This is a trend I've been noticing often lately. Maybe I'm just more attuned to it now because people in my age group have started to reproduce (OMG WHEN DID WE GET SO OLD). But there are a lot of very popular YA series that end with the characters spawning. Just to name a few super-big players out there:
Harry Potter (ughhh the epilogue)
Twilight (ughhh the whole last book... and the whole series. but that's another story)
Hunger Games (ughhh the epilogue again)
< edit: fair warning, I got a little spoilery in the comments. so if you haven't read any of these... um. close your eyes? SOWWY >
I understand what the authors wanted to do. Tie up all the loose ends in the story, let us know that the characters make it alright in the end. The easiest way to show us happily-ever-after seems to be by popping some offspring in there.
But... this kind of bothers me. Why do the characters need to push out kids in order to be happy? Why can't we have a nice, cheerful ending without flash-forwarding to show us what cute babies they make together?
Why is the reproduction necessary?
Don't get me wrong, I like kids. Maybe someday I'll even have my own. I have considered this. But not any time soon. Not for a loooong time. And most of my friends feel the same way. Some of them don't want to have children ever. And I see nothing wrong with that.
I know plenty of strong adult women with no children who are living successful, fulfilling lives without breeding. They will still leave behind great contributions to the world, and can still find true love and live happily ever after.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having/wanting/making babies. If you want them when you're young, when you're old, or at all, that's great! Obviously it's a wonderful, amazing, life-changing thing for most people. I'm just saying, why can't some of the huge YA series include some characters, specifically female ones, who DON'T want kids?* (especially if they set up the MC the entire time as a girl who will never want to have children, and then suddenly in the epilogue are like OWAITJK *coughHungerGamescough*).
And even if those characters do want kids, do we need to include it in the YA epilogue? I can't have been the only teen who was srsly freaked out by the idea of spawn. And pregnancy. And those videos they made us watch in sex ed...**
* Of course, I have to include a disclaimer here: Kristin Cashore rocks my world, because she does do this. And there are probably other authors out there, but I'm just not remembering them right now. Or maybe I haven't read them. Comment if you think of recs?
** Because that's immediately where my mind goes when I read these epilogues. It's a dark place. Just saying. Not that I have PTSD or anything.
P.S. - There's still time to win a free MS critique! < /shamelessplug >
I totally get where you're coming from and it is a bit of a cliche way to wrap things up but the truth is, most people do end up reproducing. Not all of course. My sister is 35, married, has no kids and is fine with it. On the other hand my sister-in-law has 3 kids and seriously shouldn't have ever become a mother (but that's another discussion).
ReplyDeleteAs I recall, Katniss didn't want kids because they would grow up hungry and miserable and eventually have their names put in the for the reaping. Once the Capitol was overthrown and the reaping was no longer a possibility for her kids then it was ok. It was never that Kat didn't want the kids, it's that she didn't want to bring a child into the the world she was in. She changed her world so it was ok for her to change her mind about kids.
Bella was an accidental pregnancy. Something that a good % of parents can relate to. My daughter wasn't planned but once I knew she was on her way, I couldn't imagine not going through with it. Many women will tell you, you become a mother the second the test comes up + and that's what happens to Bella. (Doesn't excuse the rest of the book but again, another discussion).
Now with HP I see that as just the natural progression in life. Most people grow up, fall in love and make babies. It's just what we do. Not all of us, but enough to make it a plausible epilogue and to show your favorite characters as stable, safe and leading normal lives.
Babies are a part of life so why not a part of our fiction as well? Great post and an interesting discussion.
Hmm... I see what you mean about Katniss, but I think her world was still dangerous. We'd been shown that the new government was as disruptive as the last, and even cutting off the head of the snake does not change the corruption within. Plus she says in the epilogue that Peeta spent years convincing her, which... I dunno. That just bugged me, because she'd been so sure about it before. Maybe if she had mentioned that, in another world, she wouldn't have minded kids, but in this one no way, then it would've made more sense to me?
ReplyDeleteBella... well, I have about 8 million issues with all of those books. gah. The baby was far from the worst problem in them. It just didn't fit the storyline for me, I guess? The first 3 books were about her relationship with Edward and how they were going to make it work, then in the first 30 pages of the 4th book, it's like "bam, ok, married and all that's resolved -- new problem! there's a baby!"
I think I wanted more resolution to the "plot" (in quotations, cause there wasn't much of one? ha...) from the first 3 before they jumped on to a new plotline.
HP, the thing that bothered me about the epilogue was the complete removal from the scene. He just defeated Voldemort. He's walking past Ginny and Ron and Hermione, and everyone grieving, and I want to see him TALK TO THEM NOW. I wanted to see him hug his friends and cry with them and kiss Ginny and hug Lupin & Tonks goodbye (OEGHARIGJABG why did they DIIEEEEEE ahem).
Instead we just cut scene and jumped ahead 15 years to be all "yay, happily ever after!" and I was like ".... wtf. Do not care about these adult Harrys and Rons and Hermiones. Want to see the resolution with them as teens damnit!"
So maybe it's epilogues in general that bother me more than babies specifically? :) dunno... But you bring up some great points, thanks for commenting!
I've thought about the baby issue for my followup historical novel. They're having sex, there's no real reliable birth control in that time period--statistically, it would be far more likely that she would get pregnant than not. But, it feels like an unnecessary complication in the story (at least as I'm envisioning it now).
ReplyDeleteI think if there's no baby, I'll be obligated to come up with a plausible reason why. Because as a reader, I would wonder.
Catching Fire is on my bedside table but I may have to return it to the library unread since others have reserved it and I gotta read this book to review, sadface. The HP epilogue annoyed me. I get that JK had to wrap up the series in a neat bow because readers were so invested and she may have wanted to stem the flow of questions but seriously, it left no mystery or sense of life continuing to throw surprises at the gang. I like my books open-ended and babies makes that a bit hard.
ReplyDelete- Sophia.
I guess it provides the ultimate sense of closure for most readers. Though it would be neat to have a couple end up "happily ever after" even without kids!
ReplyDelete@Angelica - didn't they have any herbal remedies (even if they weren't 100% reliable)? I thought I heard about things like that in the past...
ReplyDelete@Sophia - yeah, I wanted the potential for the story to continue (in my imagination) with HP... and also, naming Albus Severus? this ruins my perception of Ginny as awesome. sigh.
@Elsie - I think so! but to be fair, I guess there are popular series that don't have children in the epilogues... hmm...
When I read all the above mentioned series, I was a bit let down by the ends.
ReplyDeleteTwilight... well I confess that I carried on reading in the hopes that it would get better and that ultimately, SOMEONE WOULD KILL BELLA *coughs*
HP, I have to say that I liked that. Even if the poor kid got named Albus Severus. To me as a huge HP fan, this was the ultimate in happily ever after.
Peeta convincing Katniss to have kids... though I could relate because I have friends who have gone through that and end up being excellent parents, I just couldn't see them working as a couple with kids. Especially since Peeta was... well not himself. Even if after years, they would carry on with the real and not real, do you really want to have a kid with someone who can go off like a bomb???
In my WIPs I make sure that all characters know about birth control. Hence me never having any pregnant characters. I don't really think that's the sort of thing most teenagers want to read about, and most adult who like me read YA, we read it as an escape to "adult stress" so I don't really want to read about diapers and bottles when I have a six month old baby in the house XD
Anyway, Ellen, I'm tweeting this post because I think it's an excellent discussion;