Uglies (The Uglies) Summary

Tally Youngblood is one of the last uglies in her community to undergo the mandatory
plastic surgery that turns sixteen-year-olds into pretties, people whose appearance has been altered
to reflect her culture's beauty ideal.

According to her society, this operation is intended as an equalizing force. It levels the playing
field between people; with nearly identical appearances come nearly identical survival rates.

While waiting out her last days as an ugly, Tally befriends Shay, whose negative view of the
surgery leads her to run away the city to the Smoke, a settlement of people who have successfully
evaded the operation and are living in the wild.

On the morning of her surgery, Tally is taken to a secret underground bunker, where Dr. Cable
—a Special, or a pretty who has been surgically altered to have superhuman abilities and terrifying
facial features, whose job is to ensure the continued existence of the current regime—threatens to
withhold Tally's surgery unless she follows Shay to the Smoke and betrays its location. She gives
Tally a locket to activate once she has arrived, and promises that if Tally is successful, she will
still receive the surgery.

Following a coded note from Shay, Tally journeys to the Smoke, where she makes friends with its
inhabitants and falls in love with the child of its founders, David. David brings Tally to meet his
parents, Maddy and Az, who inform Tally that there is a secret behind the operation, one kept
from the larger population. The surgery might make one beautiful, but it also inserts lesions into
the human brain that render one unintelligent and docile. This is how the society keeps peace.

Tally's world is rocked by this revelation and by her feelings for David, the first ugly who Tally
finds beautiful. Ultimately, she throws the locket given to her by Dr. Cable into the fire, intending
to destroy it once and for all.

The next morning, Tally wakes to find that Specials have invaded the Smoke. She is informed by
Dr. Cable that the locket sent an automatic signal to the Specials when Tally incinerated it. It is
her fault that the Smoke has been destroyed.

Tally narrowly escapes the Specials and finds David hiding out in a nearby mountain. Together,
they hatch a plan to rescue others, including Shay and his parents, from imprisonment by the
Specials in their underground bunker. They liberate the prisoners, but arrive too late to help Shay
and Az. Az is dead and Shay has been turned into a pretty.

In the ruins of an old city, the escapees begin to rebuild their old way of life. Maddy finds a cure
for the lesions and attempts to give it to a brain-addled Shay, who refuses. Tally, feeling a deep
sense of responsibility for what she has done, confesses to David and volunteers to give herself up,
so she can undergo the surgery and, once she has been rescued, become a test subject for the cure.
The novel ends with Shay and Tally returning to the city, where Tally presents herself to the
Specials for surgical alteration.

Uglies (The Uglies) Quotes and Analysis

"There was a certain kind of beauty, a prettiness that everyone could see. Big
eyes and full lips like a kid's; smooth clear skin; symmetrical features; and a
thousand other little clues. Somewhere in the backs of their minds, people were
always looking for these markers."

The Narrator, page 16

This is the first description in the novel of what pretties look like. It indicates that the surgery
renders people objectively beautiful, and insinuates that this beauty is a benefit to a person's
survival; human beings subconsciously want to help those they find attractive, so getting the
surgery provides an evolutionary advantage.

"The flowers were so beautiful, so delicate and unthreatening, but they choked
everything around them."

The Narrator, page 182

This quotation describes the white tiger orchids that have spread wildly throughout the landscape,
due to genetic engineering that proved too effective. Their beauty belies the danger they pose to
their environment, much like the pretties' uniform beauty suffocates physical diversity.

"She was free. Dr. Cable would never come here now, and no one could ever
take her away from David or the Smoke, or do to Tally's brain whatever the
operation did to pretties'. She was no longer an infiltrator. She finally belonged
here."

The Narrator, page 283

In the lead-up to this passage, Tally throws the locket given to her by Dr. Cable into the fire,
believing any chance of invasion by the Specials to be destroyed alongside the necklace. Here, she
feels the relief of unburdening herself of a dangerous temptation; with the locket incinerated, she
is finally free to be an authentic member of the Smoke.

"'They sprayed it with something to keep it up for school trips.' And that was her
city in a nutshell, Tally realized. Nothing left to itself. Everything turned into a
bribe, a warning, or a lesson."

The Narrator, page 351

In this passage, Tally reveals how she feels about the city's repurposing of the Rusty Ruins as a
symbol of the dangers of too much personal freedom. No aspect of her life is beyond the city's
exploitation and control.

"What was she now? No longer a spy, and she couldn't call herself a Smokie
anymore. Hardly a pretty, but she didn't feel like an ugly, either. She was nothing
in particular. But at least she had a purpose."

The Narrator, page 352

On her way to rescue the imprisoned Smokies, Tally reconsiders which social group she belongs
to and what this categorization means to her. Having accidentally betrayed the Smoke robs her of
her Smokie status, but the fact that she didn't mean to do it means that she is no longer a spy. She
isn't a pretty, but doesn't identify as ugly. Now that she is facing life-threatening danger, Tally
finds that these things matter less to her. She knows where she is going, and that is—for the
moment—enough.

"'At first it killed me to hear you act like the Smoke still existed. But if there are
enough uglies like them, maybe it will again.'"

David, page 368

In this quotation, David expresses hope about the continued existence of the Smoke, as a concept.
Though the physical Smoke has been destroyed, rebellious thought is alive and well, which means
that it can be rebuilt.
 "'He doesn't know that you were working for Dr. C, does he? Don't worry, Tally,'
she whispered, putting one elegant finger to her lips. 'Your ugly little secret is
safe with me.'"

Shay, page 385

As Tally and David rescue the prisoners, Shay, who has been transformed into a pretty against her
wishes, confronts Tally about her betrayal of the Smoke and her decision to continue to hide it
from David. She calls it Tally's ugly little secret, a turn of phrase that suggests both her own
buried anger and the notion that there is something ugly not just in Tally's appearance but in her
decision to mislead others.

