Issues of gender is very important to adolescent literature. Gender is the first thing people generally look for when reading a book. Readers look for a character that they can associate with, or imitate. When reading adolescent literature, knowing the gender of the characters in the story, gives readers assumptions about the characters themselves without even knowing their background. Even if the author decided not to formally establish or intentionally state the gender of their characters, the readers would take their own initiative and assign the characters genders based on the actions taken in the story. Here is a general description I personally made up; “Brave and bold, the warrior went into the cave, drawing a sword from their belt,
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Let’s take the story of Princess and The Frog. An African- American female with dreams of owning her own restaurant, works hard to save up enough money to do so and eventually through a series of obstacles she is able to succeed and meets a prince along the way, gets married and lives happily ever after. Just supposed an African American girl sees the movie, she would immediately associate herself with the princess and believe that if she works hard her dreams could come true and most likely she too could get married to a prince and live happily ever after. On the other hand, a little boy that watched that same movie wouldn’t typically associate himself as much with The Princess and the Frog versus a movie such as The Iron Giant that has a little boy as the main …show more content…
These characters can be imitated and show both genders how each other should behave, what they should be interested in, character traits they should possess, and subtle guidelines they should live by. Knowingly or not, majority of people follow these guidelines unintentionally but they do so because that’s the only thing they have been exposed to. Granted, there are some people who feel as though they either fit in both categories or they don’t fit in either. Whatever the case may be, adolescent literature assist with creating a description in its reader’s heads about what a male and female are supposed to
Let’s take the story of Princess and The Frog. An African- American female with dreams of owning her own restaurant, works hard to save up enough money to do so and eventually through a series of obstacles she is able to succeed and meets a prince along the way, gets married and lives happily ever after. Just supposed an African American girl sees the movie, she would immediately associate herself with the princess and believe that if she works hard her dreams could come true and most likely she too could get married to a prince and live happily ever after. On the other hand, a little boy that watched that same movie wouldn’t typically associate himself as much with The Princess and the Frog versus a movie such as The Iron Giant that has a little boy as the main …show more content…
These characters can be imitated and show both genders how each other should behave, what they should be interested in, character traits they should possess, and subtle guidelines they should live by. Knowingly or not, majority of people follow these guidelines unintentionally but they do so because that’s the only thing they have been exposed to. Granted, there are some people who feel as though they either fit in both categories or they don’t fit in either. Whatever the case may be, adolescent literature assist with creating a description in its reader’s heads about what a male and female are supposed to