Pretties

I am currently reading the book Pretties by Scott Westerfield. In this book Tally has been transformed from a repulsive ugly to a stunning pretty. She has the world at her fingertips, until she discovers that the pretty operation makes you forget things in your past. She then decides she is going back into the wild to find the New Smoke. This book contains a lot of questions about society and how I view justice and society in the world.

     I find that in Pretties, there is a lot of attacking the society’s views. Constantly people are disobeying the society because the society’s views are very extreme. The brain lesions create this state of being called “pretty minded”, which basically means you act and talk really stupidly and your vision is always a little fuzzy. It is not until you experience something incredibly exciting and your adrenaline starts pumping that you become bubbly, normal, for only a minute. The society’s workers, Specials, say they cannot make everyone bubbly all the time because people would fight and have angry emotions and wars would break out and many people would die.

     To me, I think this reasoning on the Special’s side is unintelligent. Our society functions in a state where everyone has emotions and fights sometimes, but that not only makes life interesting, it also lets people figure out who they are. Are they calm, gentle people like the pretties? Or are the opposite: mean minded and cruel. Maybe they’re like most regular human beings: kind but they have an angry side that will come out when the time is right.

     This book makes me think about society’s laws and rights. It is kind of confusing when you think about society. There are so many parts to it. Some parts that are wrong, and others that our right. Some wrong parts many people wish to right, but it never seems to happen. I wonder if it ever will.