"'Ilike the way I look,' Shay insisted. 'I'm happier in this body. You want to
talk about brain damage? Look at you all, running around these ruins playing
commando. You're all full of schemes and rebellions, crazy with fear and
paranoia, even jealousy.' Her eyes skipped back and forth between Tally and
Maddy. 'That's what being ugly does.'"

Shay, page 408

In this passage, Shay, turned pretty, suggests that a person's ugliness is its own kind of brain
damage in that it prompts emotional lability and paranoid rebellious thought. If the Smokies were
to simply follow society's rules, and undergo the operation, they would be happy under the
government's rule.

"'They don't want people to know what it was like before the operation. They
want to keep you hating yourselves. Otherwise, it's too easy to get used to ugly
faces, normal faces.'"
David, page 330
In this passage, David explains to Tally why the Specials have burned all the books in the Smoke's
library. It is part of their campaign to withhold information from the population, because if people
were to see that there existed a civilization in which normal faces were widely accepted, the
government could not continue to mandate the operation.

"She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life
out of other plants, out of the soul itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally
Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one."

The Narrator, page 244

In this passage, Tally compares herself to the white tiger orchids that are creating biological zero
as a result of their chokehold on the land. What she and the flowers share is a self-interest that
drives them to destroy what is around them. Worst of all, Tally reflects, the orchids are beautiful
and she is not.

Uglies (The Uglies) Summary and Analysis of Chapters

1-10
Summary
Tally sneaks out from her bedroom in Uglyville across the old bridge to New Pretty Town to see
her erstwhile best friend Peris. Peris' birthday is three months and two days before Tally’s,
which means he has already undergone the extreme cosmetic surgery that transforms 16-year-olds
from uglies into pretties. In New Pretty Town, Tally dons a pig mask that has been spit out of a
passing drum machine, so as not to be spotted.

At Peris’ dorm, there is a white-tie party going on. Tally creates a stir as the only person there in a
pig mask, and is therefore unable to maintain a low profile. She searches for Peris and eventually
finds him alone in an elevator. He seems unhappy to see her but reticently confirms that they are
still best friends, even though he has only written her once since turning pretty. Tally finds that her
discarded pig mask has disintegrated into the elevator floor and so she must flee another way. At
Peris’ suggestion, she uses a bungee jacket to jump off the roof of the dorm. At the last minute,
she decides to pull the fire alarm, hoping it will distract the pretties. Instead, it creates a larger
ruckus, sending hovercars and fire engines to the scene.

Tally hides in a pleasure garden while authorities search for her. There, she happens upon another
ugly—Shay—who has hoverboarded over the river to New Pretty Town on her own secret
expedition. Together, they narrowly escape New Pretty Town using the makeshift ladder Tally has
attached to the old bridge.

Shay, now a friend of Tally’s, teaches her how to hoverboard. During the lesson, the two girls
discuss their happiness at having found one another. They discover that they share the same
birthday. Tally is overjoyed that she will not be abandoned to a lonely and ugly existence for even
a moment by Shay. Shay does not seem as enthusiastic about undergoing the surgery as Tally is.
She assures Tally that even if she turned pretty first, she would never abandon Tally. Tally
concurs, but is doubtful. Many people make these promises, but few actually deliver on them.

In the next scene, Tally uses technology to show Shay a variety of options for how she’d like to
look after her operation. Shay is not interested in this game, but Tally pressures her into creating
her own pretty model, which makes Shay angry because she feels that Tally does not accept and
love her for who she is. Tally explains that before the operation, inequality reigned as a result of
people judging one another based on appearance. This is why the operation exists, as an
equalizing force. Shay is skeptical. Tally abandons the game and agrees to go hoverboarding.

While hoverboarding, Shay pressures Tally to sneak out again, this time beyond the bounds of the
city and to the Rusty Ruins—the ruins of an old city, one dating back to a time before there were
pretties or uglies—a time when cosmetic surgery wasn’t mandated.

After nightfall, Tally and Shay hoverboard to the Rusty Ruins. Tally learns from Shay that
hoverboards only work when there is metal in the ground, which is why they have to walk through
stretches in their journey. In the city, there is a man-made steel grid underlying everything. Out in
the wilderness, one must rely on what nature provides.

The ruins extend far beyond what Tally expected. The two girls explore the city. Their trip
culminates in Shay showing Tally how to ride an abandoned roller coaster using her hoverboard.
She fails to tell Tally that a part of the track is missing, and Tally believes for a minute that she
will fall to her death, before the hoverboard catches her and the track resumes. Initially, she is
angry at Shay for not telling her, but Shay explains that it was meant as a surprise, and she wanted
to gift Tally the experience of not knowing what would happen, because it had been so fun for her
when she first rode. The two reconcile, and Shay reveals to Tally, after making her promise to
keep it a secret, that she learned about the rollercoaster from David, a man who lives outside the
city and beyond the ruins.

Shay takes Tally to the ruins of a building, where she lights a safety sparkler to signal to David
that she is there. They wait for a while, but no one comes, and Shay reluctantly agrees to go home
to the city. Back at the river, Tally thinks she sees another sparkler go off in the distance, at the
building they just left. She does not tell Shay, for fear that Shay will make her go back.

Analysis
The narration opens with a comparison of the summer sky at sunset to the color of cat vomit—an
introduction to a central theme of the book: not all that is aesthetically pleasing is in fact truly
beautiful. As night falls, Tally feels that the night is “bottomless and cold.” These observations
serve as signifiers of Tally’s emotional state. Bereft of her best friend, she has become lonely, sad,
and unsure of their connection.

