“The Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld is a dystopian novel based in the future. The society is ruled by technology and beauty. At the age of 16 you undergo a long surgery to make you “pretty”. The story follows Tally Youngblood’s journey on discovering the true secrets behind the society. Along the way she is faced with many hardships and is forced to make important decisions. She also forms new friendships and relationships she never knew uglies like her could have.
This society is based around looks. For them it’s not what’s inside that counts it’s what’s outside that counts. As the uglies grow up the education system tells them becoming pretty is what they want. They tell them once you’re pretty you’ll fit in, you will finally feel important to people, like what you say matters because of your appearance. They get brainwashed as a young child to think the only way they could be happy and be loved by anyone is to become pretty, all anyone ever wants is to become “pretty”. Once they’re pretty they’re happy, their life becomes better, and everyone treats them like they matter. Everyone is the same once they turn pretty. Everyone thinks the same, everyone looks the same, and they all act the same exact way. When they’re ugly they have their own thoughts and freewill to think whatever they want, but that’s not what the government wants. Once they turn 16 they start to develop their own thoughts. The government doesn’t want that to happen so at the age of 16 they get their operations. Once they get all that attention it makes them feel special, and changes them completely, which is exactly what the government wants. Everyone in the society is forced to wear an Interface Ring, which is a ring that tracks where they are at all times and anytime they want to access anything, for example an elevator, they have to scan their interface ring. The government tells everyone that it’s for their own safety, but in reality it’s so that the government can keep an eye on everyone. It shows them where everyone is, it shows them if the uglies are asleep by their bedtimes, and it makes sure you don’t cross the cities limits. They want everyone to think they have freedom but in reality they are completely locked brainwashed into doing everything the government wants.
Because this is based in the future their technology and whole city is very advanced. Everything they rely on is based around technology. Their cars hover, they have actual hover boards, their bridges float with medal under the whole city, and all the trash they use magically vanishes after you’ve used it. Although they are very advanced, they weren’t always like that. Their is a place called “The Rusty Ruins” that used to be the old society. They called them “The Rusties”. The rusties were normal people like us. They didn’t have flying cars, they didn’t have metal plates all under the city, and they didn’t have the operations. The uglies are taught that they were very stupid people who didn’t know how to get along. The kids are only shown what makes their “world” look better. They say that the rusties would fight over how people looked, so after a disaster happened they came up with the idea of the operation. The people are now very smart and definitely more advanced, but they don’t want everyone to be smart. The government chooses certain individuals to get another surgery in addition to becoming pretty. The surgery makes them different. These people are called “The Specials”. The specials are people who have gotten another operation to make them 10x faster, stronger, and smarter than anyone else. These people are the government, they don’t enforce the laws but they do make them. They also deal with any uglies who want to try and challenge the society.
The people who normally try to challenge the society are normally uglies who go to this place called “The Smoke”. The people who live there are named “Smokies”. The smoke is an area far away from the city. Its an area where uglies from different cities go to because they also don’t believe that the only way to be beautiful is to become one of the “pretties”. These people are the ones the specials want to catch. Those people are the only ones who really know the truth about the whole society. They know everything they teach in the schools is wrong, and they know all of the things they show them as they grow up is just to brainwash them into thinking that, that’s the only way they can be pretty. I think the event that brought along rebellion would be when Tally’s friend, Shay, left to go to the smoke and left her a note just in case she wanted to go before her surgery. I think this started the whole rebellion because this was the part where Tally had an important decision to make that started the whole uprising of the smokies trying to really make a change in the society.
With the smokies knowing secrets to the government and society there could be hope that they one day figure out how to get the pretties on their side, and have all the uglies working with them as well. The smokies are a very powerful and smart group of people. Not all of them are kids, there are some older people who have been there since the smoke was created. Theres also Tally’s other friend, David’s parents, who are the really smart ones and they know all the insider secrets because they were one of the doctors who performed the operation on people. So eventually as the smokies get new members they could one day over power the government and possibly change the society for the better. One thing that the government might not think of because they think so highly of themselves, is if their technology stops working everything would collapse. If one big piece of machinery breaks everything they rely on would stop working. Their cars would stop, they wouldn’t be able to use normal things like elevators because you need an interface ring for that, and everything else you need an interface ring for. That alone could eventually destroy that society. Some aspects of their society that are similar to our society is that those people are very obsessed with beauty and what’s one the outside. In today’s world everyone always says love yourself and love each other and always be positive to each other, but even today, if you do it intentionally or not people still judge other by the way they look. The first thing we notice about someone is how they look or their clothes, before we even get to know somebody we’re judging them by their appearance. That’s definitely one thing we have in common with their society. Another thing we have in common is the fact that even at a young age we are very attached to technology and a lot of us rely on technology for many things. We use technology so much in our daily lives that if it got taken away from us many things would fall apart. But contradictory to that we could still survive without technology because the technology we use is mostly for entertainment purposes rather than our transportation and many important things we need on a daily bases.
One message the authors trying to give us is how beauty should not define our world. The author is telling us that because our society today does care so much about beauty and we have to fit into a certain mold or we won’t “fit in”, that if we keep going on with this path we will slowly turn into that type of society. The author uses the Rusties and the rusty ruins to symbolize our society today. In the story he tells us that the operation was created because the Rusty’s would get into great wars over their appearances and if we had the operation none of us would fight because we would all look the same and act the same, this is something that could very much happen in our future. Another message in the story is the use of technology, like I said before our society today relies a lot on technology. Technology can show us a lot about the societies values, it shows us that they value technology, having fun, and being crazy over knowledge and intelligence for all. The smokes on the other hand live on their own without any higher power, they don’t have all the technology the other cities do but still work hard and get things done correctly. They value knowledge over all of the artificial intelligence. I really recommend this book because the themes that the author wrote about are very impactful and could show young adults that they can stop it before this becomes our future.
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