YA Lit and the Deathly Fellows

Campbell, Patty. “YA Lit and the Deathly Fellows.” Horn Book, May/June 2008. Pp. 357-361. 
 http://www.hbook.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/may08toc.pdf

Patty Campbell concludes that YA Critic Jonathan Hunt is correct when he explains that “the dead narrator gives the narrative a sense of immediacy that is so characteristic of young adult fiction, but at the same time allows for a degree of reflection and self-awareness that would probably otherwise seem jarring for a young adult narrator (p. 361).” I think they are right on this count in that the idea of having a narrator who is dead gives the novel  a twist that allows us to believe that the narrator, while still a teen, has been through an experience that gives them wisdom and distance to be more reflective.  Death gives new depth to the narrator’s viewpoint, and is perhaps more inwardly self-aware than most living teens.  Campbell also point out that many teens view themselves as immortal and questions “Is it more comfortable for them than for adults to read close-up accounts of death, since they are theoretically further away from having to accept their own mortality (p. 361)? “ I believe that’s part of it.  As teens, the idea of our mortality is often a distanced event in the far off future, not an immediate concern. Vicariously experiencing the death of the protagonist in a novel doesn’t seem as harrowing or frightening as it perhaps does for adults who have seen parents and friends pass on, and who perhaps feel more intimately the specter of our frail mortality. But I think that’s not totally true. Many teens have seen parents and friends die, and while perhaps they still feel somewhat invincible, I think it’s not fair to our teen readers to assume that they don’t have a healthy respect for the frailty of life. In many respects, I think these novels bring forth the immediacy of making the most of the time we have while still alive, and that’s a very teen-like perspective: to live in the moment.