The old bridge Tally uses to sneak into New Pretty Town is built without the use of smart
technology, which, according to Tally, renders it more trustworthy and durable. After everything
else has fallen, she predicts, it will still be there. This is the book’s first instance of foreshadowing.
The reader is to understand that this dystopian world is precarious, capable of instant collapse
should its technology fail.

Sneaking into New Pretty Town feels to Tally like the plight of “a rock climber facing a sheer
cliff.” Tally feels dwarfed by the enormity and difficulty of her task, as well as powerless against
the structural principles by which her world operates.

The pig mask Tally dons in New Pretty Town parallels Tally’s self-perception—she feels ugly,
undeserving, and greedy for her best friend’s attention. Tally goes on to explain the ideology
behind the extreme plastic surgery all teenagers undergo in her society. She has been told that the
facial and bodily structure into which she will be transformed will help in her survival because it
will make her more appealing to others. People will believe her to be vulnerable and want to
protect her. Because of her beauty, they will think she is healthy and subconsciously consider her
to be a good candidate for reproduction. Indeed, when Tally is almost caught by a middle pretty
warden looking for her, she almost gives herself up because she has been conditioned to trust and
rely on them for support and protection.

In contrast to the borderline-unfriendly way in which Peris greets Tally, Shay exhibits warmth and
excitement towards her. She thinks Tally is cool, despite her ugliness. These incidences of
characterization introduce Shay as a sympathetic character and Peris as an unsympathetic
character. Shay is a true friend, while Peris is not.

Scattered throughout are important pieces of information that tell us about the dystopian society in
which the narrative takes place. As Tally learns to hoverboard, we learn that smart technology
works by adapting to its user, using sensors to read bodily signals. Uglies are rarely ever referred
to by their given names. Instead, they use nicknames that refer to those things that are ugliest
about their bodies. Shay is called “Skinny” and Tally is called “Squint”. Uglies are thus
conditioned to emphasize their imperfections, rather than their strengths.

Later, when the girls use a technological interface that allows them to experiment with how they’d
like to look after the prettifying operation, we learn that, in this society, symmetry is prettier than
difference. Before allowing for any alterations, the interface divides the face of the user into two
sides, or images, and doubles each side. This step in the game literalizes the idea that there are two
sides to every person, that we are complex, multifaceted beings fraught with conflicting values,
beliefs, and virtues, capable of a vast array of emotionality and behavior. Shay chooses to base her
altered appearance on the side of her face that looks angry; she values her fierce nature. Tally
prefers the softer side of herself; she likes nicety, prefers to acquiesce. Their styles of play work as
indirect characterization, proving that Shay is more of an independent thinker than Tally, who
would rather conform. This valuation of symmetry also teaches us about the values of their world.
Namely, conformity is prized above all else.

From the characters’ face-altering game, we understand that though people have a say in what
they’d like to look like after the operation, the city has strict regulations that do not allow them to
request extreme or exotic changes to their appearance. These rules vary according to city, and
theirs is particularly strict.

While playing, Tally tells Shay that she believes pretties don’t want to visit after their surgery
because they don’t want to have to look at ugly people, effectively blaming the problem on the
uglies’ appearance, rather than the pretties’ behavior. Tally shows Shay a version of her face that
looks like Cleopatra, and Shay suggests that Cleopatra was not particularly physically attractive.
What was seductive about her was her cleverness. There are other ways to be appealing to people,
she seems to be saying. One does not have to look a certain way to be loved.

Because she pulled the fire alarm and jumped off a building on the night they met, Tally is
worried that Shay believes her to be more adventurous than she actually is. In fact, she is afraid to
venture beyond the bounds of her small world into the wilds of nature. She admits to Shay that she
promised Peris she would stay out of trouble until her operation, so that she could ensure she
would get to be pretty and rejoin him in their new life. Shay is skeptical of Peris’ motives for
asking Tally to make that promise. She believes that Peris may have said this so he wouldn’t get
any more disruptive visits from his old ugly friend. If Tally doesn’t want to go, she says, that’s
fine—she’ll go by herself. In the acquiescent manner we have come to expect from Tally, she
gives in and decides to accompany Shay.

Shay wants to show Tally that there are other kinds of fun than the ones prescribed by their
society. She shows Hallie how to hoverboard down rapids and on a rollercoaster, both of which
Tally is surprised to find she enjoys. Unexpectedly, Tally finds joy in being away from the city,
out in nature. She reflects that everything feels realer in the wilderness, electrifying in its majestic
intensity and in the physical demands it makes on those who venture into it. It hasn’t ever
occurred to her that the Rusties, or those who lived before the institution of the operation, enjoyed
their lives, only that they suffered thankless existences, working in obscurity until their
civilization fell and they died scrambling to get out. Without the various conveniences provided
by smart technology, Tally realizes that she has to rely on herself and that self-reliance can make a
person feel more capable and confident.

That Shay is in contact with David, someone who lives outside the strict parameters of their
society, indicates that she is invested in alternative ways of living. Until now, she has hidden the
secret of David from Tally, which suggests that she may have more secrets we do not yet know.

As part of a prank on the newest uglies, Tally teaches Shay to use a bungee jacket, a gesture which
underscores the idea that their friendship is built on risk-taking. Later, Shay expounds further on
her sacrilegious views during a trip to the beach. While Tally believes that being pretty is
tantamount to being at peace with oneself, Shay contends that this standardization of appearance
reflects a valorization of mindless conformity. That Tally accuses Shay of immaturity for this
opinion—in Tally’s view, Shay just doesn’t want to grow up—reveals an important character
detail about Tally herself: she is in a hurry to be older and wiser because she isn’t happy with who
she is.

