A. Introduction- The Uglies is a book about a futuristic look of America. There are a lot of futuristic things like hover boards. But this society isn’t perfect like people think. The narrator in this book is tally Youngblood who will be on a journey to find her best friend. In this society everyone is obsessed with beauty. And the Uglies are the people between the ages of 12 and 16 they live in a remote community far from the beautiful people. In this community the Uglies anxiously wait for their 16th birthday. At the age of 16 they go through a mandatory plastic surgery in order to live up to society’s standards. After they go through plastic surgery they will be known as pretties, and they will also live with all of the other gorgeous people. After changing communities they will party all the time and spend most of their time drinking champagne. But then Tally find out that the government is hiding a scary secret about becoming a pretty and she will risk her life and her friends to save them from becoming pretties. B. Characters- Tally- She is the main character in this book she has to choose to betray her friends or become a pretty. She isn’t so sure of what she wants. When Tally starts to talk more with Shay she starts to reconsider what normal really is. In the first part of the book she want to become a pretty and have a normal life like everyone else. But after a while she starts to change her mind and she is trying to avoid have plastic surgery. She is a really adventurous person and like to have a lot of fun. She falls in love with David and they save the smokes together. At the end she risks her life and becomes a pretty to become and experiment to David’s moms to test a cure to the brain lesions created when they go ... ... middle of paper ... ...o save them from going through a transformation that will change them forever. The moral of the book is you don’t have to get surgery to look a certain way. That a perfect society will never exist and no one can control the way people are. It is not right to categorize people into different groups by the way they look. There will never be a utopian society where they government will control everyone, and they have to do things at a certain age. The E. Theme- The theme of the book is appearance shouldn’t matter. Like how Shay says that she doesn’t care about appearance or becoming a pretty. F. Overall Opinion- My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book. Works Cited Westerfeld, Scott. Uglies. New York: Simon Pulse, 2005. Print.
In all aspects a utopian society is a society that is place to achieve perfection, and that is the society that both the “Uglies”, by Scott Westfield and “Harrison Bergeron”, by Kurt Vonnegut, was striving for. In both of these stories, the government had control over the people’s choices, freedoms, and their natural abilities. Yet both government strive for a perfect society, the methods they use to achieve this goal were different from each other.
This is my personal reflection about this book. First and foremost, I would like to say that this book is very thick and long to read. There are about nineteen chapters and 278 pages altogether. As a slow reader, it is a quite hard for me to finish reading it within time. It took me weeks to finish reading it as a whole. Furthermore, it is written in English version. My English is just in average so sometimes I need to refer to dictionary for certain words. Sometimes I use google translate and ask my friends to explain the meaning of certain terms.
Criticisms (Unfavourable): Near the end of the book the dialogue becomes more rhetorical than the rest of the book. This isn’t really a problem, but can become slightly confusing at times. The best option would be to read this part slowly and carefully in order to understand what the message is.
Throughout the first chapters, the reader learns about the struggles that young women are facing and how these girls are influenced to completely change themselves to fit into society. It is mentioned that girls change dramatically, that girls who once were talkative and bold, are now shy and timid. Dr. Mary Pipher believes that to stop
...cieties views on gender roles but nothing ends up changing. In reality, the only real difference, which occurred, was the death of April and her baby. If April had died, her attempts at change would not have been successful, though she was persistent in trying as in constantly giving Frank boosts of ego and even attempting to abort the baby so the plan to move to Paris would not fall through. April was alone in her attempt at change and nobody else was supporting her views, and through her death others saw her as somewhat crazy, comparable to John Givings. Her attempts at changing the gender roles in an unchangeable society in the 1950s failed to work and created a revolution in society, which simply just brought things right back where they started.
Now that I have read several chapters of my chosen book for Book Club, I have realized the significance of my book title. My book, Uglies takes place in a dystopian society where groups of people are separated based off of their looks. The Uglies are biased to think that they're not normal, and that they don't fit in. Their government gave them the opportunity to start anew by undergoing a procedure that makes you perfect. But, there are some Uglies that believe Pretties are too perfect. They don't have a creative thought in their heads, and all they care about is being pretty and partying. Uglies aren't unnatural parts of their society. Pretties are. You only think you're ugly when you're told there's someone who's prettier than you. Uglies
Gaining maturity and growing up is an important part of life and can affect your future. In “Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld, everyone lives in a futuristic society where the only way to be equal and be accepted is to look perfect. The government pressures and manipulates young adults to undergo an operation that turns them from an average ugly, to a stunning pretty. The main character, Tally, is excited about becoming “pretty” but her friend is not. Her friend, Shay thinks having the operation will change her brain and plans on running away. Because of this, their friendship is torn apart. In “Uglies”, Westerfeld uses the hoverboards as a symbol for growing-up and gaining maturity.
First, the conflict in the story, “The Jacket” by Gary Soto supports the overall theme. The kid in the story has gotten a new jacket, he thinks it is ugly, but he knows he is stuck with it. Gary Soto explains the boy “wanted to cry because it was so ugly and so big that [he] knew [he’d] have to wear it a long time.” This shows how insecure he was of his jacket when he needed to be confident in himself. The way he looks shouldn’t determine his personality. This proves how needed it is to be confident in oneself. Also the boy says, “Everybody saw me. Although they didn’t say it out loud ‘ Man, that’s ugly,’ I heard a buzz-buzz of gossip and even laughter that I knew was meant for me.” People were judging him by how he looked when they hadn’t even got to know him. They weren’t looking at his characteristics they were looking at how he looked.
Because young girls and women around the world are beginning to alter themselves to fit a certain mold, people are starting to realize that a pretty face and one’s youth is a factor that has been hurting the world for many years. So much so that a person is willing to kill to obtain beauty. This is truly and amazing yet sickening fact and the more we emphasize on one’s appearance the more catastrophes like this will happen.
This book was a good read for me, but I also read book reviews to help me keep track on what I am reading. These book reviews just made a better understanding of what I was reading.
The author created this book for our entertainment, but also to teach us that you shouldn’t change for anyone, that you should express yourself the way that you want to.
influence all her life and struggles to accept her true identity. Through the story you can
Being beautiful, being perfect, is what most of society cares about in this day and age. For example, people value getting rid of any to all imperfections, like having a bit of baby fat, or getting rid of scars. People are put down by the comments of strangers, and more so the comments made from people of their inner circle. People feel ugly and hate themselves for things that they have no control over. Some do radical things to get rid of these imperfections by getting surgery or taking pills. Even though not all people judge minor blemishes the view of one’s self is the most important view a person could have, and if that identity is under attack it could ruin a person 's self confidence. The story “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne also has aspects of self-confidence and identity that are relevant to the current times.
...e ability to achieve anything in life. Hopefully, readers would learn from this novel that beauty is not the most important aspect in life. Society today emphasizes the beauty of one's outer facade. The external appearance of a person is the first thing that is noticed. People should look for a person's inner beauty and love the person for the beauty inside. Beauty, a powerful aspect of life, can draw attention but at the same time it can hide things that one does not want disclosed. Beauty can be used in a variety of ways to affect one's status in culture, politics, and society. Beauty most certainly should not be used to excuse punishment for bad deeds. Beauty is associated with goodness, but that it is not always the case. This story describes how the external attractiveness of a person can influence people's behavior and can corrupt their inner beauty.