Gangs In Fictional Literature
What comes to mind when you hear the word gang? Everybody has their own idea of what a gang is and also their own image of what a gang member might look like or act like. I’m sure that many people have similar images coming to mind. I think of a group of big guys with tattoos, guns, and drugs. My idea of a gang is stereotypical and not true of all gangs, but it is probably similar to other people’s views on gangs and their members. Many people create mental images of gangs before ever having had an experience with a gang or a gang member; but almost everybody seems to have a pretty clear image of what they think a gang is. How do we come to picture gangs the way we do? Television shows, movies, stories and news articles all have an effect on how people perceive gangs and their members. One unexpected source of media changing the way people view gangs is fictional literature. Other forms of media misrepresent gangs in many different ways. Some sources show gangs as groups of huge men covered in tattoos, driving nice cars, living in nice houses, dealing drugs and committing crimes. Others portray gangs as groups of kids from a bad area of town who have no place to turn other than gang life. There are many other ways that gangs are represented in the media that are giving people the wrong idea about gang life and misrepresent the people that join gangs.
I am looking into the ways that gangs are shown throughout fictional literature and how the images portrayed have changed as time has passed. Gangs have been portrayed in fictional literature since the 1500s when Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet and gangs continue to show up in many different types of fiction. I am going to be comparing many different types of gangs; gangs of girls, gangs formed in school, gangs with nowhere else to turn, violent gangs and gangs created because of family.
The way gangs are shown in literature has seriously changed since they first showed up in fictional writing so long ago. In Romeo and Juliet the two gangs are formed because of a fight between the Capulet’s and the Montague’s that happened long before any of the boys in the gang were born. The two gangs of Romeo and Juliet were not participating in random acts of violence or dealing drugs like the gangs being portrayed in more recent literature. Those two gangs only fought each other, and they only fought if one family somehow wronged the other. They were both concerned with their family honor and worked hard to protect that honor – even if that meant battling with another family. The gangs in Romeo and Juliet do not match up with most of the stereotypes of gangs that we have today, they are not big scary men toting guns and drugs, but the violent acts between the two gangs are very similar to the way gangs are portrayed throughout literature today. A novel written after Romeo and Juliet depicting gangs was Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which was written in 1885. The gangs featured in both Romeo and Juliet and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are far from the gangs that we think of today. They are made up of people that would not normally be thought of as gang members and do not behave the same as the gang members that we see today. In Huckleberry Finn, Tom’s gang of boys is alluring to Huck and he would do almost anything to get in with them. Although they are a gang of robbers, they still appear to be the group that you would want to be in and that you would strive to hang out with. This portrayal of the gang of boys may make their lives seem cool and desirable to kids reading the book. The violent acts that the gang of robbers participates in go along with the idea that gangs are violent but other than that, they are more of a group of delinquents than a gang in today’s society. While the boys in Tom’s gang in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn chose to be a member of the gang, not everybody in a gang chooses to live that way. In 1954, William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, which shows a group of boys that were thrown into a situation where they had to fend for themselves, and had no authority telling them what was right and wrong. The boys were initially separated into two groups; the hunters and the gatherers. The two groups worked together at first so that they would all have what they needed, but as time went on the two groups turned into rivals. The two sides eventually started fighting with each other and all of the fighting between the two ended in the death of a boy because of the other gang and their members. The boys formed their gangs because they were thrown into a bad situation and it seemed like their only way out. There are many other depictions of gang members being thrown into gang life because they felt they had no other place to turn.
Gangs With Nowhere Else To Turn
Some gangs in fictional literature go along with the stereotype of gangs being violent and aggressive. In The Lord of the Flies, there is a group of boys that are thrown into a situation where they haven no parents and no authority and have to learn to fend for themselves. They split into two groups, the hunters and the gatherers, these groups eventually turned into gangs and after a while, the boys turned against each other based on what group they were in. Things turned violent between the two gangs of boys and eventually a member of one group killed a member of the other group. These boys were thrown into a situation where they had nobody to keep them from misbehaving and also had no rules to follow. They were boys that would not have usually been dragged into gangs but because of the situation they were put into, they had few other choices.
Gangs of Girls
A representation of gangs that is rare in literature is a gang made up of girls. In Joyce Carol Oates book Foxfire, written in 1993 and based in New York during the 1950s. The gang of girls in Foxfire fights against men because of all the ways that they have wronged women over time. They want to stand up for the women who have been hurt and they want to fight against the men who have hurt them. This group of girls formed during a time where the men were the powerful dominant ones and the women had to accept that and act accordingly. They went against not only gang stereotypes but also went against the way women should have been acting at that time. The depiction of gangs in Foxfire is different than most other gang representations because they are a group of girls. This gang participates in sometimes-violent acts as an attempt to make up for the bad things that have been done to women and for the embarrassment that has been caused. The depiction of gangs in Foxfire goes against the standard stereotypes of gangs at that time – guys with tattoos, dealing drugs, and from a bad part of town. Although this book was about a rare gang made up of only girls, the reason that the gang formed in the first place is not a new reason. Like the gangs of Romeo and Juliet, their gang were formed to fight against a wrong done to somebody – in Romeo and Juliet it was one family disrespecting the other, while in Foxfire it is protecting against all the bad things that have happened to women.
Gangs in School
Another book that went against a popular gang stereotype was Pat Conroy’s The Lords of Discipline. During the 1960s and 1970s, gangs were thought of as kids who did not go to school and were often seen as troublemakers. The gang that was formed in The Lords of Discipline was actually formed within the military school that the gang members went to. The gang in this book is looking to be in control of their school and will take very serious and violent measures to make sure that they are still in control. While going against the stereotype that gangs are made up of school dropouts with bad backgrounds, this gang certainly plays into the assumption that gangs are violent and strict on who can join and who cannot.
Violent Gangs
A typical gang image that people have is a group of men who are violent and destructive. In the book Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker, a group of men start to act in the same ways that people think of most gangs acting. The men are driven to gang activity – like rioting and killing – because they are desperate for a way to buyout of having to go to war. In the book, gangs are made out to be something to join if nothing is going right for you. The portrayal of gangs in this book also seems like they can solve all of your problems in this book. Once the men realize that they need three hundred dollars to buy their way out of war, they resort to stealing, killing, and rioting to get what they want – and they don’t seem to care who or what they leave destroyed behind them. This portrayal of gangs makes people think badly of gangs and puts all gangs into a bad light even though not all gangs act this way. This is a misrepresentation of gangs and their members.
Gangs Formed Based On Family
It is sometimes said that a gang is like a family; in Romeo and Juliet the gangs are formed based on their actual family. In Romeo and Juliet the two gangs are formed because of a fight between the Capulet’s and the Montague’s that happened long before any of the boys in the gang were born. The two gangs of Romeo and Juliet were not participating in random acts of violence or dealing drugs like the gangs being portrayed in more recent literature. Those two gangs only fought each other, and they only fought if one family somehow wronged the other. They were both concerned with their family honor and worked hard to protect that honor – even if that meant battling with another family. The gangs in Romeo and Juliet do not match up with most of the stereotypes of gangs that we have today, they are not big scary men toting guns and drugs, but the violent acts between the two gangs are very similar to the way gangs are portrayed throughout literature today.
Caroline C.