Uglies (The Uglies) Summary and Analysis of

Chapters 11-20
Summary
With a week to go before the operation, Tally and Shay have still not mended their friendship.
Lonely and bored, Tally sits at her window and looks across at New Pretty Town, reflecting on the
operation. For the first time, she feels some level of reticence about the impending change in her
life, and a sense of nostalgia in looking back at her time spent as an ugly. Soon, Shay surprises
Tally by sneaking in through her window, and they make up. Shay asks Tally to join her in
running away to “The Smoke,” a settlement even farther out than the ruins, where David lives.
She admits that she had been planning to escape alongside her prior group of friends some months
ago, but chickened out at the last minute and was left behind. After her argument with Tally, she
reconsidered, citing Tally’s accusation of immaturity as the catalyst that made her rethink her
future. Tally, surprised and dismayed by her friend’s wishes, refuses Shay. Shay departs, leaving
Tally with a coded note containing a set of directions, should Tally change her mind.
On the morning of her operation, Tally is asked by a new ugly why she looks so sad. She finds she
cannot explain her mixed emotions to this younger child—the regret she feels at failing to
convince Shay to stay, the sadness at leaving behind her childhood, the wish that she didn’t have
to change herself to garner others’ love and respect. Her dark mood dissolves, however, when she
is picked up by a middle pretty for the operation. But when she arrives at the surgery center, she is
left waiting for an unusually long time, until a strange man comes in who stirs fear in Tally’s
heart. He looks beautiful, but in a terrifying way, like a predator.

The strange man takes Tally to Special Circumstances—a facility entirely populated by people
who look as terrifying as he does, devoted to maintaining peace within the city, like a secret police
force. There, she meets another of his kind—Dr. Cable.
Dr. Cable cruelly questions Tally about the whereabouts of Shay and her friends, believing Tally
to be hiding information. She asks Tally to help find Shay, and when Tally refuses, she tells Tally
that as long as she refuses to help them, she will never be pretty.

Back at the dorms, Tally receives a visit from her parents, Sol and Ellie. It comes as a surprise
to Tally that they know about Special Circumstances, and even more of a surprise that they
believe it is for the best for Tally to help Special Circumstances by finding Shay, so the two can
become pretty and get on with life. Tally finds her father’s blind faith to be jarring. He has no idea
what life outside the city can be like, she realizes.

Tally also receives a visit from Peris, who is worried and confused that she hasn’t joined him in
New Pretty Town yet. She learns from Peris that the people who work at Special Circumstances
are called Specials, and that having met one garners one social clout as a pretty. Peris, too, urges
Tally to give the Specials what they want, so they can be pretty and popular together. Tally,
seduced by his wounded beauty, gives in. She sends a message to Dr. Cable: she is willing to help.

However, when Tally speaks again with Dr. Cable, she discovers that she is expected to make the
journey out to the Smoke herself, pretending that she has had a change of heart, and to betray the
location of the secret settlement to the Specials. Only Tally can decode the instructions of Shay’s
note, Dr. Cable claims. She gives Tally a heart-shaped locket that will only respond to her eye
print, which she is to activate when she arrives at the Smoke. Tally balks at this task, but finally
agrees to do it when Dr. Cable forces her to look at her own reflection, projected onto the
wallscreen, and tells her this is her final chance—if she doesn’t want to look ugly for the rest of
her life.

Tally sets off to find the Smoke using Shay’s coded note. The first line is pretty clear: she is to
take the rollercoaster past straight the gap in the tracks. But when she follows the direction of the
gap, veering away from the rest of the coaster, Tally is perplexed again. She is supposed to “find
one that’s long and flat,” but one of what? A track, she discovers, happening upon some old
train tracks that stretch beyond the ruins.

Tally follows the tracks and comes upon the ocean, a landmark which correlates with the next line
in Shay’s note. At this point, she is supposed to “watch for breaks.” Tally doesn’t know what this
means until she almost falls into a chasm between rocks, where the track is spanned by a broken
bridge. After her near-death experience, Tally is rattled and takes a break to rest. Food and water
sharpen her wits; she finds a way to hike around the chasm.

Soon, she comes upon a second chasm, foreshadowed by the line of Shay’s note that reads, “At
the second make the worst mistake.” Tally puzzles over what the worst mistake could possibly be.
Everything is dangerous out here. She goes to sleep and dreams that she is flying on her own, no
hoverboard. That is, until she falls into a deep rift in the cliffs and drowns. She wakes, screaming
her defiance, to the impending night and the vast ocean.

Tally must find a way across the chasm to continue her journey. She decides to follow the chasm
as it dips down on her hoverboard, hoping to find iron deposits in the cliffs to keep her aloft. She
goes too far and the hoverboard loses power beneath her. As she was in her dream, Tally is in
free-fall.

Thankfully, the iron deposits in the water at the foot of the cliffs catch her. This, Tally now
realizes, is what Shay meant by “make the worst mistake.”

She follows the next instruction, which indicates that she must travel for four days. Coming upon
a forked river, Tally realizes that when the note says she must “take the side you despise,” it
means that she should take a right, as this is the side of her face she never uses in the appearance
modification game she and Shay played. This smaller tributary narrows as it climbs into the
mountains. Tally disembarks from her hoverboard, ready to search for the “firebug eyes”
mentioned in the following line. No such luck. Tally beds down for the night in the middle of a
vast field of beautiful white flowers.

She wakes to a vast fire devouring the picturesque landscape. Tally mounts her hoverboard and
flies above the fire, coming to a hover directly above the river. From there, she can see that there
is a helicopter overhead, purposefully spreading the fire. She is knocked from her board by a gust
of wind and falls into the river. She sees that the helicopter has landed and people are
disembarking. As they rescue her from the churning water, she can see that they are wearing
masks that give them bug-like eyes.

Analysis
Tally and Shay’s final argument reinforces two central thematic binaries in the novel. Tally
believes that “it is wrong to live in nature, unless you want to live like an animal.” To her, to live
outside society’s constraints is to be uncivilized. In contrast, Shay feels that nature means
freedom. It means being able to think for oneself, and live according to one’s own rules.

