The homeless teenagers on the streets of early 21st century England reflected in Kevin Lewis’ Frankie

ABSTRACT

Homelessness is a social problem faced by any country includes England. It is experienced not only by the adults or old men, but it also covers the children and teenagers. The homeless teenagers should go through harsh and terrible experiences on the streets to keep survive whereas it is not a good place for them to grow. Most of them are becoming homeless people since they ran away from their houses or cares. This action of running away is mainly caused by domestic problems such as domestic sexual abuse and domestic violence.

Frankie is a novel written by Kevin Lewis which takes the life of homeless teenagers on the streets as its main background. Two characters reveal in the novel, Frankie and Mary, are the homeless teenagers of England streets. They ran away from their houses after experiencing domestic abuses which were done by their own parents. Becoming a homeless, they should face terrible circumstances of street life especially to keep survive. In this study, the researcher takes the novel Frankie as the object of analysis in which this study aims at exploring the experiences of being a homeless teenager on the streets as revealed in the novel, and finding out the aspects from the novel which reflects the real condition of homeless teenagers on the streets of early 21st century England.

In this study, the researcher uses the approach of genetic structuralism. This approach considers both the intrinsic and extrinsic elements of the work in the analysis. The main aspect of genetic structuralism is considering the genesis aspect; the certain historical background of the work making. The primary data is the novel Frankie by Kevin Lewis, and the secondary data are taken from the report of Social Exclusion Unit – Office of the Deputy Primr Minister, research results of social organizations such as The Children’s Society, many articles and journals dealing with the homeless teenagers on the streets especially in England.

Based on the analysis, the novel Frankie reveals the habitual and experiences of homeless teenagers’ life on the streets that are sleeping rough, facing the bad weather, involving in criminality, running away and its factors, and having harsh life on the streets. Besides, this novel reflects the real condition of homeless teenagers mainly in three aspects, which are about the runaway teenagers, the life of homeless teenagers and their involvement in crime.