Tally's Journey To Self-Discovery In Uglies

Tally’s journey to self discovery teaches her about what really matters in life. Discuss.

In the novel ‘Uglies’, by Scott Westerfeld, the society is divided into two. The Uglies, and the Pretties. The main character Tally Youngblood spends her whole life waiting for the day that she will become pretty, until she meets somebody named Shay. Shay has no intention of becoming pretty, and plans to leave the city. After Shay leaves, Tally gets held back by special circumstances and is told she must go outside past the city and find Shay. Tally finds an entire community of people who managed to escape before they turned pretty, and discovers the secret about the surgery. That causes her to realise that life isn’t about who looks the prettiest, it’s

For people under the age of 16, you are your natural self, or as they would say, ‘Ugly’. Once you turn 16, you get a surgery that fixes all of your features and turns you ‘pretty’. Later in the book, we find out that the surgery also changes your mind, however Tally does not know that yet. Tally has spent her whole childhood longing for the day that she will turn pretty, and after her best friend Peris turned, she had nobody. She decided to go visit Peris in New Pretty Town. Because she was an ugly, it was clear she didn’t belong there. “When you’re pretty, people pay more attention.” Once she finds Peris and has a conversation with him, she realises how much he looks down on her, and returns back to UglyVille. As she is getting home, she bumps into a girl named Shay. When she first laid her eyes on Shay, she analyses her looks. “Her eyes were too wide apart.” This shows that society has brought them up to think that beauty is everything. Tally and Shay immediately become friends, and as they are talking Tally finds out that Shay does not actually want to become pretty. Shay’s friends have escaped outside the city to an area called ‘The Smoke’. It is later revealed that the smoke has a community of people who have stayed ugly and built their own civilisation. They call themselves smokies. Tally is bewildered at the idea of not turning pretty, and does not take Shay

Special circumstances send Tally on a mission to go find Shay and the rest of the smokies and bring them back, and after she does that she turns pretty. They give her a necklace, and when she presses it, it sends special circumstances her location. Once she arrives at the smoke, she finds it difficult to fit in. They survive by getting their resources themselves, such as chopping trees for wood, and shooting animals for food. After a few months, Tally finally settles in and decides that she actually wants to stay there. She learns many life lessons and builds friendships with everybody, and that’s when she realises how much better it is to not have your life controlled. David, one of the main smokies, introduces Tally to his parents, and that’s when she finds out about the surgery. It plants lesions in your brain that effectively make you dumber, and she realises that she never wants to turn pretty. Learning how to actually live in the wild and meeting people who all think the same is so freeing for Tally, and it helps her discover her true self. Parties every night and looking identical to every other person is not how she wants to live. She wants to own her life, and make her own decisions. She was just brainwashed her whole life into thinking that being pretty was everything, but after only just a few months of being in the smoke, and finally being able to control her life, she realises that this is what she wants to do. She wants to stay