Tally scoffs at Shay’s view. She doesn’t think a person can “beat evolution," by which she means,
Shay will never escape the tyranny of beauty. Her unconventional beliefs won’t help her survive.
As far as Shay is concerned, to become a pretty and live in the city is tantamount to eschewing
personal authenticity.

Tally’s glorification of beauty is complicated when she learns about the Specials. Their
appearance, though engineered to be aesthetically appealing, engenders fear rather than love. That
beauty can terrorize as well as lionize, is a new idea for her. Being relegated to her old life at the
dorms is psychological torture for Tally, who realizes that if she doesn’t undergo the operation,
she will spend her life as a social pariah. Consistent with her state of mind, she once again
describes the sunset as “cat vomit.” Tally’s realization is underscored by the visits she receives
from her parents and from Peris, neither of whom can fathom another way of life. She feels that
the choice she is being offered is no choice at all; if she doesn’t betray Shay, she will have no life
of her own.

At the Specials' behest, Tally must live according to the whims of social, behavioral, and natural
structures larger than herself. While flying through the ruins on her search for Shay, she feels as if
she is “something caught in the wind,” which, in this circumstance, she quite literally is. The
nature metaphors continue, as Tally compares Shay’s disappearance to that of the roller coaster
track; both left Tally in free-fall.

As she travels further away from the city, Tally finds unexpected joy in the natural world.
Sometimes, she feels dwarfed by the towering mountains—her life smaller in scale and
significance than she ever realized—but other times, she feels awakened to her own
resourcefulness.

Shay’s instruction that Tally must take the side she despises when she reaches the fork in the river
operates on two symbolic levels. First, it refers to the side of Tally’s face that she never uses in her
morphological games. To get to the Smoke, Tally must choose to champion the ugly side of
herself. Second, it references Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, a poem frequently used
to describe the fork in one’s path when one is faced with a difficult decision. Though one of the
paths is more-frequently traveled—the one that is wide and easy to ford—it can make all the
difference to choose the road less traveled, if that is what is in one’s heart. Thus, when Tally
chooses the smaller tributary, she is making a decision to dissent from the masses, and indeed
from her own previous inclinations.

Uglies (The Uglies) Summary and Analysis of

Chapters 11-20
Summary
With a week to go before the operation, Tally and Shay have still not mended their friendship.
Lonely and bored, Tally sits at her window and looks across at New Pretty Town, reflecting on the
operation. For the first time, she feels some level of reticence about the impending change in her
life, and a sense of nostalgia in looking back at her time spent as an ugly. Soon, Shay surprises
Tally by sneaking in through her window, and they make up. Shay asks Tally to join her in
running away to “The Smoke,” a settlement even farther out than the ruins, where David lives.
She admits that she had been planning to escape alongside her prior group of friends some months
ago, but chickened out at the last minute and was left behind. After her argument with Tally, she
reconsidered, citing Tally’s accusation of immaturity as the catalyst that made her rethink her
future. Tally, surprised and dismayed by her friend’s wishes, refuses Shay. Shay departs, leaving
Tally with a coded note containing a set of directions, should Tally change her mind.

On the morning of her operation, Tally is asked by a new ugly why she looks so sad. She finds she
cannot explain her mixed emotions to this younger child—the regret she feels at failing to
convince Shay to stay, the sadness at leaving behind her childhood, the wish that she didn’t have
to change herself to garner others’ love and respect. Her dark mood dissolves, however, when she
is picked up by a middle pretty for the operation. But when she arrives at the surgery center, she is
left waiting for an unusually long time, until a strange man comes in who stirs fear in Tally’s
heart. He looks beautiful, but in a terrifying way, like a predator.

The strange man takes Tally to Special Circumstances—a facility entirely populated by people
who look as terrifying as he does, devoted to maintaining peace within the city, like a secret police
force. There, she meets another of his kind—Dr. Cable.
Dr. Cable cruelly questions Tally about the whereabouts of Shay and her friends, believing Tally
to be hiding information. She asks Tally to help find Shay, and when Tally refuses, she tells Tally
that as long as she refuses to help them, she will never be pretty.

Back at the dorms, Tally receives a visit from her parents, Sol and Ellie. It comes as a surprise
to Tally that they know about Special Circumstances, and even more of a surprise that they
believe it is for the best for Tally to help Special Circumstances by finding Shay, so the two can
become pretty and get on with life. Tally finds her father’s blind faith to be jarring. He has no idea
what life outside the city can be like, she realizes.

Tally also receives a visit from Peris, who is worried and confused that she hasn’t joined him in
New Pretty Town yet. She learns from Peris that the people who work at Special Circumstances
are called Specials, and that having met one garners one social clout as a pretty. Peris, too, urges
Tally to give the Specials what they want, so they can be pretty and popular together. Tally,
seduced by his wounded beauty, gives in. She sends a message to Dr. Cable: she is willing to help.

However, when Tally speaks again with Dr. Cable, she discovers that she is expected to make the
journey out to the Smoke herself, pretending that she has had a change of heart, and to betray the
location of the secret settlement to the Specials. Only Tally can decode the instructions of Shay’s
note, Dr. Cable claims. She gives Tally a heart-shaped locket that will only respond to her eye
print, which she is to activate when she arrives at the Smoke. Tally balks at this task, but finally
agrees to do it when Dr. Cable forces her to look at her own reflection, projected onto the
wallscreen, and tells her this is her final chance—if she doesn’t want to look ugly for the rest of
her life.

