He's Happy: Using Hybridity to Create Immersive Literature

Abstract

He’s Happy is an experimental novel about a pair of siblings trying to survive in a war-torn world. The novel is comprised of a series of documents, including journal-like entries from the siblings, Tess and Danny, and from the parents, Anna and Ben. With the bulk of the entries from Tess and Danny, the focus is on the challenges and dangers faced by children in a war-torn environment. Presented to the reader as an artifact, the box of documents is designed to be sorted through and read in any order. Furthermore, the variety of documents, ranging from magazine covers to newspaper articles and letters to journal entries, pulls specifically on genres familiar to readers such that they can see the characters and their world as real. The intent is that with such hybridity readers are drawn out of the status quo of traditional dystopian novels, developing empathy for Tess and Danny.