The aim of this essay is to present a model for analyzing the in- terplay between voice and point of view in literary journalism/reportage. The model can be used to nuance previous researchers’ discussions about “subjective” and “objective” journalism. It also problematizes the reporter’s special role as an eyewitness by highlighting how narrative techniques can create empathy with the Other and move the reader’s gaze away from the reporter, away from the one who is witnessing. Using tools from classical narratology, I focus on the form of the texts. The tools help me investigate the narrator’s as well as the characters’ subjectivity and interpret the narra- tive’s construction as an expression of a journalistic mission. I systematize variables such as the narrator’s visibility, the relation between an experienc- ing reporter and a narrating reporter, the interplay between the experienc- ing reporter and other characters in the text, and in what way a level with a director (an implied author) can facilitate a comparison between vari- ous kinds of literary journalism. I also examine whether it might be time to abandon the theory that a first-person reportage is more subjective in general than a third-person reportage. I explore whether it is instead the narrator’s visibility that determines the position of the text on a scale be- tween “subjective” and “objective” forms. (Note: I have provided a glossary of terms at the end of the essay.)

Drawing upon the tenets of discourse narratology, this essay identifies and discusses the various narrative and rhetorical features typical of literary journalism/reportage that have evolved from the classical tradition of first-hand observation/eyewitness reporting. I give examples of narrative patterns that have influenced literary journalism throughout the 20th century and up until today, and argue that they differ from structures found in comparable ways of narrating in fiction as well as in autobiographies. I highlight four consequences of a rhetorical “position of witnessing”: a narrative perspective directed from the outside and inward, and an illusion of simultaneity of a reporter being present on the spot and seemingly witnessing and narrating at the same time. Furthermore, the essay explores how realism, in terms of mimetic (scenic) form and scrutinized details, works differently in literary journalism than in realistic fiction. In this article, I attempt to demonstrate how narratology can open new doors to our understanding how literary journalism works in its single structures and how these structures in turn affect the reader’s experience.

Cecilia Aare, Department of Social Sciences, Södertörn University

Narrative Commitment and a Complex Narrative Technique in Gustaf Hellström’s War Reportage (Narrativt engagemang och komplex berättarteknik i Gustaf Hellströms krigsreportage)

The 1910s was a dynamic period in Swedish journalism when reporters became professionals and the largest newspapers engaged their own foreign correspondents. A prominent correspondent of the time was Gustaf Hellström, also a famous writer. His reports from France during the First World War, collected in the book 1 1/2 mil härifrån står världens största slag, are known for their dedicated attitude. An assumption in this essay is that such an attitude corresponds to a narrative commitment, which could be divided into narrative empathy and narrative compassion. 

Using tools from discourse narratology and cognitive narratology, I investigate narrative techniques and strategies at work when a narrative commitment is constructed in the reportages from France. A conclusion is that parallel perspectives and a multitude of voices within the narrative construction connect the individual to the general and convey empathy with all victims of the war, civilians as well as soldiers on both sides. 

In a final section, I place Hellström’s series of reportages from France within a broader context where I highlight similarites with Stig Dagerman’s series of reportages Tysk höst from 1946 and Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary books from the 1980s and onwards.

The 1910s was a dynamic period in Swedish journalism when reporters became professionals and the largest newspapers engaged their own foreign correspondents. A prominent correspondent of the time was Gustaf Hellström, also a famous writer. His reports from France during the First World War, collected in the book 1 1/2 mil härifrån står världens största slag, are known for their dedicated attitude. An assumption in this essay is that such an attitude corresponds to a narrative commitment, which could be divided into narrative empathy and narrative compassion. 

Using tools from discourse narratology and cognitive narratology, I investigate narrative techniques and strategies at work when a narrative commitment is constructed in the reportages from France. A conclusion is that parallel perspectives and a multitude of voices within the narrative construction connect the individual to the general and convey empathy with all victims of the war, civilians as well as soldiers on both sides. 

In a final section, I place Hellström’s series of reportages from France within a broader context where I highlight similarites with Stig Dagerman’s series of reportages Tysk höst from 1946 and Svetlana Alexievich’s documentary books from the 1980s and onwards.

This study ­is the first dissertation where the genre of reportage (in the U.S. classified as literary journalism) is systematically mapped with the help of narratology. Using tools primarily from structural discourse narratology, the thesis examines, describes and maps written reportages as narratives. Rhetorical and cognitive narratology complement the approach. 