Tally sets off to find the Smoke using Shay’s coded note. The first line is pretty clear: she is to
take the rollercoaster past straight the gap in the tracks. But when she follows the direction of the
gap, veering away from the rest of the coaster, Tally is perplexed again. She is supposed to “find
one that’s long and flat,” but one of what? A track, she discovers, happening upon some old
train tracks that stretch beyond the ruins.

Tally follows the tracks and comes upon the ocean, a landmark which correlates with the next line
in Shay’s note. At this point, she is supposed to “watch for breaks.” Tally doesn’t know what this
means until she almost falls into a chasm between rocks, where the track is spanned by a broken
bridge. After her near-death experience, Tally is rattled and takes a break to rest. Food and water
sharpen her wits; she finds a way to hike around the chasm.

Soon, she comes upon a second chasm, foreshadowed by the line of Shay’s note that reads, “At
the second make the worst mistake.” Tally puzzles over what the worst mistake could possibly be.
Everything is dangerous out here. She goes to sleep and dreams that she is flying on her own, no
hoverboard. That is, until she falls into a deep rift in the cliffs and drowns. She wakes, screaming
her defiance, to the impending night and the vast ocean.

Tally must find a way across the chasm to continue her journey. She decides to follow the chasm
as it dips down on her hoverboard, hoping to find iron deposits in the cliffs to keep her aloft. She
goes too far and the hoverboard loses power beneath her. As she was in her dream, Tally is in
free-fall.

Thankfully, the iron deposits in the water at the foot of the cliffs catch her. This, Tally now
realizes, is what Shay meant by “make the worst mistake.”

She follows the next instruction, which indicates that she must travel for four days. Coming upon
a forked river, Tally realizes that when the note says she must “take the side you despise,” it
means that she should take a right, as this is the side of her face she never uses in the appearance
modification game she and Shay played. This smaller tributary narrows as it climbs into the
mountains. Tally disembarks from her hoverboard, ready to search for the “firebug eyes”
mentioned in the following line. No such luck. Tally beds down for the night in the middle of a
vast field of beautiful white flowers.

She wakes to a vast fire devouring the picturesque landscape. Tally mounts her hoverboard and
flies above the fire, coming to a hover directly above the river. From there, she can see that there
is a helicopter overhead, purposefully spreading the fire. She is knocked from her board by a gust
of wind and falls into the river. She sees that the helicopter has landed and people are
disembarking. As they rescue her from the churning water, she can see that they are wearing
masks that give them bug-like eyes.

Analysis
Tally and Shay’s final argument reinforces two central thematic binaries in the novel. Tally
believes that “it is wrong to live in nature, unless you want to live like an animal.” To her, to live
outside society’s constraints is to be uncivilized. In contrast, Shay feels that nature means
freedom. It means being able to think for oneself, and live according to one’s own rules.

Tally scoffs at Shay’s view. She doesn’t think a person can “beat evolution," by which she means,
Shay will never escape the tyranny of beauty. Her unconventional beliefs won’t help her survive.
As far as Shay is concerned, to become a pretty and live in the city is tantamount to eschewing
personal authenticity.
Tally’s glorification of beauty is complicated when she learns about the Specials. Their
appearance, though engineered to be aesthetically appealing, engenders fear rather than love. That
beauty can terrorize as well as lionize, is a new idea for her. Being relegated to her old life at the
dorms is psychological torture for Tally, who realizes that if she doesn’t undergo the operation,
she will spend her life as a social pariah. Consistent with her state of mind, she once again
describes the sunset as “cat vomit.” Tally’s realization is underscored by the visits she receives
from her parents and from Peris, neither of whom can fathom another way of life. She feels that
the choice she is being offered is no choice at all; if she doesn’t betray Shay, she will have no life
of her own.

At the Specials' behest, Tally must live according to the whims of social, behavioral, and natural
structures larger than herself. While flying through the ruins on her search for Shay, she feels as if
she is “something caught in the wind,” which, in this circumstance, she quite literally is. The
nature metaphors continue, as Tally compares Shay’s disappearance to that of the roller coaster
track; both left Tally in free-fall.

As she travels further away from the city, Tally finds unexpected joy in the natural world.
Sometimes, she feels dwarfed by the towering mountains—her life smaller in scale and
significance than she ever realized—but other times, she feels awakened to her own
resourcefulness.

Shay’s instruction that Tally must take the side she despises when she reaches the fork in the river
operates on two symbolic levels. First, it refers to the side of Tally’s face that she never uses in her
morphological games. To get to the Smoke, Tally must choose to champion the ugly side of
herself. Second, it references Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, a poem frequently used
to describe the fork in one’s path when one is faced with a difficult decision. Though one of the
paths is more-frequently traveled—the one that is wide and easy to ford—it can make all the
difference to choose the road less traveled, if that is what is in one’s heart. Thus, when Tally
chooses the smaller tributary, she is making a decision to dissent from the masses, and indeed
from her own previous inclinations.

Uglies (The Uglies) Summary and Analysis of Chapters

32-42
Summary
While trying to escape the Specials’ invasion, Tally runs into the Boss, the librarian she met
earlier with Shay. He gives her a bag of old magazines—a representation of hundreds of years of
Rusty history—and says he will distract a nearby Special with a can of powdered habanero pepper
so she can make a run for it. Then, seeing she is barefoot, he changes his mind. She won’t make it
to the forest’s cover. Tally must distract the Special so he can get away. She tries to run for the
Special with the canister, but the Special ducks away with superhuman agility. The operation has
done more than make Specials look terrifying, Tally realizes. Before the Special can go after the
Boss, Tally manages to kick the canister open and run away. The Special screams, an unnerving
sound that raises the alarm amongst her fellows. They lead her away and find Tally hiding in the
forest.

