Book Review

In the world today people are forced to believe that appearance is the most valuable asset a being must have. Pretty, ugly, skinny, short, tall - these are the characteristics that define a person in the modern world society. Personality and traits are forgotten. Who you are doesn’t really matter anymore as long as you are beautiful.  If such brainwash continues what will the world/society be like in the future? Will everybody be the same? Will everyone think the same and desire the same things. Will no one have a personality?  

These questions come to mind while reading the bestseller “Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies is a story written in the future where the world as we know today has been abandoned due to lack of oil. A new world has been formed where all that matters is your appearance. One town is divided into a pretty side and an ugly side. Every being starts their life in the ugly part of town and when 16 years pass an operation transforms them into pretties. They then move to the pretty part of town and are told to have fun.  The civilization has completely failed and appearance is all that matters.

The story starts off with a 15 year old Tally who is anxiously waiting for her operation in 3 months to become pretty.  Her best friend Peris has already turned pretty and moved out of town. One night Tally sneaks off into pretty town to find her friend. After meeting Peris, and finding that he does not want to see her until she turns sixteen and is made pretty, she escapes with the help of another ugly, called Shay.  The two girls discover that they share a birthday; Tally and Shay become close friends. Shay teaches Tally to hoverboard, and takes her out of the city to the nearby Rusty Ruins. Gradually, Tally realizes that Shay does not want to become a pretty which leads to her running away from the city to the Smoke right before her birthday, leaving Tally a secret note of instructions on how to follow her.  Even though Tally is disappointed in Shay’s disappearance she still decides on having the operation. On the day of, she is sent to a special office that belongs to a Dr. Cable, head of Special Circumstances. They inform Tally that she will not be allowed to become pretty unless she follows after Shay and brings her in for the operation. Tally agrees and sets of to a journey into the wild. After many days of travelling, during which Tally faces several life-threatening situations, she makes it to the Smoke. There she is terrified at first of the way of life but soon realizes that freedom is much rewarding and valuable than image.  She refuses to turn on the beacon Dr. Cable gave her, but she still keeps it with her. Tally soon falls in love with the son of the founders of the Smoke, David.  Meeting David's parents, she learns that a part of the pretty operation creates brain lesions, which force all pretties to be happy and compliant.  This means that people lose their independent thinking and are brainwashed.  Tally was unaware that your attitude and personality also changes when performing the operation.  With all the new changes and information and love for David, Tally decides to destroy the tracking beacon.  The only problem was that accidently Tally turned the beacon on before throwing it. This lead to an attack by the Special Circumstances which take all the uglies back to their cities. Tally only just escapes with David, who was outside the Smoke when the attack began, she makes her way back to the city to save her friends and David's parents. In a brave and dangerous raid on Special Circumstances headquarters, they rescue the Smokies from the city. However, they are horrified to discover that Shay has already been made pretty, and that David's father Az was killed in an experimental procedure to make him forget the lesions. David's mother, Maddy, explains that she has found a cure for the lesions, but refuses to use them on Shay without her consent. Realizing the only possible solution, Tally admits to her betrayal of the Smoke, shocking the other Smokies. She then gives full consent to taking the cure, and surrenders to the city to become pretty.

              In my opinion the author, Scott Westerfeld, really wants to stress the importance of independent thinking and that beauty isn’t everything. In one part of the book Tally says ”There was something magic in their large and perfect eyes, something that made you want to pay attention to whatever they said, to protect them from any danger, to make them happy. They were so…pretty.” In real life why does it matter if you’re pretty or not? Do words that come out of someone pretty’s mouth have more significance than the rest of the people? Why is that? These are the messages that the author was quietly hinting. He was making you infer during the entire book and that’s why Uglies is a great read.  Scott creates a world in which inequality has vanished from society in the form of making everybody look essentially the same. Faces are made symmetrical, features are shrunken or enlarged based on what the brain considers attractive.  And of course, all the science behind these ideas is done by someone else - a government that remains fairly secretive. This brings up another part of the story where Shay tells Tally about how the operation is someone else’s idea of pretty. But people have their own preferences and choices. If something is pretty for one person it may not be for the second person. Everybody has the right to their own opinion.  While reading the story it reminded me of the social injustices in the book “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. He also described dysfunctional societies that have brainwashed the innocent people. In the book, I think, the author exaggerated the prettiness and ugliness to how that person’s thoughts and opinions are important. The government makes you look pretty. Who says it’s pretty? That is why the pretties are also brainwashed and made happy. They have no opinion anymore.  For them pretty is the same for everyone. No differences between preferences.  One of the moral’s I take from this book is to be proud of who you are and accept your uniqueness. People should learn to appreciate their appearance even if they do not like some of their physical characteristics because that’s what makes them special. There is no “perfect” or “ideal” appearance. And as a wise man once said “people should not be perfect, they should be whole “.

Uglies was full of adventure and emotion! The book wasn’t so obvious, but allowed the reader to ask himself questions and to draw his own conclusion.  Westerfeld wrote a great book for young people and it would be good if teenagers read more books like that because it seems to me that our society is on the verge of losing all uniqueness and independent thinking.