The investigation rests on two assumptions. Firstly, a reporter’s professional purpose is to report about people and states of affairs outside the reporter herself. This results in a contextual commitment, which leaves traces in the narrative in the form of a textual commitment. The latter is in turn divided into narrative empathy and narrative compassion/sympathy. The thesis highlights the creation of narrative structures and stylistic features in reportages and the overall conclusion is that conceptions about a reporter’s professional purpose in fact do influence the narrativity of the text. 

Secondly, in contrast to news journalism, reportage is a personal genre that can be considered a directed reality: the content is taken from reality but the form is personal and a consequence of the writing reporter’s choices. The thesis presents a narratological model where the text develops in the interplay between three instances: a director, a narrator (in a first-person reportage a narrating reporter) and experiencing characters (in a first-person reportage including an experiencing reporter). The director should be regarded as a structuring property of the text itself. 

Part 1 provides a historical background to the reportage genre and the social side of the reporter role. In part 2, narrative characteristics of the genre are explored and defined together with the common roots of reportage and novels within realism and naturalism. Part 3 demonstrates how a contextual commitment can be transformed into a textual commitment. Throughout the dissertation, the director model is used to investigate differences and similarities between subcategories within the genre, sometimes between single texts, sometimes between reportage in general and fictional narrative. In part 4, a typology of reportage is presented. The genre is divided into five types of narration, based on the representational relation between how the physical reporter has collected information and in what ways an experiencing reporter is or is not apparent in the text. 

The thesis ends with a historicization of consonance and dissonance within the reportage genre. Consonance emphasizes the characters’ “here-and-now” and can be found within a broad, classical tradition of eyewitness reporting. Dissonance emphasizes the narrator’s retrospective perspective and can be found within the modernistic type of American New Journalism and in more experimentally written reportages from the most recent decades. The thesis demonstrates how both these ways of narrating may enable the reader’s narrative empathy with someone else than the experiencing reporter.

The analyses and conclusions are mainly based on Swedish reportages from 1819 to 2014. This material is complemented with international reportages from 1903 to 2007,  from Norway, Poland, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Bohemia, Croatia, Belarus and the U.S. Accordingly, the dissertation demonstrates that traditions of reportage are primarily international and that the observations about narrative patterns within the genre are also relevant outside of Sweden. 

This study ­is the first dissertation where the genre of reportage (in the U.S. classified as literary journalism) is systematically mapped with the help of narratology. Using tools primarily from structural discourse narratology, the thesis examines, describes and maps written reportages as narratives. Rhetorical and cognitive narratology complement the approach. 

The investigation rests on two assumptions. Firstly, a reporter’s professional purpose is to report about people and states of affairs outside the reporter herself. This results in a contextual commitment, which leaves traces in the narrative in the form of a textual commitment. The latter is in turn divided into narrative empathy and narrative compassion/sympathy. The thesis highlights the creation of narrative structures and stylistic features in reportages and the overall conclusion is that conceptions about a reporter’s professional purpose in fact do influence the narrativity of the text. 

Secondly, in contrast to news journalism, reportage is a personal genre that can be considered a directed reality: the content is taken from reality but the form is personal and a consequence of the writing reporter’s choices. The thesis presents a narratological model where the text develops in the interplay between three instances: a director, a narrator (in a first-person reportage a narrating reporter) and experiencing characters (in a first-person reportage including an experiencing reporter). The director should be regarded as a structuring property of the text itself. 

Part 1 provides a historical background to the reportage genre and the social side of the reporter role. In part 2, narrative characteristics of the genre are explored and defined together with the common roots of reportage and novels within realism and naturalism. Part 3 demonstrates how a contextual commitment can be transformed into a textual commitment. Throughout the dissertation, the director model is used to investigate differences and similarities between subcategories within the genre, sometimes between single texts, sometimes between reportage in general and fictional narrative. In part 4, a typology of reportage is presented. The genre is divided into five types of narration, based on the representational relation between how the physical reporter has collected information and in what ways an experiencing reporter is or is not apparent in the text. 

