Twtwb And The 100

John Marsden’s 1993 novel, Tomorrow, When the War Began (TWTWB), discusses Australian youths’ reactions to an abrupt invasion, in which they must learn to survive independently from external order. Jason Rothenberg’s tv series, The 100, produced in 2014 considers similar themes and circumstances. The themes evident in TWTWB and The 100 are powerful women and mental trauma due to warfare. Both texts feature a drastic change in societal structure, which are primarily described through characterisation, contrast, flashbacks, and comparison.

TWTWB describes the callous conflicts a group of diverse teenagers must covertly surmount amid the terror and destruction of foreign invaders. Similarly, The 100 focuses on a gang comprised of 100 delinquent

TWTWB and The 100 consider adolescents’ reactions when confronted with hostile conditions, devoid of traditional order and parental figures. When a ‘leader’ must be elected due to human’s natural instincts to form a group to survive, both texts appoint a young, strong, stubborn female character. This contradicts the conventional leadership order before the war, in which both texts had a male leader.

Women in power is an underlying theme throughout TWTWB and The 100. TWTWB’s protagonist, sixteen year old Ellie Linton, finds herself controlling the choices made by her band of terror-stricken friends when placed under intense duress. Subsequently, her previously sweet nature begins to unravel, as she is hardened by the conflict engulfing her. Marsden demonstrates Ellie’s personal development through characterisation. As she is introduced to the existence of war in her small, country town, Ellie’s guerilla actions transform her sense of self, “At that moment I stopped being an innocent rural teenager and started becoming someone else, a more complicated and capable person, a force to be reckoned with even, not just a polite obedient kid.” (page 82, chapter 7). Marsden’s uses characterisation to describe

The theme conveyed through this is conflict resulting in psychological trauma. TWTWB’s teenagers were all unique prior to the war, therefore their responses to death and bloodshed are all specific to the individual. This is also palpable throughout The 100 series, as the hundred juveniles acknowledged the presence of war in diverse manners. Both texts exhibit the character development through the use of comparison. In Ellie Linton’s neighbor, Homer Yannos’ case, Marsden often describes his life preceding the invasion in stark contrast to the present circumstances, “Homer was becoming more surprising with every passing hour. It was getting hard to remember that this fast-thinking guy, who’d just spent fifteen minutes getting us laughing and talking and feeling good again, wasn’t even trusted to hand out the books at school.” (page 104, chapter 8). This extract from TWTWB demonstrates Homer’s hasty emotional growth after exposure to the carnage of war, compared to his apparent immaturity just weeks earlier. The 100’s reaction to conflict is at a much slower rate than that of the TWTWB’s characters, as they are exposed to brutal conditions and treacherous choices before being sent to Earth. Rothenberg distinguishes the two grim locations through the use of comparison. Clarke often says that Earth is not like the Ark (the space ship holding what is