Children‘s perception of the Hostile adult world in Antoine de Saint-Exupery‘s the little prince and Lois Lowry's The Giver

Abstract

Children perceive the world entirely differently from the adults do. However, the children do not have enough experience and knowledge to understand the diversity in the world. While interpreting and interacting with the world we adults expect the children to behave and act as adults. Adults are controlling and are forcing children to do as per their own expectations. As a result, children often find themselves trapped in the adult‘s world. In order to bring how the children see the adult‘s world, I have selected the texts The Little Prince and The Giver. My dissertation addresses the question of how children behave differently in the adult's world. Comprehensive theoretical and textual analyses of the novels have been carried out in the research. These texts have been explored to see how and why a child observes the world differently than that of the adults. Textual analysis of the concerned texts has been made in the research. This research uses children theoretical perspective from Joseph L. Zordardo‘s Inventing the Child, John Bowlby‘s Attachment Theory and Maurice Sendak‘s Detachment child as a primary tool for analysis and Chris Jenks's idea of Sociology of Childhood as supporting tool to analyze The Little Prince and The Giver. Joseph L. Zornardo notion of Inventing the child talks about psychodynamic effects of strict child rearing practices and its adverse effect on children. Similarly, Bowlby‘s monotropic theory of attachment suggests attachment is important for child‘s survival and maternal deprivation with child likely to have serious effects on childrens‘ intellectual, social and emotional development.