Tally is taken to a pen of “armed resistors,” where she encounters Croy and Shay. Shay is
convinced that Tally has betrayed the location of the Smoke to the Specials—that this is why she
came all along. Tally denies it. After all, she has destroyed the locket. True, she was a spy, but she
didn’t betray her friends in the end. Specials march among the Smokies, scanning their eyes for
identification and separating them according to city. When they scan Tally’s eye, they recognize
her and congratulate her on her achievement in outing the location of the Smoke. Shay is
vindicated; Tally is taken to the library to see Dr. Cable.
Dr. Cable is as disagreeable as ever, despite her success at finding and invading the Smoke.
Suspicious of Tally’s initial resistance to the Specials, she demands to know where Tally’s locket
is. If the locket had been damaged, she says, it would have sent out an automatic signal to the
Specials. Tally pretends she has hidden the locket on the roof of the trading post and heads there
with a Special, whom she tricks into letting her climb onto the roof. Through some complicated
maneuvering, Tally is able to escape on a hoverboard, knocking the Special off the roof. She is
chased by hovercrafts, until she disappears into the partially collapsed tunnel in the mountain,
where she finds David, hiding.

The two wait in the dark, hoping they will evade capture. During this time, Tally hatches a plan.
She cannot bear to tell David that she has unwittingly betrayed the Smoke, because then she will
lose him. But she cannot hide the truth forever. If she is able to rescue the Smokies (David’s
parents, Shay, and Croy) that the Specials have brought back to her old city, then she will feel a
little better about telling him. Though David is initially skeptical of her plan, Tally assures him
that she knows where the captives will be taken because she has been to Special Circumstances
before. To cover up the real reason why, she tells David that, after her bungee jacket incident, she
was found out and brought there. The reason she never told Shay is that they forbid her to say
anything. David believes the lie.

The Smoke is decimated and the library burned. In the wreckage, Tally discovers a pile of shoes.
She remembers that Croy saw her barefoot and silently thanks him for convincing the captives to
leave their shoes behind so that Tally would have something to wear. She goes searching for the
Boss, the only other person she knows got away, and finds him dead in the woods. The magazines
are hidden nearby. David and Tally go to check if his parents’ house is still standing. It is burnt to
the crisp, but there are no human remains inside, which suggests that Az and Maddie have been
captured too. David leads Tally to a cave nearby, where his parents have stockpiled emergency
supplies, should an invasion ever happen. They gather what they need and set off.

Passing through a desert created by the orchids, David explains to Tally how the Rusty
civilization failed. Someone messed with the chemical compound for petroleum and it turned to
phosphorous, which ignites when exposed to air. Tally wonders why she never learned this is
school. Maybe because the city didn’t want anyone to know.

Ten days later, they have reached the city. Tally and David scout out Special Circumstances,
planning a way to get inside. Tally realizes that the only way in is to use bungee jackets to jump
down onto the roof from a nearby hill. Out in the ruins, David sees a safety sparkler flare—it is a
new group of uglies (An, Sussy, and Dex) looking to get to the Smoke. He and Tally hide out
along the uglies’ path home and surprise them. David asks them to help by creating a diversion.
They agree.

Analysis
In the holding pen, Croy tells Tally that the Specials are separating out the captives by city, so
they can take them home. His words make Tally realize that she no longer considers the city to be
home; now, her home is the Smoke. Later, when she returns to the decimated remains of the
Smoke with David, Tally feels wracked by loss. She watches a wolf attack and kill a rabbit. The
parallels between her situation and the rabbit’s are not lost on her. Nature, she ruminates, can be a
vicious, uncontrollable thing. It is on no one’s side.

On the way to the city, Tally sees her first desert. It has been created by the environment of
"biological zero" left in the orchids’ wake. The interference of men has left the land barren and
uninhabitable; similarly, the operation has killed individual spirit.

In learning about the phosphorus that wiped out the Rusties, Tally considers why their society
would want the real truth behind the end of the Rusties hidden. David offers that it might be
because the government doesn’t want to expose their population to the idea that every civilization
has a fatal weakness. Such an idea might inspire people to fight back.
A hurricane in the desert impedes Tally and David’s progress. Tally has never seen weather like
this before, and takes it as another lesson in how cruel and arbitrary the natural world can be. As
she waits for the storm to end, she looks out on the ruins. Now that she has seen the wreckage of
other cities, Tally is further embittered by the way this one has been preserved for tourism. It feels
to Tally like everything her society does is in service of some kind of exploitation.

Hoverboarding the river is still a joy for Tally. She feels liberated by the air at her back and the
exhilaration of adventure, although this one is for real, not like the tricks she played as a kid. Tally
reflects on who she has become: not an ugly, a pretty, or a smokie, but her own person. For the
first time, not belonging to a particular group is okay with her, because she has gained self-
assurance.

