Grasshopper Jungle (spoilers)

julie37619

Has anyone else read it?  We read it for book club and I can't stop thinking about it.  I've had several discussions outside of book club (where we also discussed this issue extensively) and I'd love to hear your thoughts.  This is my issue: the novel does a great job of portraying a teenage boy.  As such, every single woman in the book is totally objectified.  He literally wants to have sex with every woman he sees.  Which is fairly typical teenage boy thought process, right?  But my question is, should the author have addressed this at some point?  Because every female character in the book is just this totally one dimensional, flat, personality-less character.  Our main characters and our narrator are teenage boys, so does that justify a flat portray of women?  Or do you think Smith should have made a point of giving at least one female character some agency and personality?

Young_Love

I saw on GR you were reading this and I have been very interested to hear your thoughts on it.

YES. Totally. I think Andrew Smith writes great teen guy characters, warts and all. But this really did frustrate me. Is it accurate to how a teen boy thinks? Does he have some kind of responsibility to define the female characters more? Did he do this on purpose? I don't really know. 

It's just...if Austin is bisexual, he seems to look at his bff as a fully-developed person but only looks at his gf as a piece of ass. And that's bothersome. You'd think that even if every other woman in his life is objectified, he should at least have more respect for his gf? Treat her as an equal to his bff? He seriously looks at every woman the way the male unstoppable soldiers look at the female one.

Is this a thing teen boys haven't figured out yet, making this a really honest portrayal of their mind? Or did the author colossally drop the ball?

I don't know. 

julie37619

Yes!  Even Robby gets a chance to tell Austin he's acting like a jerk and being selfish - so why could Shann not also get a similar scene?  She's miserable through the entire book - they're constantly leaving her out.  And then at the end, she has his baby and then just stays home by herself while he goes out with Robby on adventures?  She doesn't seem to even get to raise the baby, because the baby lives with Austin.  So what does Shann get out of any of it?

Young_Love

julie37619 said:

Yes!  Even Robby gets a chance to tell Austin he's acting like a jerk and being selfish - so why could Shann not also get a similar scene?  She's miserable through the entire book - they're constantly leaving her out.  And then at the end, she has his baby and then just stays home by herself while he goes out with Robby on adventures?  She doesn't seem to even get to raise the baby, because the baby lives with Austin.  So what does Shann get out of any of it?

That bothered me SO much! I was hoping there would at least be a little more equity for her in their life in the silo, but it seems even more miserable for her. Poor Shann.