NOTE: Isaac has been on sabbatical from the blog. He's been busy with various duties, including: getting older, doing copious amounts of homework, and trying to be cool. No fear, he has returned.
So, I read a book the other day. Shocking, I know. But I read a book, and it turned out it was the first in a trilogy. Then it turned out that this trilogy had a sequel, so really it was four books, proving for once and for all that authors clearly have no idea what they're doing.
But the book was Uglies (Scott Westerfield) and I categorize it as YA dystopian tech-fantasy. The main plot theme is in this brave new world, surgery and science have combined to find the archetype of the most attractive faces possible. These features include large eyes, symmetrical faces, and other tiny markers that make humans subconsciously attracted to one another. So in this semi-postapocalyptical society, the governments of the various cities have decided that to eliminate the conflicts and unfairness of the previous mold of humans, they will make the pretty-making operation compulsory starting from age 16. Certain other imperfections of society are removed, including the money system (governments pay for all of their citizens' needs), weapons (except for the giant cache the government has), and anything at all that damages the natural world of the earth.
The whole history behind the book's current events is that the old humanity, the "Rusties," seriously screwed up the world and that the above changes are the way to recover and fix it. Problem is, some people don't like being forced into surgery, forced into a certain physique, etc. The main character, Tally Youngblood, loses her best friend to the elite clique of pretty people when he turns 16 three months before she. She quickly finds a new friend, Shay, who goes against the norm and runs away rather than become pretty. She feels comfortable with her natural look. This aggravates the government. "Special Circumstances" (the new FBI or whatever) forces Tally either to follow her friend and give away the location of a hidden village of like-minded rebels, or to forgo the pretty-making surgery -- to be ugly forever. The rest of the book catalogs Tally's struggle with betraying Shay and her new friends and the inner turmoil of realizing that life as an ugly isn't that bad.
Despite being young adult literature, Uglies and its sequels are worth reading. Scott Westerfield keeps the story interesting and relevant from start to finish. You keep reading for the resolution of the plot twists, and then keep thinking because of the many ethical issues that Westerfield brings up, all the while satirically hinting that today's modern society is the generation responsible for the semi-apocalypse.
Anyway I can't give away the plot of the novel, nor the rest of the trilogy (quadrilogy?), but more and more through the books the government is shown to be evil. Mind-control and other unethical acts are disguised as the only possible way to keep society from destroying itself. So I asked myself the following question: regardless of how it turned out, was the government's original idea right?
Is the main problem of humanity our propensity to judge people based on one look at them? No, really -- is it?? Westerfield doesn't intend to tell us that we all have to be 100% pretty (or 100% ugly) to solve our problems. The "rusties" were also wasteful, constantly at war, and selfish.
It still begs the question: how much does appearance affect our lives?
Think about it.
Cheers,
Isaac
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