The Ecology of Rebellion: Deconstructing Adolescent Identity in Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire

Abstract

The article is based on the Ecological Systems Theory developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner is used to comment on the psychological coming-of-age book Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman, which addresses the nature of friendship between two teenage girls who are undergoing trauma, identity, and rebellion in a small American town in the 1990s. The novel describes the way individuals are formed through the complicated stratifications of their social and cultural world. Ecological Systems Theory, which introduces five interrelating systems the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem offers a useful perspective in the discussion of influences attributable to the external forces shaping the protagonists in the story, Dex and Lacey. In this paper, we can observe the role of their dysfunctional family, toxic school environment, society judgement, their gender role requirements, and the historical background of the time to include these factors that cause their emotional imbalance and violent behaviour. The progression of the characters traced in this paper is in the terms of Bronfenbrenner; in this system, the paper demonstrates the systemic change of adolescent disillusionment, traumatization and revolution. Not only does the analysis demonstrate the psychological depth of a characters developed by Wasserman but it also demonstrates that EST can be utilized as a theory in literary studies that research the adolescence stage and identity formation.