I’m
further expanding my knowledge of young-adult dystopian literature with Lauren
Oliver’s Delirium trilogy. Unlike its more well-known sisters The Hunger Games and Divergent, this series, so far, seems to
be following more the 1984/The Giver route, by which I mean it’s
less action-heavy and more about the internal journey of its protagonist.
In Delirium, the U.S. has closed its
borders to the rest of the world, and the cities within it are well-regulated
police states cut off from one another; between the established metro areas is
the ungoverned “Wilds.” The isolation is
an attempt to lessen the spread and influence of amor deliria nervosa, the disease that’s charged with the blame for
all the world’s problems. War, greed,
self-harm, irrationality, hate, and depravity are all purported to follow
directly from the deliria. In adults, the disease can be cured through a
surgical procedure, but it’s unsafe to perform on minors, and Lena Haloway is
only 17. With a history of the disease
in her family, she counts down the days until she can be cured.
And
just what is amor deliria nervosa? The name is a giveaway: it’s love.
In Lena’s tiny world, healthy citizens are cured when they come of
age. They receive their future spouse
from a government-approved list of compatible matches, they have their
designated number of children, and they go through life free from obsession,
lust, and heartbreak. Lena has grown up
indoctrinated on all fronts – school, science, and religion – about the horrors
of the deliria. Romeo
and Juliet is a sobering cautionary tale (which cracks me up, because it’s
so true,) the children of the deliria-stricken
“unmatched” are born twisted and malformed, and if the disease is allowed to
take root, the sufferer will die. It
took her mother from her when she was a child, and she avoids the illegal and
unlit places where it festers.
(Gee, I
wonder if she’s gonna fall in love?)
Right – no real surprises about the main thrust of this series, but the
path it takes to get there is interesting.
As Lena feels her heart tugging her out of line, as she starts to crave
the deliria as much as she fears it,
she faces up to the lies on which her culture operates. She begins to understand the true nature of
the deliria, the strict ordinances
put in place to protect her from it, and the purportedly-savage, uncured
“Invalids” who live outside the borders of society.
Like I
said, while there’s some action, it’s really not a shoot-‘em-up story. Instead, it’s about a girl discovering the
truth of love and being confronted with the fact that she’s everything she’s
been taught is untenable. The book has a
great undercurrent of tension, as Lena fights to resist evidence she can’t ignore,
as the longing at the center of her can’t help but try to dismantle her
lifetime of programming. Lauren Oliver,
who delivers some compelling prose, has clearly worked to create a world whose
internal structure feels well-rendered.
The small details, the terminology, and the chapter-opening quotes (all
propaganda on the deliria, from
sources as varied as textbooks, religious texts, and childhood nursery rhymes)
all add tremendously to the picture she draws of the trilogy’s society.
Warnings
Thematic
elements, violence, swearing, drinking, and sexual references.
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