Research Topic Proposal

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For my final paper I am going to discuss how young adult literature tends to focus on and sometime seven glorify the troubled teen. It has been my experience that literature for young adults tends to primarily portray protagonists who are struggling with a particular "thing." I believe that this leads the young readers to feel like they are only special and worth talking about if they have some sort of defining attribute that makes them worth while. For example, in Speak the main protagonist is a girl who was raped and therefore the whole novel has to do with her finding the will power to speak up. In Curious Incident, the protagonist focusses on a boy with autism who struggles to make sense of the world, and in 13 Reasons Why we focussed on a girl who describes in detail all of the reasons why she decides to commit suicide.
The main questions that I will be addressing are "why do we feel like it is of utmost importance to discuss such hard and depressing matters to an already troubled and maturing group?" Isn't adolescence hard enough? I do not believe that troubling this group further is necessarily the right answer. Most of these issues such as rape and suicide will most likely be introduced to them during this stage naturally and I feel as though it would be more beneficial to discuss novels that focus more on empowerment and equality than the constant reminders of the harshness of life. I will use research that demonstrates a correlation between the amount of dark literature given to a teen and a rise in depression and suicide among teens. I will also use research to help show how positive and empowering novels help to encourage and build this group. 

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