The thesis ends with a historicization of consonance and dissonance within the reportage genre. Consonance emphasizes the characters’ “here-and-now” and can be found within a broad, classical tradition of eyewitness reporting. Dissonance emphasizes the narrator’s retrospective perspective and can be found within the modernistic type of American New Journalism and in more experimentally written reportages from the most recent decades. The thesis demonstrates how both these ways of narrating may enable the reader’s narrative empathy with someone else than the experiencing reporter.

The analyses and conclusions are mainly based on Swedish reportages from 1819 to 2014. This material is complemented with international reportages from 1903 to 2007,  from Norway, Poland, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Bohemia, Croatia, Belarus and the U.S. Accordingly, the dissertation demonstrates that traditions of reportage are primarily international and that the observations about narrative patterns within the genre are also relevant outside of Sweden. 

A reportage is the reporter's story about reality. Even though it details real events, it always presentsa personal interpretation of these events. In contrast to the news article, which primarilyinforms readers, a reportage involves a pronounced degree of personal narration. Normally it is based on the reporter's role as an eyewitness. This essay discusses how the position of the eyewitness establishes narratological structures inthe text, which seem to differ from the structures present in other kinds of non-fiction narrativestold in the first person. For instance, in reading an autobiography, a reader's empathy willbe drawn toward the main character. By contrast, a reportage will direct the reader's empathyaway from the reporter and towards the other. The narratological construction of a reportage may be studied as an interplay between threeinstances: the experiencing reporter, the narrating reporter and the director (the implied reporter).Thus, a three-part model may be utilised in order to help explain, for example, how ahomodiegetic narrator can be combined with external focalisation, and how a character otherthan the experiencing reporter can be internally focalised. It can also illuminate how the textmay employ a form of dissonance between the experiencing and the narrating reporter to serve ajournalistic purpose (displacing the perspective from person – the reporter – to subject-matter).

Hur ser berättelsen om svensk gängkriminalitet ut i tre aktuella reportageböcker och med vilken berättarteknik är den konstruerad? Med en blandning av narratologisk och medieretorisk analysmetod undersöker den här artikeln hur innehåll och form samspelar i Mammorna av Alexandra Pascalidou, Familjen av Johanna Bäck- ström Lerneby och Tills alla dör av Diamant Salihu. En slutsats är att skiftande berättarperspektiv kan motverka ensidighet, samtidigt som narrativ medkänsla utan parallell narrativ inlevelse kan hindra läsarens möjlighet att föreställa sig de skildrade människornas situation. Dramatiserade händelseförlopp kan öka närvarokänslan, medan en reporter som ifrågasätter sin egen auktoritet uppmuntrar läsaren till att undvika förenklande slutsatser. Till sist bidrar person- beskrivningar och urval av fakta i de tre böckerna till skilda budskap. Studien visar att reportagegenren tack vare sin narrativa form har potential att skildra samhällsproblem på komplexa sätt. Detta gäller särskilt när gestaltningen kombineras med gedigen faktaresearch. 

In recent years, media researchers have displayed an increased interest in emotion as an element of the content in both news journalism and narrative journalism. These studies lack a theoretical definition of emotion and do not usually specify what characterizes narrative journalism more than it being "not objective" and, consequently, not similar to conventional journalism. In practice, they identify emotion through frames of personalization or explicit expressions of feelings and evaluations. However, narrative journalism integrates implicitly conveyed emotion. To enable a broader understanding of the function of emotion in narrative journalism, this article gives examples of and analyzes how emotion and the related concept subjectivity is used and discussed in two different fields of research: social sciences-influenced journalism studies and literature-influenced studies. The dualistic view on journalism as either subjective or objective is questioned when narrative journalism (also known as reportage or literary journalism) is placed in a professional context, where the genre is based on its own tradition and represents its own form of knowledge, due to its main characteristic: a narrative form. Finally, the article demonstrates how tools drawn from narratology can illuminate diverse storytelling techniques that transmit emotion implicitly rather than explicitly.

This article discusses the genre of literary journalism/reportage against a background of earlier assumptions on fictionality. At a local level in nonfiction, fic- tionality can be expressed through invented stories and scenarios that create a con- trast to the global, nonfictive context. However, fictionality can also be expressed through stylistic devices that traditionally have been associated with narrative fic- tion. A local contrast may appear, but only if the genre in itself is not narrative. If the focus is on the nonfictional and narrative genre of literary journalism/reportage, there will be no contrast. Here, the rhetoric will work just like in narrative fiction and should be considered to be part of the features of narrativity. Furthermore, the concept imagination should be perceived in close relation to Monika Fludernik’s understanding of narrative as experience. The conclusion is a call to partly rethink existing connections between fictionality, narrativity, and imagination in order to better understand the narrative nature of reportage. 

