Unwind Book Report

The novel Unwind by Neal Shusterman takes place in a futuristic, dystopian United States. In this society there was previously a war fought over reproductive rights, the solution the came up with was “unwinding”. Unwinding is where they take your body apart, and sell it off as organ transplants, but it’s the parents who chose to unwind their kids. The three main characters are Connor, Risa, and Lev. Each are about to be unwound when their journey’s meet in an unexpected way. In no time they are each fugitives on the run. This suspense filled novel contains many things that I liked, disliked, connections that people could relate to, and I would recommend it to certain people.

The things I liked about the novel was that it was action packed,

On page 5 it says, “ ‘What did they hit this time?’ They blew up an Old Navy in the North Akron mall.’ ” Later in the book it also refers to Connor as the “Akron AWOL”, this shows Connor lived in Akron, and the book was based out of Ohio. I can relate to this because I lived in Akron for twelve years, and I still live in Ohio. Another connection I could make was that Unwind was a little like the novel The Giver. An example of this is on page 292 where it states, “Not quite darkness, just an absence of light. He hears everything around him but can no longer communicate.” Just like The Giver it deals with mercy killings, or euthanasia, as the basis of the novel. In Unwind they “unwind” teens, but in The Giver they kill babies and elderly. A connection I could relate the book to the current world is that they both deal with the same controversial topics such as euthanasia, abortion, and organ transplants. For example on page 53 it says, “ There was a time, shortly after the Bill of Life was passed, that Dumpsters such as that would be tempting to girls like her. Desperate girls who would leave unwanted newborns in the trash. It had become so common that it wasn’t even deemed newsworthy anymore- it had become just a part of life. Funny, but the Bill of Life was supposed to protect the sanctity of life. Instead it just made life cheap. Thank goodness for the Stroking Initiative, that wonderful law that allows girls like her a far better alternative.” This shows that since they were no longer allowed to have abortions- because a war was fought over reproductive rights- they could just leave babies on doorsteps to get rid of them. Another piece of evidence is on page 224 which says, “ ‘Then we proposed the idea of unwinding, which would terminate unwanteds without actually ending their lives. The Bill of Life was signed, The Unwind Accord went into