My concerns about depressing literature in high schools are that  1. it can contribute to or help to trigger depression or anxiety in teens during a stressful and hormonal time in their lives (especially for teens who are prone to this biologically) and 2. it can turn teens off to reading in general.  Sometimes, unfortunately, there is a 'perfect storm' of sorts when there are a number of triggers in a teen's life that can lead to depression/anxiety and possible suicidal thoughts or even suicide attempts.  This appears to be what happened to a young man named Nathan Austin. After his suicide, his parents realized that he'd been reading some very bleak literature in class, including one play and one novel that included suicides as major plot points. In World Magazine, Emily Whitten of  Redeemer Reader, an education blog with a Christian point of view, wrote Hello Darkness, which is an -- article about the suicide death of Nathan Austin 

 

Hello, darkness

Books | Teenagers and the literature of hopelessness and suicide

By Emily Whitten

Issue: "Border gridlock," Aug. 9, 2014
Posted July 25, 2014, 01:00 a.m.

 

Does dark or graphic material in literature harm teens? Never? Always? Sometimes? Among authors, librarians, and teachers, asking that question often starts an ideological battle, with some focused on protecting against censorship and others focused on authors’ and teachers’ worldviews.

But is that debate the whole story? When Texas high-school senior Nathan Austin committed suicide on April 2, 2012, his parents, Paul and Karen, examined new research on the biology of depression and suicide prevention, and saw that reading about death and suicide may have contributed to the mentality that led to their son’s death.

The Austins knew their son had been struggling with depressing thoughts, but they didn’t know, until soon after Nathan’s death, that his Advanced Placement (AP) English course, intended to help high-school students earn college credit, included many books that dealt with death and suicide, such as Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.

 

Thousands of students, of course, read these books and don’t kill themselves, but among the depressed they may contribute to bleakness. A classmate of Nathan later told the Austins, “The books we read our senior year of high school were dark. It seemed every book we read told us that life was meaningless and in the end nothing matters. … These books all together made life seem hopeless.”

 

When the Austins asked teachers and administrators why such bleak books would be chosen for teens, teachers explained that, among other reasons, the AP exam frequently has material on such works. Beyond that, the people behind the AP exam choose their books based on recommendations from top U.S. colleges, so these books represent a consensus view within the literary community about what is good for teens. (Officials at Westwood High School, where Nathan attended, declined to comment on this point.)

 

Paul Austin says, “For one who is healthy or naïve, these books may offer a glimpse into a darker world.” In Nathan’s case, though, Paul believes reading so many dark books “was like filling his pockets with lead before a swim in the ocean.” Part of Nathan’s summer reading assignment asked him to research the method of suicide used by Willie Loman, the protagonist in Death of a Salesman. Nathan later used a variation of this method to end his own life.

 

Jill Harkavy-Friedman of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) says the inclusion of detailed or how-to information is one of the most detrimental things a writer can do for those struggling with suicidal thoughts. News stories often lead to copycat suicides, and in some cases suicide “contagion” has been reduced up to 80 percent simply by taking simple steps such as not focusing on the methods used or romanticizing the act.

Juli Slattery, co-author of Pulling Back the Shades, points out that biological factors among teens make them more at risk from dark, graphic stories: “The last area of the brain to fully mature is the prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is used in decision making, weighing consequences and suppressing emotional and sexual urges. This is why even ‘good’ teens can be impulsive. … They can get lost in their own emotions and experiences without taking into consideration the larger truths around them.” She adds, “For a depressed teen, I would never suggest dwelling on the depravity of man but on stories that demonstrate the greatness of God.”

 

 

 

 

Following the publication of this artice, Emily wrote a four-part article on the Redeemed Reader blog about the Christian perspective on the depressing, discouraging literature used in most high school curricula. Here are links to each part along with excerpts that are thought-provoking: 

 

Part one of a four-part article in the Redeemed Reader newsletter 

 

"And for all the scrutiny I’ve given Hunger Games and Harry Potter, the reality is that the problematic material in these books pales in comparison to the books I was asked to read in high school.  Native Son by Richard Wright is a book I remember quite vividly having to read in my public high school, and it is basically the tale of a young black man who kills someone, stuffs her in a furnace, and leaves the scene of the crime.  Oh, it resonates, and has lots of noble themes about the suffering of main character, but it’s also a really gruesome tale of an evil act done by an evil man who has suffered at the hands of other evil men.

 

I could list other books I remember–The Red Badge of Courage, A Scarlett Letter, etc.–that had very disturbing, problematic content.  But the point is, my mom knew I was reading these books.  She was concerned that the messages of the stories didn’t reflect her values, and she put the time in to actually read ALL of them along with me.  But she still didn’t know how to counteract them, other than to say, “That’s not what we do,” and “That’s not what I think.”

 

 Part two of the article

 

"As Jill Harkavy-Friedman of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) explained to me in an interview last July, people don’t usually commit suicide for one or two reasons. There is usually a convergence of many factors, including two which are critical in pushing someone over the edge: 1) exposure to how-to information and 2) a trigger.

And while factors like Nathan’s grandmother’s death undoubtedly played a part, Paul Austin believes his son may have gotten both the how-to information and trigger from his AP English course.

