Unwind is a science fiction novel written by Neal Shusterman. The story takes place in the future in the United States of America. After a Second Civil War, also known as “The Heartland War” the Pro-life and Pro-choice armies were fighting over abortion, but they managed to negotiate a deal to end the war. Both parties came to an understanding and ended the war when “The Bill of Life” was passed. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively “abort” a child on the condition that the child’s life doesn’t “technically” end. This process is called “unwinding” (Shusterman 1). The unwinds are technically not dead since almost 100% of the organs are reused. From that moment, unwinding was morally acceptable and was very common in society. This book tells the journey of three main characters that were sent to be unwound, but managed to escape. Conner Lassiter, Risa Ward and Levi Calder now have to survive and avoid being captured by the juvenile police.
As I was reading this novel, the first thought that came into my mind was that I found it amazing and at the same time disturbing to think that people were able to graft human body parts from one person to another. On the other hand, I also thought that it was awful and revolting that parents could easily give up on their children and send them to be unwound without any remorse. An example of this is at the very beginning of the novel when Connor found in his father’s home office his unwind order and three tickets to the Bahamas for his father, his mother and his brother (Shusterman 6). This suggests that they were...
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...would have changed her fate to something more positive. Lastly, I would have made sure that Roland and Connor buried the hatchet and became friends and helped each other to fight against the evil instead of killing him.
The thing that confused me the most in the novel was the Admiral and his intentions of saving the unwinds. At first, I thought that he was an evil man that used the helpless kids to his advantage, for example pretending to save them, but then betraying them by selling them to the cops or using their organs to his benefit. As the story progressed, I found out that he really wanted to prevent children to be unwounded and even sacrificed his career to this secret project. By the end, I think that this was satisfactorily resolved because he and his wife were able to gather all of Harlan's parts in one place, symbolically making their son whole again.
...olent incidences contrast in specific details and their fathers personas, both children lose their innocence and gain the experience and knowledge to question life and make logical decisions.
The science fiction novel Unwind by Neal Shusterman has a central idea, being ‘life’. This novel opens up our ideas to when a human’s life actually begins which is a sensitive topic for most people. This is a concept that everyone has their own opinions on usually based on the way you were raised; however this book opens up these ideas and decisions for you to make. It relates to abortion and the controversy over it. One example of how Shusterman gets us to think about life is when Connor (one of the main characters) is in a crate with three other unwinds. They are discussing life and what happens after you are unwound. In reality we know very little about life so we come up with our own conclusions. This unwinding experience that Connor Lassiter has really changes who he is as a person and his outlook on life.
The pieces of the book come together in the end, where a helicopter leaves the bus in which McCandless died. Krakauer included specific enough details to understand the entire story. He provided an emotional ending that leaves the reader with many thoughts.
The main conflict Connor was afflicted with is society desiring to get rid of the “problem child” by having him unwound. Besides Ariana-Connor’s girlfriend, Sonia, and the Admiral, everyone wants Connor dead due to his intolerable behavior, resulting in a man verse society conflict. For instance, Ariana’s parents remark about their disapproval of Connor by saying, “We always knew he’d be an Unwind, you should have stayed away from that Lassiter boy” (Shusterman 5). Connor only had two options. He could have run from the Juvey Cops, his parents, and the reality that he’d probably end up being unwound or he had the option to give society their way by giving them exactly what they desired; to have one less problem in the world. Obviously, Connor faced his conflict head on and decided he was going to fight past everything to remain alive. This depth of society’s desire to dispose of Connor rapidly grew early on when the narrator recalls, “Connor makes a split-second decision and bolts, pushing the officer against the truck and racing across the busy highway.” (Shusterman 18). Connor’s action of assaulting an officer and rapidly escaping made the Juvey cops view him as a threat and want to try even harder to get him unwound. Understanding Connor’s conflict to survive when society wants him dead, helps us better understand the choices he made.
What I did not like about this book was all of the wasted space and time. The book itself had a really good story but could have been told much better. I found that after the problem was stated at the start of the book it all just turned into Terry going after the same useless leads over and over again. The author could have left all of that out of the book and it would have been much more exciting instead of getting the feeling of dragging on until near the end when it picks up again.
Therefore, every single abortion ends a human life. There are many who say that the preborn child is just a mass of tissue, a part of the woman's body.... ... middle of paper ... ...Pfeifer, Michael. A. Pearce. "Abandoning Error: Self-Correction by the Supreme Court.
“Unplanned” by Abby Johnson is a true story about a dramatic life turn-around. Abby Johnson goes from being a Planned Parenthood Director to advocating for Coalition for Life. In her touching story, she describes how one abortion turned her life upside down. She discovers the truth and realizes how blind she had been all along. Crossing the pro-choice side of the fence, to the pro-life side, this book conveys both opinions and the forces driving them.
... the world, but that one can gain “wholeness” only by devoting oneself to your fellow human beings. He matures under stress and commits to bettering the future for himself and his family. After seeing so much injustice, he finally realizes that “his” people are all people. He cannot stand working for his family’s well-being if it means taking work from another family. He ends up leaving his family to set out on a course of public action. With his rational, calm temperament, it’s no wonder he handles such inhumane treatment so well. I would speculate that he would become an effective political leader if there were to be a sequel to the story. Overall, this is a story that is completely focused on what it means to be a family, what humans need to survive, and the idea of human weakness in self-interest. Families are truly the bedrock of not only society, but humanity.
Abortion in context: What was the fate of an unwanted or orphaned child in the nineteenth century?
...hut the child out of their lives. Rather than dealing with the mistake or misfortune as a parent should do and stand by their child’s side, both parents ran away and tried to hide from the problem. The feelings of each character were completely forgotten and lost. Each were treated as some sort of object that could be thrown away and replaced. And ultimately, the outcomes in their lives reflected their poor parenting. The choices they made unfortunately came from the lack of skills they were taught when they were young and impressionable. Neither character knows what it is like to be a part of a loving family because they were both used as objects for money or fame. Sadly, the lack of parenting led to the demise of each and we are reminded, from over a hundred years ago as well as today, that successful parenting today will lead to successful adults for the future.
Once upon a time, I was a student ignorant of the issues plaguing our nation; issues such as abortion and a frightening scarcity of organ donors meant little to me, who was neither pregnant nor in need of replacement body parts. Today, I fortunately remain a simple witness to these scenarios rather than a participant, but I have certainly established a new perspective since reading Neal Shusterman’s Unwind several years ago.
Wolff, Sula and Alexander McCall Smith. Children who kill: They can and should be reclaimed.
...and through an unfolding of events display to the reader how their childhoods and families past actions unquestionably, leads to their stance at the end of the novel.
The act of human cloning raises important socio-ethical implications in cases where cloning might change the shape of a family's structure by mixing the role of parenting within a family of complex relations. An example of this is when a female DNA donor would be the clone's genetic twin, rather than mother, complicating the genetic and social relationships between mother and child as well as the relationships between other family members and the clone. The ethical questions we need to ask in these situations, specifically one where a child is genetically bred to be a donor is whether doctors and parents producing another child are doing so exclusively in order to act as an organ donating factory, and also the moral question of how the child would feel about the process. Designer babies produced to save the lives or health of their siblings or parents would know that they have been brought into existence solely to satisfy a need and not out of love for their own existence. If the creation of these babies is allowed, it would seem like society views these new human beings as mere instruments for the good of others. This causes serious socio-political, economic, ethical and religious upheavals in societies that have only just began to realise and embrace the
What changes would you like to see in society as a result of this movie?, If you could change the ending, what would you change?