Family, Social Context and Drug Addiction in Young Adult Novels

In the 1990s the influence of literary and extraliterary changes introduced new topics to Croatian literature for young adults. Those are the topics (like drug addiction) that had been considered taboo prior to these changes. This paper presents work on a selected corpus of novels written in the period from the 1990s to the present to investigate the family and social context that appears in novels discussing drug addiction and to explore in what manner the identity formation of the individual is influenced. In the four novels analyzed: Kad pobjedi ljubav [When Love Prevails], Čarobni prosjak [The Magical Beggar], Miron u škripcu [Miron in Trouble] and Meko okidanje [The Soft Triggering] the causes of addiction are linked to family problems, while in the novel Zeleni pas [The Green Dog] there is no family pathology. A disintegrating family, neglectful parents or the lack of parental presence (physical and emotional) influence the identity formation of the teenage protagonists. In all of these novels the life of addicts is presented as a life on the margins of society. They are either ignored or pitied by their surroundings, with rare occurrences of helpers, while the institutions prove to be ineffective and powerless. The unfortunate endings in the novels that take hold of the addicts and their family members function as a warning. Only the novel Miron u škripcu [Miron in Trouble] presents a different kind of ending where the importance of family is emphasized.