The poet and author Chris Abani talks about alienation and poetry.

This essay analyzes the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God written by Zora Neale Hurston, 1937. The main focus is how the protagonist Janie uses her voice to subvert patriarchal oppression. In this essay my hypothesis is that she has a voice all along. However, it evolves due to her ability to engage in activities that are subversive to patriarchy. Her journey throughout the novel is a journey where the oppression from her relationships only makes her grow stronger as a woman. During her journey towards self-revelation as an empowered woman, she gradually gains her freedom and her own authentic voice by asserting control over her body and thoughts. The main theoretical terms of this essay are used in direct link to the struggles and achievements of formulating the self in a male dominated society. What I aim to achieve with this essay is to show how Janie emerges as a subject with a voice of her own in Hurston’s novel.

Denna studie handlar om textsamtalets påverkan på elevers läsförståelse. Studien utgår från en undersökning som genomfördes i två skolklasser. Det är två högstadieskolor inom Hallands län och klasserna har delats in i grupp A och B. Grupperna har fått besvara sex frågor till H.C. Andersens saga Flickan med svavelstickorna men testet har bedrivits på två olika sätt. Grupp A fick texten och sex frågor att besvara individuellt utan någon hjälp. Grupp B fick använda sig av ett textsamtal med sina klasskamrater innan de fick besvara de sex frågorna individuellt. Resultatet som framställs från de olika skolorna jämförs på individuell nivå men skolorna jämförs även på skolnivå då det är stora skillnader dem emellan.  Studien har sin relevans då undersökningar har visat att elevers kunskaper inom läsförståelse blir allt sämre och därför är det av vikt att komma fram med strategier för hur vi kan motverka detta.  Resultatet denna studie visar är att samtalet gynnar många elever. Fler elever kan besvara innehållsfrågor till en text efter att ha samtalat om den.

The article examines how popular feminist discourses on confidence are expressed in contemporary Swedish popular romance literature through a close reading of Simona Ahrnstedt’s novel Allt eller inget from 2017. It is argued that the novel relies heavily on an individualized and commercialized popular feminist message, but that it also nuances, questions and presents alternatives to it.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur svensklärare på mellanstadiet arbetar med bokrecensioner i undervisningen, vad de anser att bokrecensioners syfte är samt vilka metoder de anser vara gynnsamma i arbetet. Detta är en kvalitativ studie där semistrukturerade intervjuer har genomförts med åtta lärare för att påvisa likheter och skillnader mellan deras olika arbetssätt och tankegångar. Efter genomförda intervjuer analyseras de utifrån en tematisk analys.Resultatet visar att lärarna har en övervägande positiv inställning till bokrecensioner. Dock förekommer det en tvetydighet bland dem, samtidigt som de menar att bokrecensioner är ett fördelaktigt moment som kan inkludera flera viktiga kunskapsutvecklande delar menar de också att momentet inte ska ta allt för stor plats i undervisningen då det finns andra saker som behöver mer utrymme. Syftet med bokrecensioner tycks inte vara att eleverna ska utveckla sina kunskaper kring bokrecension som genre utan de används mer som ett verktyg till att kontrollera elevernas läsförståelse och andra färdigheter. Resultatet visar också att särskilda metoder i själva verket sällan används i arbetet kring bokrecensioner eftersom syftet mer är av kontrollerande karaktär än utvecklande av elevernas genrekunskaper.

The aim of this study is to expose and analyze the ways Yennefer of Vengerberg in the series The Witcher is prescribed a monstrous female identity. This has been done by applying three theories to the selected material, Crip Theory by Robert McRuer, The monstrous feminine by Barbara Creed and Colleen Donnellys analysis of the visual impact. The three theories have been used to identify how Yennefer is defined as a female monster and how this is done based on her physical appearance and personal characteristics as well as her performative actions. The conclusions of the study highlight the importance of beauty and a normative body in relations to what can be seen as the monstrous feminine. The findings can be applied to a wider set of society context, to better understand our view and perception of the female identify, and to help us expose underlying cultural patterns that in many ways place barriers for women.

