Elements Used In Ally Condie's Crossed

When reading a book such as Crossed, by Ally Condie, readers often notice elements that make the connection to the story deeper. Having knowledge in elements from the chapters “Every trip is a quest (except when it’s not)”, “Geography Matters”, and, “Is That a Symbol?” in Thomas Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor For Kids helps readers identify that those three elements are used in Ally Condie’s Crossed.

Before understanding how three certain chapters from How To Read Literature Like A Professor relate to Crossed, background information from Condie’s previous book in the series, Matched, must be explained. The main character, Cassia Reyes, lives in a dystopian government called the Society. The Society controls its citizens’

When Ky is in the farmers’ township deep in the Carving, he notices a familiarity that his father had told him before since he had been there. “My father told me about the floods. Sometimes, the farmers saw the river rising and knew it would happen. Other times, during the flash floods, they had no warning at all. They had to build and farm on the Canyon floor where there was space, but when the water rose, they took to the higher caves” (Condie 128). If the river did not flood in the location where the farmers’ village was in, then the farmers would still be in the village. This is a prime example of Chapter Thirteen, “Geography Matters”, from Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor For Kids because having the farmer’s village in a easily flooded area makes the farmers’ village far more useless for Cassia, Ky, Vick, Indie, and Eli than it could have been, making the plot take a different turn for the better. This shows that geography does matter because it changes what could have happened in the story and has a big impact on the story . Being there would help reunite Ky and Cassia faster since they both passed the township at different times, find the Rising faster, and they could give knowledge on the carving which would then help Cassia, Indie, Ky, and Eli navigate through the carving faster and easier. They could have even prevented Vick’s death since Ky, Eli, and Vick visited the empty township before Vick died and if the farmers were there, they could have provided information and/or help to prevent Vick’s death. But, those events did not happen since the farmers escaped their township due to the constant numbers of flash floods and attacks made by the river (partly caused by the Society). Overall, the Geography elements that Condie put in her novel, Crossed, impacts the story