Maya Angelo once stated, “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible”. Marie Lu uses this idea in Legend (Penguin Random House, 2013). Fifteen-year-olds, Day and June, are both seeking revenge against each other's wills. June wants revenge against Day for the murder of her brother. Day wants revenge against all government officials, like June. Lu uses symbolism to illustrate that judgment obscures one's identity, truth is a weapon against darkness, and the ability to determine one’s role in life is up to them, not others.
Other’s viewpoints create one’s identity. When June’s brother was murdered, and the government officials told her that Day murdered him, June thought that Day was
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When Day breaks into a hospital, trying to steal a cure for the plague that’s killing millions in his nation, he loses his pendant in the act of doing so. “It’s more proof.”...UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN GOD WE TRUST, QUARTER DOLLAR embossed on one side, and LIBERTY and 1990 on the other. “See? Evidence.” He pressed it into her palm…... It’s a genuine coin from nineteen ninety. See the name? United States. It was real.” …“This is a dangerous thing to own, ” she whispered. “We’re not keeping this in our house.” My father nodded. “But we can’t destroy it. We have to safeguard it—for all we know, this might be the last coin of its kind in the world” (Lu 232-233). Day didn’t think that he could trust June with all of his personal information because June worked for the Republic, his greatest enemy. He later realizes that June isn’t harmful to him and states, “She must have discovered something—who killed her brother, or some other truth about the Republic. She has no reason to trick me now. . . . I have nothing to lose and she has nothing to gain” (Lu 259). The text argues that, with truth and evidence, someone can be perceived to gain knowledge of reality and inner feelings, not the facade that others make for