Salome is the myth of the Oriental princess who dances for her stepfather, Herod the tetrark at his banquet. He becomes so enchanted by Salome's dance that he allows her to wish for what she wants. On the advice of Queen Herodias, Salome's mother, she asks the head of prophet John on a platter. Herod is horrified, but grants Salome's desire.

This is the first in a series of Salome petitions as Mark and Matthew in the New Testament. Salome has since then never ceased to fascinate artists and writers through the ages. From the medieval petitions with the focus on Salome's dance of the Renaissance with the shift from dance to John the Baptist's head on a plate, the romanticism of Heine and the amazing climax in the late 1800s feverish petitions, symbolism, decadence and modernism's painterly hallucinations of Salome as the castrating woman par excellence, of Salome as the terrifying Femme Fatale and "La belle dame sans merci".

Ann Jäderlund's Salome is the latest of Salome petitions of all time. An unbroken tradition of  a blood-red thread spinning throughout history, from Biblical days until our days, and postmodernism. Jäderlund's Salome is a fascinating creation, just as exciting and alarming as the  Salome character herself. The sliding movement between irony and sentimentality in the narration of the text is a complication, and one senses that the author's intentions are far more complex than what the current research today suggests. How can we understand the incomprehensible, the recurrent male-killing in the play? Literally and realistic in feminist psychoanalytic tradition, or figuratively and symbolically, in accordance with the mature and masculine tradition? Should we focus on the content of the text as the gender-oriented studies sought to assert, or should we instead focus attention on the text and dramaform as such? What happens if you problematised Jäderlund's drama based on Peter Szondi's and Mats Ödeen's genre determinations, is it possible at all to identify Salome as a modern drama then, or are moving in a new land, in such a postmodernist? And what characterizes in this case this as compared to the prior art tradition?

These questions may form the basis for my thesis after prolonged inability to find a theoretical input to a text reminding much about the author's other works, a lyrical souterraine to get lost in, to immerse and musical dream of, and be attracted to as be attracted to a dark star or the surrealist black sun. The black sun of the soul with its dazzling, and at once obscure perversion.

Medieval Sermon Studies (MSS) is published annually under the auspices of the International Medieval Sermon Studies Society. This refereed journal features insightful articles on sermon studies and related areas; reviews; sermon transcriptions; and information about work in progress are also included. MSS is an essential resource not only for sermon specialists but also for researchers working in the field of religious culture, history, and literature. It has a world-wide circulation among eminent academics and institutional subscribers.

CONTENTS

Society News

ARTICLES

Dominican Dignitaries and Private Preaching at Papal Avignon Part II:

The Sermon by Hugues de Vaucemain (14 April 1340)

Blake Beattie

Exegetical Traditions and the Artes Praedicandi in the Collationes de tempore

of Frater Petrus (Fourteenth Century)

Daniel Nodes

An Old Norse Adaptation of a Christmas Sermon by Honorius

Augustodunensis

Stephen Pelle

« L’argument vassalique » au service de la prédication des croisades

en Terre sainte (fin XII e – XIII e siècles)

Valentin L. Portnykh

Prêcher sur le prêche. La réflexion de Maurice de Sully sur l’importance

et la nature de la prédication

Beata Spieralska-Kasprzyk

REVIEWS

Bryan Deschamp, [Iohannis Soreth.] Expositio paraenetica in Regulam Carmelitarum (Johan Bergström-Allen); Elisabet Göransson, Gunilla Iversen, Barbara Crostini, Brian M. Jensen, Erika Kihlman, Eva Odelman, et Denis Searby, The Arts of Editing Medieval Greek and Latin: A Casebook (Marjorie Burghart); Filippo Sedda, Franciscus liturgicus: Editio fontium saeculi XIII, Marco Bartoli, Jacques Dalarun, Timothy J. Johnson and Filippo Sedda, Fonti liturgiche francescane: l’immagine di san Francesco d’Assisi nei testi liturgici del XIII secolo (Pietro Delcorno); Shari Boodts, Sancti Aurelii Augustini Sermones in epistolas Apostolicas II, id est Sermones CLVII–CLXXXIII secundum ordinem vulgatum, insertis etiam aliquot sermonibus post Maurinos repertis (Jérémy Delmulle); Richard J. Serina, Nicholas of Cusa’s Brixen Sermons and Late Medieval Church Reform (Donald F. Duclow); Patrick Gifreu, Saint Vincent Ferrier, Sermon sur la passion, Philip Daileader, Saint Vincent Ferrer, His World and Life: Religion and Society in Late Medieval Europe (Alberto Ferreiro); Eleonora Lombardo, Models of Virtues: The Roles of Virtues in Sermons and Hagiography for New Saints’ Cult (13th to 15th Century) (Ralf Lützelschwab)

