Interpellation and Children’s Identity in Saunders’ Short Stories

Abstract

This study examines the construction of children’s identities in George Saunders’s Tenth of December (2013). It investigates how ideological state apparatuses, including family, consumer culture, technology, and social institutions, shape children’s subjectivities within contemporary society. The study employs Louis Althusser’s theory of ideological interpellation and Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia to analyse the competing ideological discourses influencing children’s identity formation. A qualitative textual analysis based on Alan McKee’s textual analysis framework has been conducted. The findings reveal that Saunders portrays children as subjects of consumerism, surveillance, and moral regulation, while simultaneously presenting them as active agents who negotiate and challenge dominant ideologies through imagination, empathy, ethical reflection, and dialogic engagement. Unlike conventional studies that emphasize political or dystopian representations of childhood, this study highlights the subtle operation of ideology in everyday life and its psychological and emotional effects on children. It argues that Saunders’s fiction presents literature as a critical space where power, ideology, and identity are continuously constructed, negotiated, and resisted.