Social Issues In Uglies

Alice Kang
Ms. Georgi
Writing 9 / 3
December 11, 2015

Picture that you wake up every day by thinking you are ugly. Whenever you stand in front of a mirror, you will throw up from looking at yourself. Can such imaginations become reality? It can. They are ugly. In the book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld, the main character, Tally, fights with these imaginations every single day until she turns 16 years old. In the society where she lives people are judged as ugly before their 16th birthday. It is different as getting the driver license. It is similar as having a totally different life. Most people are in a hurry to have a surgery that will change their appearance even though people may look beautiful on the outside, they are ugly on the inside.

Shay is similar to Tally in some various ways, as both like to be alone, are in a similar age group and don’t like to follow principles. Tally Youngblood wants to be pretty, while she wants to revolt against the entire pretty community system. Tally thinks that appearance is not everything. Also, she doesn’t like the changing system of the society. She often makes comments such as, “That’s not me. It’s some committee’s idea of me” (Westerfeld 44). This becomes the major problem of identity in the book Uglies. Shay wonders about what is really you and what other people want to make you. For Shay, being herself means to be tricky and not to listen to the laws. She declines to turn to pretty and rejects the city to plan her remained life. “It’s about becoming what I want to become. Not what some surgical committee thinks I should” (Westerfeld 90). Shay mentions intelligible opinions in opposition to the surgery that changes to the pretty. She disagrees with the surgery because she trusts it will change her

Tally had the best friend named Peris, and he was already a pretty. She tries to find him to check their friendship and she goes to the town where Peris lives. Peris, who used to play with Tally until he became pretty, wasn’t so excited to see Tally and told tells her they cannot be friends anymore. He says that “they’d be friends again. Once Tally was pretty too…” (Westerfeld 28). Tally wanted to meet Peris, so she went over to New Pretty Town. Peris did not want to be friends because of Tally’s appearance. Tally doesn’t seem important to Peris. Actually, he does not seem very interested ind Tally. She “always felt respect when face-to-face with a middle or late pretty. But in the presence of this cruelly beautiful man, respect was saturated with rear” (Westerfeld 98). Observe how she always has these emotions towards the pretties. Regardless of who they are, middle or late pretties, she admired them. Likewise, at any time she meets a current pretty, she is astonished and whenever she sees a Special, she was frightened. So the class and the system society in the community essentially rule each cooperation and feel those people