The First Stone provides an in-depth look at Reef’s emotional and mental instability. He struggles with impulse control, anger management, substance abuse, and severe anti-social tendencies. The other boys at the North Hills home add pyromania and kleptomania to the list. The adolescents in the book lash out and commit crimes—both small and large—out of retaliation against a world that doesn’t want them. The characters’ suffering largely stems from a lack of effective guardians and mentors.

Young adult literature is a useful medium for examining the nature of suffering caused by physical and/or mental instability. Pain and suffering are part of life, but many young people have parents and authority figures who do whatever they can to prevent pain from forcing their children to grow up too quickly. Without parental figures, the pain becomes the teenager’s teacher. In Reef’s case, suffering teaches him that no one will look out for him, he should strike first to avoid being hurt by someone else, and he should not be optimistic about his future.

By examining young adults in turmoil, authors have a rich opportunity to portray injustice and the darker aspects of human nature. For instance, one of the most horrific aspects of Susanne Collins’s bestselling The Hunger Games series is that children are specifically targeted for suffering.