Uglies Essay
Chelsea Dowding-Hopkins
Year 9 – Mrs Graham
INS essay
Uglies by Scott Westerfield
One of the main themes in Scott Westerfield’s text Uglies is the conflict teenagers have with where they stand in society and learning to respect and value themselves. Using examples from the text compare them with today’s world for teenagers.
Word count:
Date Due:
Uglies illustrates many issues that young teenagers will go through in life. The reader has an insight of three main characters and their struggles to fit in to certain societies and others. They are Tally, Shay and David. “Is it not good to make a society full of beautiful people?” (p.1), the first line of the text Uglies foreshadows exactly what the main theme of the book is; basing a whole society on a system similar to the caste system. The characters are born Littlies, grow into Uglies, operated on to become Pretties, operated on again to become Middle Pretties and then die as Crumblies. The operation came about to put everyone in place, to have no anger or hate towards anyone. They used the operations to make the prefect Utopia. Tally, a young, impressionable Ugly is led to believe she is exactly what her title is, ugly. Her whole life she has been brainwashed into thinking she is ugly by computer technology, lack of affection and taunting name calling such as ‘squint’, ‘skinny’ or ‘nose’. She has grown up with nothing but beautiful faces surrounding her. Her feelings towards herself and the way she looks, resembles how most adolescent teenagers perceive themselves. Trapped in a world full of unrealistic beauty portrayed by televisions and magazines, young girls and boys have no idea how to feel about the way they look, much like Tally. Alike any other Ugly she is waiting for the day she turns sixteen so she can become a Pretty. Unable to do anything but sit through life waiting for that one day she decides to play tricks and hoaxes to satisfy her in terms of entertainment which shows exactly
Year 9 – Mrs Graham
INS essay
Uglies by Scott Westerfield
One of the main themes in Scott Westerfield’s text Uglies is the conflict teenagers have with where they stand in society and learning to respect and value themselves. Using examples from the text compare them with today’s world for teenagers.
Word count:
Date Due:
Uglies illustrates many issues that young teenagers will go through in life. The reader has an insight of three main characters and their struggles to fit in to certain societies and others. They are Tally, Shay and David. “Is it not good to make a society full of beautiful people?” (p.1), the first line of the text Uglies foreshadows exactly what the main theme of the book is; basing a whole society on a system similar to the caste system. The characters are born Littlies, grow into Uglies, operated on to become Pretties, operated on again to become Middle Pretties and then die as Crumblies. The operation came about to put everyone in place, to have no anger or hate towards anyone. They used the operations to make the prefect Utopia. Tally, a young, impressionable Ugly is led to believe she is exactly what her title is, ugly. Her whole life she has been brainwashed into thinking she is ugly by computer technology, lack of affection and taunting name calling such as ‘squint’, ‘skinny’ or ‘nose’. She has grown up with nothing but beautiful faces surrounding her. Her feelings towards herself and the way she looks, resembles how most adolescent teenagers perceive themselves. Trapped in a world full of unrealistic beauty portrayed by televisions and magazines, young girls and boys have no idea how to feel about the way they look, much like Tally. Alike any other Ugly she is waiting for the day she turns sixteen so she can become a Pretty. Unable to do anything but sit through life waiting for that one day she decides to play tricks and hoaxes to satisfy her in terms of entertainment which shows exactly