Resurrection (Eden Book 3) by Tony Monchinski Read Free Book Online Page B

pressed.
    “The five hundred pound gorilla in the room anytime we talk about technology.” Jermaine held his hands up. “The nukes that popped off. The power plants that melted down. There’s an example of technology structuring our lives.” He smiled.
    There were a few nervous titters of agreement, but most looked troubled by Jermaine’s remark because they knew his situation. Tricia looked very seriously at him.
    “You’re right,” said Anthony, because Jermaine was. There was no escaping the facts. “We’re caught up in this thing, and we take it for granted.”
    “And that,” said Jermaine, “is how we’ve been saying ideologies work all along.”
    Anthony looked at the clock on the wall without making it obvious. He had a way of getting caught up in these conversations with his class and losing all track of time.
    “Justin, I thought the class might be interested in your topic. Could you explain what it’s about?
    “Yeah. I’m interested in the role children play in dystopian novels.”
    “Run with that.”
    “Well, some of the books we’ve read— The Long Walk , Battle Royale , Lord of the Flies — really bad things happen to kids. I think there’s a big difference between the way the authors of those books viewed children and children’s potential compared to, say, the way kids were portrayed in, I don’t know, Ordinary People or Catcher in the Rye .”
    “What do you think it was about the twentieth-century that made these portrayals of children in these novels—the dystopian ones I mean—effective?”
    “I’d say the same thing that made them effective in Separate Peace or Ordinary People . The idea of children being innocent. That adults want to shelter them from the harsh stuff.”
    Anthony knew that what Justin said was true. The zombies had been driven back to the far corners of the globe and small, inhospitable pockets of their own continent. But there were things out there that no adult could protect a child from, things in the atmosphere, in the air around them.
    “I don’t know…” Justin continued. “There’s just something diabolically sick and ingenious to me about casting kids as participants in these murderous dystopian games.”
    “What do you…” Anthony addressed the class “…think King was going for when he wrote The Long Walk ? Or Takami when he wrote Battle Royale ? What is it about putting kids in situations where they basically have to kill each other, or hope all the others die, so they can live?”
    “I don’t know if I can answer that question,” said Felice. “But one thing those particular novels have in common is that their games take place against the backdrop of pretty horrendous totalitarian governments. Even in The Running Man .”
    “Good point. And those governments often control the daily lives of their citizens, yes? Let’s talk about the ways children are conceived and raised in some of these books, alright? Does anybody remember the picture Huxley painted of the future?”
    Erin motioned and Anthony nodded to her. “In Brave New World humans are predestined and conditioned.”
    “And how does that compare to us today?”
    “I don’t think it does. We don’t have ‘class’ in the sense that it existed in Huxley’s novel, or even like the U.S. had in the twentieth century.”
    “Well,” said Megan. “We do have prenatal screenings and abortion.”
    “Yeah, but no one forces you to have an abortion.”
    “Let’s not forget PL-422,” Tricia said.
    No one who had been born and educated in New Harmony could forget it. PL-422 had been an extremely unpopular law that held sway for a short period of time in New Harmony, effectively making children with birth defects property of the state. Babies were taken from their parents and disappeared. There had been rumors that the kids were used in medical experiments. It was a stain on New Harmony’s history, and one its citizens never forgot.
    “Yes, let’s not forget PL-422,”