Cinder Essay

Marissa Meyer’s Cinder revamps the classic tale about a poor maiden, a blue puffy dress and a glass slipper. Incorporating androids in a world dominated by humans presents a rigid hierarchical structure that oppresses cyborgs and keeps those with beating hearts on top. Such hierarchy objectifies cyborgs as metal parts held together by screws. Their intellect and skills become disregarded yet are useful assets to their owners. Thus, placing the oppressor, humans, and the oppressed, androids, under the same roof and family, highlights the questionable morality of this hierarchal system. The text centers on this scenario, we see a cyborg who is not only owned by her human stepmother, Adri, but also lives with her and her two stepsisters. Cinder

This horrible relationship between stepmother and stepdaughter is because Cinder is viewed as no different than a beggar who has found a place to stay and never leaves. My analogy is shown in Adri’s reaction to Cinder raising her voice at her because she was tired of her maltreatment, “ ...I do not appreciate being spoken such a manner by the orphan that I accepted into my home.”(133). The italics used for the term orphan emphasize disdain and disgust which make an orphan synonymous to a beggar. Furthermore, Cinder is not worthy to live in that house because she has no blood ties with the family members that live with her, this unworthiness that Cinder possesses triggers a negative reaction from Adri whenever she accomplishes something positive that is in Adri’s favor. My argument is that this hateful tension between Adri and Cinder reveal that Adri is more “android-esque” than Cinder because of her inhumane personality and poor role as a mother, As humans, we tend to value key instinctual human characteristics such as compassion, kindness and empathy, however, we tend to always recall when we helped someone and hold this over their heads as if they will never be able to succeed on their own (add comma) which does not correlate with the values we so