 

AP English Literature’s Role

I will post the entire list of books eventually so that you can judge for yourself the cumulative effect of those books. For now, let’s look at these two critical factors. First, the how-to information. The summer before 12th grade, Nathan was assigned to read Arthur Miller’s play, The Death of a Salesman. In his list of questions to answer about the book, Nathan was asked to answer, “What hidden object has Linda recently discovered and why does it concern her?”

Since the story implies that the father commits suicide, in order to answer the question, Nathan likely searched out information on how the object might have been used for that purpose. Given that Nathan later used a variation of that method himself, it is very possible that while doing his homework assignment, Nathan found the how-to information for his own suicide. It’s worth noting that the book did not have to be studied this way. Instead of asking kids to research on their own time how certain objects might be used for suicide, that information might have been presented in class with limited detail. 

 

Second, concerning the trigger, as best his parents have been able to piece together, the last book that Nathan read was The Awakening by Kate Chopin. At the end of this book, a woman decides that suicide is her best option and the reader follows the character as she drowns herself. In this case, as in The Death of a Salesman, the author does not call to mind all the people the woman leaves behind, all the people she is hurting. Chopin doesn’t show other options that the woman might have taken. Romanticizing the act and not putting suicide in its full context (including the pain felt by those left behind) are critical risk factors for copycat deaths.

Harkavy-Friedman pointed out in our interview that teachers don’t have to ban these books–they can often bring a bigger perspective to the conversation themselves, even if an author doesn’t. They can hand out suicide lifeline numbers, and remind teens that suicide isn’t a romantic answer to life’s problems.  The school can also host a More Than Sad training program to help bring awareness to faculty and students.

 

Reading and hearing stories about suicide—whether journalistic stories or books read in the classroom—has been well-documented to cause copycats or “suicide contagion.” As early as 1774, the phenomenon was originally called the Werther effect after a character in a Goethe novel.

 

Why then do schools like Nathan’s ignore the problem?  One reason may be that society simply does not realize how many teens are at risk. Among teens like Nathan, suicide is the third leading cause of death. A 2011 study by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) showed that 15.8% of students in grades 9-12 had seriously considered suicide in the previous 12 months. And for every 1 who succeeds, over 100-200 more teens attempt to take their lives."

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Part three of the article

from Tony Reinke, author and cultural critic at Desiring God:

"Despair is not good existential art; despair is a powerful force of hopelessness in a fallen world that can take root in the heart of any self-aware human. Mix despair with a frequent dismissal of the Church in these books, then top that with a postmodern context that denies religious absolute truth, and you end up with a potential disaster. In my opinion, any study of despair through dark realism, if simply left as despair, is like studying fire in a science class without a fire extinguisher on the wall. We must be careful. Using literature to awakening despair in the heart of a child or teen, without the hope of the gospel, is spiritual ignorance or spiritual negligence, or both."

 

 from Karen Swallow Prior, Professor of English at Liberty University: 

"For most healthy young readers, reading works that deal with doubt, pain, and darkness can serve to concretize the normal fears and anxieties of growing up, offering a way to examine such at an objective distance as a part of a healthy coping and maturing process. Obviously, there are fragile exceptions to this that no one might be able to predict.

 

Most important, however, is how such literature—any literature—is presented. No literary work should be expected or understood to be presenting total truth. But hope can be revealed even for the unseasoned reader and even from as dark a work as Death of a Salesman when the great truths beneath the dark surface of the play are brought to light. Such is the role of the teacher. "

 

Part four of the article

 

"Strangely, though, I hear critics and teachers talk sometimes about sensitive readers as if they were stupid or mentally ill.  Oh, this book of sex and gore is FINE for most readers.  But sensitive readers might not be able to handle it.  Sensitive readers might not be able to live with scars. Honestly, I talk that way too often myself because there is a grain of truth there. Some amount of deadness of heart is required to function in this world, and that includes reading.

But let’s be honest: highly intellectual, sensitive readers like Nathan Austin often see more than everyone else.  More of what is really there.  More of what was in the heart of the author when he wrote the piece.  To belittle a sensitive reader as for being depressed about depressing literature is a bit like saying, “Oh, that doctor is just pessimistic about your terminal cancer because he has so much training and experience.” And it’s that seeing, that knowing that becomes a heavy burden for students like Nathan. They understand more of an author’s sin and doubt, and because so many parents and educators are blind to the spiritual impact of these books, too often, it’s a burden sensitive readers bear alone

 

Without going too far into critical theories, I think it is helpful to think of literature in terms of the questions it poses. Questions like: What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Why do we suffer? And that’s one reason I love literature as a human endeavor: these are questions we as human beings ought to be asking. English literature classes aren’t wrong to push students to ask them. But these are spiritual questions. And whatever answers we supply—whether they have anything to do with Jesus or not—are spiritual answers."

 

 Whitten also says that there certainly reasons for teens to read and be challenged by darker literature, that some would not be detrimentally affected by such novels:  "Sometimes, to keep them from drowning, we keep kids in the kiddie pool all their lives."  However, we have to do this with caution. 

 

Janie in the comment section of this article, writes: "I don’t have a problem with high-schoolers reading books like The Awakening, but the problem seems to be that the stories about suicide, murder, abuse, etc., aren’t balanced by more hopeful works. And the deeper problem is that as our culture has become more secular it has banished the only real source of hope, which is Christ.