This essay’s primarily focus is on the common discourse about the persisting effects of the past in the present in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale(1985)and Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred (1979).These novels are the testimonies of the protagonists Offred and Dana who shares their experience of traumatic violence and oppression. Dana, with her ability to time travel, will see her present time in clearer light as she experiences the life of a slave on an antebellum plantation. Offred, the Handmaiden owned by the totalitarian regime Gilead, portrays her contemporary life in parallel to remembering her former and thus describing Gilead’s increasing authority. Based on different theorists and concepts in the field of cultural memory studies, this essay examines the tension between memory and history, the distantness towards the past and the problematics with representations of traumatic events. As I argue that the voices of Dana and Offred calls attention to the importance of perspective and of sharing stories, they are also an act of hope, therapy and resistance; an act that also make possible a critique of the processes of the production of historical knowledge.

The aim of this paper is to examine the didactic potential of the books: Kitty and The Witch Tree Symbol, Kitty and the Mystery of the Stolen Books, Yes, See Lotta and Dear Lotta. All these booksbelong to the B.Wahlström series of girls' books, a literary genre that has been looked down upon overtime and considered harmful to read because of the fact that they where too stereotypical. The reason forthis is that the characters are far too gender stereotypical and can have a negative impact on young girls.The essay intends to investigate how these books, despite being girls' books can be used as tools in theschool's value base work, especially regarding gender equality, equality, norms and stereotypes. It alsoexplores how the selected books can be used in the classroom to address gender and sex issues.To answer the aim of this paper, a qualitative method, close reading, has been used. During the closereading, there has been a specific focus on how the feminine characters, in particular how the femaleprotagonists' Kitty and Lotta, are portrayed. The theoretical approaches used to analyse the books aredidactic potential, defined by Malin Alkestrand, and the gender system, defined and explained byYvonne Hirdman. The result of the analysis was that there is a didactic potential in how Kitty and Lottaare being described since their characterization on several occasions can provide an opening fordiscussing fundamental values in school. The study also showed that the books selected for this analysishad scenes that may work as a tool in a classroom context to address and discuss the topic of sex andgender.

The study aimed to investigate how power and powerlessness are created and portrayed

in Ann-Helén Laestadius novel Stöld (2022) and what didactive implications the novel

has for teaching at a high school level. Based on an intersectional perspective, it was

analyzed when the axes of power gender, class ethnicity and age co-vary where power

versus powerlessness occurs. For the analysis, the thoughts, acting and actions of three

female and three male characters were studied. On an overall level, the analysis shows

that Sámi as a minority group is powerless in relation to the majority society because of

the historical context. On an individual level, the power perspective shifted depending on

the characters age, gender or ethnicity. From a didactive perspective, the novel Stöld is

relevant for teaching in upper secondary school partly based on the discourse they are in,

and partly based on the possibility of applying several parts of the course syllabus with

Stöld as a starting point.

Denna studie syftade till att undersöka hur genus skildras i Fredrik Backmans roman Björnstad (2016) samt vilka didaktiska implikationer romanen har för undervisningen på gymnasial nivå. Utifrån genusperspektivet som ser begreppet genus som sociala konstruktioner studerades karaktärernas egenskaper. För analysen valdes fyra unga vuxna karaktärer i romanen, två flickor och två pojkar. För att skildra karaktärernas genus användes Nikolajevas (2017) motsatsschema över kvinnliga och manliga egenskaper hos litterära personer. Analysen påvisade både stereotypa och icke stereotypa skildringar av karaktärerna vilka påverkades av romanens intrig som gjorde att karaktärerna omvandlades från stereotypa till icke-stereotypa karaktärer. Romanen skildrar teman som kärlek, sexualitet, vänskap, makt och normer vilka är teman somkan aktualiseras i undervisningen inom ramen för ett normkritiskt arbete. Det är teman som berör ungdomar och den diskurs de befinner sig i vilket gör romanen aktuell förläsning på gymnasial nivå.