Uglies
by Scott Westerfield
It was during a classroom discussion of Fahrenheit 451 that one of my students said, “This is just like the Uglies.” What followed was a rather confusing rush of plot tidbits from two or three of the girls. I’m not sure the novel even sounded interesting to me at that point, but I made the promise to read it this summer–just as I did last summer with Twilight.
Uglies is a dystopian young adult novel (a kind of Giver for teens) about a world divided into groups based on looks and age: littlies, uglies, new-Pretties, mid-Pretties, and finally, Crumblies. At age sixteen everyone undergoes an operation to become a Pretty–bones are lengthened or shortened, skin removed, iris’ implanted, cheekbones sculpted, eyes widened. Pretties are then segregated into Pretty Town where they party wildly and indulge their passions.
As the story opens, Tally Youngblood is lonely, having lost her best friend Peris a few months before when he “turned”. Once prettified, Pretties no longer associate with Uglies. Then Tally meets Shay and the two Uglies become fast friends. Shay, however, has plans to escape her turning–she claims not to want the operation–and has made a few inroads with runaways who live in the Smoke. While Tally tries to convince Shay not to run, Shay is true to her word and disappears only days before her turning. Though saddened at the loss of yet another friend, Tally is still eager for her own operation.
Special Operations, however, has other plans. Tally is blackmailed into leading the authorities to Shay and the Smoke–her refusal would mean she would stay ugly forever. Tally eventually makes her way to Shay and is intrigued by life in the secret settlement. In the Smoke she reads magazines in the library and sees that hundreds of years in the past everyone was ugly–weight, height, eye and skin color all differed from person t0 person. Tally finds satisfaction in the Smoke, and falls in love with David, an ugly who has never lived in a city. A twist of fate brings down the Smoke and the rest of the book sees Tally trying to free those captured by Special Operations (such a blatant pun!)–and in the process Tally discovers the awful secret David’s parents had uncovered.
[spoiler alert]
Westerfield attacks our preoccupation with outer beauty and touches on the idea of lookism. Teens who are bombarded (and often overwhelmed) by media and social pressure to measure up to a certain standard of beauty will find the novel compelling. And while I rarely read the second volume of these teen trilogies, I found myself wondering … what will happen to Tally after her operation? Will she remember the promise she made to find a cure …
… to be continued?! Whatever the case, on a cloudy summer afternoon I was pleased to find myself in that reading fog that only comes from reading for hours and hours–oblivious to the demands of the everyday. It is truly summer.
This is my symphony 