At the beginning of the novel Tally hates uglies. She
believes that they are useless and stupid. All she wants to do is become a
pretty, but this all changes once she leaves for The Smoke to find Shay.
- While Tally is at the smoke she is told by David that the whole system is created to make all uglies feel ugly even if they are not.
- "That's the worst thing they do to you, to any of you. Whatever those brain lesions are all about, the worst damage is done before they even pick up the knife. You're all brainwashed into believing you're ugly," (Westerfeld 65).
- To David, who has never been in the city, the whole idea of the separation between ugliness and prettiness is completely stupid. For him, the problem isn't just the surgery, but the whole social system that says that pretties are better than uglies.
- Tally’s ways change when she starts to fall in love with David who is an ugly and she starts to see him as an attractive guy.
- “Tally’s main crisis begins when she meets David and begins to fall in love with him. David is Ugly, and Tally comes from a place where love is determined purely by physical attraction. As her loves grows, she even begins to see David as an attractive boy, rather than the repulsive creature she thought he was upon first meeting him. She learns to feel emotions deeper than purely superficial lust,” (Uglies).
- This quotes helps deepen the look on Tally’s love for David through saying that the reason she stayed with The Smoke was because she started to see David as a normal everyday person and that leads her to seeing the rest of the people in The Smoke as pretty and normal making her feel like she belongs.
“Is
it not good to make society full of beautiful people?” -Yang Yuan
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness
in the proportion.” -Francis Bacon
"Beauty is that Medusa's head / Which men go armed to seek and sever. / It is most deadly when most dead, / And dead will stare and sting forever." -Archibald MacLeish
As Tally goes through the story she finds out the
secrets behind being pretty and the pretty surgery making her not want to
return back home and become pretty.
- Tally starts off loving the idea of being pretty. Her every move and every detail is preparing her for the life of a pretty.
- “There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big eyes and full lips like a kid's; smooth, clear skin; symmetrical features; and a thousand other little clues. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, people were always looking for these markers. No one could help seeing them, no matter how they were brought up. A million years of evolution had made it part of the human brain,” (Westerfeld 47).
- In this quote it becomes clear that everyone in this society is made to look the same so that no one becomes jealous of another person’s looks, what they have, etc. because everybody has the same things once they become pretty. It also seems like there's not a lot of freedom in Tally's version of the world.
- The main reason that Tally decides to stay in The Smoke is because she learns of the secret that is behind the surgery and being pretty itself. She learns that when you go for surgery the doctors put lesions in your head to make you think and act like everyone else, as well as that they make you behave.
- "’Our minds are fine,’ Maddy answered. ‘But we wanted to start a community of people who didn't have the lesions, people who were free of pretty thinking. It was the only way to see what difference the lesions really made. That meant we had to gather a group of uglies. Young people, recruited from the cities,’" (Westerfeld 128).
- This quote proves that Maddy and Az, David’s parents, moved out into the wilderness to start over new and try to create a society where nobody had to worry about getting the lesions and also so that they could see the difference of how people act with and without the lesions in their heads.
Throughout the book special circumstances/ the
specials keep popping up and ruining Tally’s life. First they tell her that she
will not turn pretty until she goes to find Shay and expose The Smoke. Then
they come and ruin her new home and take all of them back to the city.
- When it was Tally’s birthday she was taken to special circumstance and told that if she wanted to become she would have to go to The Smoke and get Shay back and show them where it is so that they could come and return everyone back to the city.
- “Tally snorted. ‘You're not giving me a choice.’ Dr. Cable smiled. ‘We always have choices, Tally. You've made yours,’" (Westerfeld 7-8).
- This quote signifies the beginning of Tally’s adventure and that if she does not take it than she does not get to turn pretty, but if she takes it then she is breaking the promise that she made to Shay. Altogether this this the way that the specials control Tally and they are the first people to make her want to change and stay with The Smoke.
- After Tally learned what the specials did to her friend, Shay, she becomes mad and wants revenge for what they did to her.
- “Tally thought of the lesions on Shay's brain, the tiny cancers or wounds or whatever they were, that she didn't even know she had. They were in there somewhere, changing her friend's thoughts, warping her feelings, gnawing at the roots of who she was. Making her forgive Tally,” (Westerfeld 386).
- In this quote, Tally is wondering why Shay is forgiving her then she remembers that she has the lesions, which are making her forgive Tally. Tally blames herself for this happening and goes back to the city to start the rebellion against the government and the pretty surgery.
Throughout
the book uglies, pretties, and specials give Tally different reasons to run
away from her everyday society making life with The Smoke the best option for
her.
In conclusion everything that happens to Tally throughout the novel is caused by how each type of appearance treated and fooled her into running away from society.
References
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