is of course not the case in our contemporary reality. The role of young people in society could be said to be liminal when considered in the context of political structures and institutional practices. In some contexts, young people are treated as competent, responsible, and liable, whereas in other contexts, they are perceived as incompetent, irresponsible, and unreliable. This liminality or “in-betweenness” in relation to the state’s legal and political practices makes young people interesting and unique political subjects (Skelton 2010, 145). When discussing adolescents as political subjects, we must also discuss citizenship. The application of citizenship to minors is challenging, especially since as political actors, underage Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 130 Maria Laakso “Artemisian” heroines, who are strong and independent saviors. The Artemisian woman survives violation, exploitation, and all the awful things she must confront without being traumatized. On the contrary, this type of heroine empowers herself. Such characters can be found, for example, in The Hunger Games (2008–2010), the Divergent trilogy (2011–2014), and the film Children of Men (2006). The ya dystopias of the 2010s seem to exploit the motif of the child savior inherited from Romanticism, where a child or a young person is presented as the savior of a doomed humankind. The motif is connected with a rebellion plot that is common in the so-called critical dystopia. It is typical in ya dystopias that the protagonist becomes a Harry Potter-like savior (Lauer 2013, 40). In this plot type, the dystopian or totalitarian society can be defeated by rebellious individuals. For example, in Enoranta’s novel, the social responsibility for resistance is thrust upon young people. I find it surprising that enormous hopes are placed on children and young people in many contemporary ya dystopias. Hope is one of the main attributes connected to children and adolescents in Western thinking, and it is associated with the temporal distance between children and adults. Children and young people are the future, and in this sense, the association of hope with children and young people is understandable. As the main actors in ya dystopias, young people are situated in an interesting way with respect on the axis of hope and despair. Youth appears as a liminal time between childhood and adulthood. As I mentioned before, liminality can also be seen as a typical feature of the dystopian genre in general. According to Moylan’s (2000) thinking, utopia and dystopia belong on the same spectrum: dystopian utopia is just an extreme form, a utopia that has turned against itself. In this sense, dystopia as a genre examines the complex boundaries between utopia and 131Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” dystopia, hope and despair, and past and future. In ya dystopias, this liminality also extends to the boundaries separating age groups. Apocalyptic thinking signals the foreground experience of the loss of a former way of life. Apocalyptic and dystopian fiction can be read as a projection connected to cultural and technological shifts. As Barton (2016, 5) claims, humans start to write apocalypses when “some traditional mores, beliefs and societal constructions no longer resonate with an emerging zeitgeist.” It could be claimed that we live in an age of dystopia. Many dystopian themes have indeed become less speculative and more familiar. ya dystopia is an interesting phenomenon also when considering the rhetoric of the contemporary political conversation about children and adolescents. It is especially interesting that the temporal distance between children, young people, and adults is often utilized in political rhetoric. The question of “what kind of world we leaving to our children?” is very often used when discussing global or local problems. We could claim that ya dystopias are providing answers to this question. Using the tools of speculative fiction, ya dystopias really describe what kind of a future our children (future teenagers) might face if the current developments continue. ya dystopias are therefore permeated by adult guilt. Against this feeling of guilt, it is interesting how strongly these novels seem to expect that it will be children and young people who will rescue the world. ya dystopias might be somewhat brighter and more optimistic compared to dystopias aimed mainly at an adult audience, but it is also noteworthy that the burden passed on to the future generations is a heavy one. In this sense, ya dystopias are often politically conservative by nature. Change does not Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 132 Maria Laakso have to happen here and now, because the possibility of change lays in the future, on the shoulders of young people. For example, the young guerrilla fighters in Enoranta’s novel often develop an outright messianic tinge. This happens with the expedients of fantasy fiction. In Enoranta’s novel, the teenage protagonists Dharan and Vayu are the descendants of the great stone gods, as is Vayu’s sister, Pavan. Their names are written on the wall in a hidden cave in the parallel universe, a wall showing the family tree of the stone families. Their destiny is to save the world and humankind. Pavan suggests that she and Dharan should rule together and procreate. Dharan does not agree: I feel like the lineages of the stone families are not meant to continue. I feel like this is our last chance. … I just feel … if we don’t succeed now, there won’t be another chance. We have to fix this world now and if we can’t, we’re not worth it. If we don’t succeed, everything is lost. Our children wouldn’t even have anything to fix. There’d be nothing left. (Nettle Revolution, 304) One reason Dharan and Vayu are not meant to be together is that they are both male and therefore cannot reproduce. In the novel’s worn-out world, reproduction is immoral. The most important message behind this address is the idea that responsibility can no longer be escaped. The task given to the young heroes is binding. They cannot transfer their duties to the future generations. The change must happen now. This is an important and quite explicit theme in Enoranta’s novel. 133Narratives of fear and safety “We have to fix this world now” Conclusion Above, I have analyzed two Finnish dystopian novels aimed at young readers. In Enoranta’s Nettle Revolution, the task of changing the oppressive society falls on the shoulders of the young protagonists. In Alongi’s Spring Sacrifices, teenagers are left alone to survive in a fearful and partly hostile environment without any help from adults. As I have shown, both works question the dichotomy between dystopia and utopia. Although the dystopian setting in both novels is terrifying, both works still offer their readers hope for a better future. The dystopian world order also offers young protagonists a space to become independent and fulfill their potential. Especially in Nettle Revolution, teenagers are also given a level of political agency that is usually not extended to minors in Western societies. Particularly important in all this is the discourse that closely binds together young people and the hope for a better future. This seems to show that the recent boom in dystopian writing for adolescents is not simply a marketing trend. Instead, the ya dystopia has become the most important contemporary genre because of its examination of the political power structures between adults and juveniles. Furthermore, the genre reveals how we construct the concept of adolescence in our time. Kaukiainen, K., Kurikka, K., Mäkelä, H., Nykänen, E., Nyqvist, S., Raipola, J., Riippa, A. & Samola, H. (eds) 134 Maria Laakso Bibliography Alongi, K. K. (2015). Kevätuhrit. Helsinki: Otava. Atwood, M. (2005). Writing With Intent. Essays, Reviews, Personal Prose: 1983–2005. New York: Carroll & Craft Publishers. Barton, R. (2016). 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