Dramatic Irony In Uglies By Scott Westerfeld

Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld, tells the story of a girl named Tally Youngblood who is only several weeks away from having a life-changing surgery completed; the people that undergo the operation have their faces and bodies modified to look conventionally attractive. It’s revealed later in the book--by former members of the “Pretty Committee”--that the surgeons alter the patient’s personality and reasoning as well.

At the very beginning of Part, I there read a quote from Yang Yuan, taken from the New York Times; “Is it not good to make society full of beautiful people?” Westerfeld’s story explores the implications of a society where people are socially conditioned and made to think that they are naturally ugly; at the age of 16, they are made “pretty”, as stated earlier. An interaction between Tally and her friend Shay makes clear the irony of becoming “pretty”. “You’re still yourself

The “power” that beauty once had before becoming pretty was a regular occurrence is neutralized by the fact that everybody is beautiful now. Shay states herself many times throughout how most of the new pretties have symmetrical faces, similar bone structure, etc. Beauty and prettiness both lose

-their meaning, because they’re both defined through difference. If we look closely at the first part after reading through the whole book, we know that Tally’s statement about “being the same on the inside” is not true. As stated earlier, the patients undergo not only physical but mental changes. In case the book hadn’t said it enough, we get a direct quote from the people who used to work for the ICMS (International Committee for Morphological Standards) that they had discovered lesions in the pretties’ brains. Consequently, they don’t do anything quite important and they frequently show signs of