Uglies (The Uglies) Character List

Tally Youngblood
Tally is the 16-year-old protagonist of Uglies. She is characterized as mischievous, good-
hearted, and beauty-obsessed. Her dearest wish is to undergo the operation that will turn her
pretty. When Special Circumstances forces Tally to pursue Shay and reveal the location of the
Smoke or be denied the surgery, Tally faces a life-altering decision: betray her friend or remain
ugly forever. She undergoes a substantial emotional transformation throughout the novel. While
she is initially convinced of the ethics and necessity of the surgery, by the end Tally realizes that
the surgery is immoral and she is living in a tyrannical surveillance state.
Shay
Shay is Tally’s close friend, adventurous and independent-minded. Her escape to the Smoke is the
major catalyst for the events of the book. Toward the end of the novel, she is captured by the
Specials and turned into a pretty against her will.
David
David is Tally’s love interest and the child of the founders of the Smoke. He is naive and
idealistic, hard-working and passionate about those he loves. Knowing the secret of being pretty
has made him vehemently opposed to the mandatory surgery. He has grown up in the wild and
never lived within the constraints of mainstream society.
Dr. Cable
Dr. Cable is the Special who forces Tally to betray the location of the Smoke and the main
antagonist of the novel. She is cruel and terrifying, having been surgically altered to look
predatory and to have superhuman physical capabilities.
Maddy
Maddy is David’s mother and co-founder of the Smoke. She used to be a doctor in charge of the
surgical committee in the city, but escaped with her husband when they discovered the secret
behind the surgery.
Az
Az is David’s father and co-founder of the Smoke. He used to be a surgeon in the city and escaped
alongside his wife when they discovered the secret behind the surgery. He is killed by the Specials
when they take the Smokies captive.
Croy
Croy is Shay’s old friend and a Smokie who escaped before Shay. He is the first person to be
suspicious of Tally’s sudden arrival to the Smoke.
The Boss
The Boss is the librarian and de-facto leader of the Smoke. He is curmudgeonly and cares most for
the "Rusty" books and magazines in his library, remnants of the previous society. He is killed by
the Specials while attempting to smuggle a selection of magazines out of the settlement during the
invasion.
Sol
Sol is Tally’s father. He is loyal to the government and a woodworker. He believes Shay to be a
bad influence and encourages Tally to betray her.
Ellie
Ellie is Tally’s mother. Like her husband, she is loyal to the government. She believes Shay to be
a wayward child and encourages Tally to betray her because it is in Shay’s best interest to return.
Peris
Peris is Tally’s erstwhile best friend, who turned pretty before her. He is characterized as shallow
and self-absorbed. He wants Tally to betray Shay because then she will turn pretty and join him in
the city, where her adventures will boost his popularity.

Uglies (The Uglies) Themes

Conformity
The pressure to conform plays a major role in Uglies. The dystopic world in which the novel is
set values conformity to such a high degree that it has instituted a compulsory cosmetic operation
to ensure that all people look the same and are therefore equal in the eyes of others. Tally's pull
toward conformity exists in opposition to her personal ethics, prompting the inner strife that
provides much of the thematic tension in the novel. Her horror at the thought of staying ugly and
becoming a social pariah is what drives Tally to work for Special Circumstances in the first place.
However, when Tally learns of the brain lesions that result from the operation, her feelings
change. While she wants desperately to fit in, Tally is not willing to sacrifice her individuality and
her critical thinking skills.
Beauty
Initially, beauty is presented as a fixed quality in the world of Uglies, referring solely to
physical appearance. Those who have undergone the operation are pretties, those who have not are
uglies. Those who do not undergo the surgery have no shot at living a successful and happy life,
because society will ostracize them. Consequently, uglies grow up with severely damaged self-
esteem, unable to see their bodies in a positive light. But Tally's experience in the Smoke, and
most especially her romance with David, complicate her understanding of beauty. She realizes
that it is a relative and subjective term, applicable to a person's inner as well as their outer self.
Accordingly, there are many ways to be beautiful, and diversity is what allows beauty to flourish.
Technology
Tally's world is held up, literally and figuratively, by modern technology. The bedrock of the
society's structure depends on the social divides created by cosmetic surgery—uglies, new pretties,
middle pretties, crumblies, and Specials. The complex architecture of the city is made possible
only by "lifters," which function based on magnetic principles. Similarly, hoverboards are held
aloft by the steel grid that has been installed underground. There are benefits to this advanced
scientific technology: it has all but eradicated disease, greatly strengthened the economy, and
eliminated poverty and war. But it also renders Tally's society more vulnerable to destruction,
because its citizens are completely dependent on its continued success. Should their technology
fail, the population would become utterly helpless, completely unable to care for themselves. At
the beginning of the novel, Tally reflects on this thematic issue while surveying an old bridge
spanning between Uglyville and New Pretty Town: "A million years from now, when the rest of
the city had crumbled, the bridge would probably remain like a fossilized bone." Some
technologies, like building with bricks and mortar, are more dependable than others.
Freedom
Tally lives in a surveillance state where her every move is witnessed and recorded by the
government. She wears an interface ring that tracks her movements, and sleeps in a dorm with
smart walls that listen to what she says. At 16, she must undergo the surgery that will turn her into
a pretty, and prompt the growth of lesions that will result in intentional brain damage, so as to
keep her docile. She has no right to privacy, and a limited ability to make her own choices. In the
Rusty era, no governmental limitations were imposed on peoples' behavior, which led to total
annihilation. Now, the government severely impinges on its citizens' personal freedoms.

When she journeys to the Smoke, Tally's eyes are opened to the pleasures of personal freedom.
She becomes more confident and self-reliant. Her self-esteem, once in shambles, begins to rebuild.
Though she must live without the protections and comforts of a centralized government, at least
Tally has the right to privacy and the freedom to say no. Still, the question remains: to what extent
should the government limit personal freedoms? What lines need to be drawn in order for a
civilization to thrive?
Loyalty
The question of loyalty underpins much of Tally's behavior in Uglies. Her desire to remain
loyal to Shay drives her initial resistance to betraying the Smoke. Once she arrives in the
settlement, Tally's loyalty to her government is eroded by her love for the Smoke's rebellious,
free-thinking inhabitants. The struggle to remain loyal to her government, her friends, and herself
consumes Tally. To whom should she be allegiant? In the end, seeing the suffering her behavior
has wrought, Tally understands the paramount importance of loyalty to oneself, not so much as it
pertains to self-interest, but as it pertains to one's personal values.
Nature
The complicated power, savagery, and beauty of nature is another theme in Uglies. Tally, who
has grown up in the city, has never been exposed to the terror and majesty of the natural world.
She is entranced by the spectacle of the wilderness and terrified by its cruel indifference to
humanity. Nature, she realizes, is on no one's side but its own. Often, Tally's emotional
predicaments are illuminated through natural metaphor.
Social Isolation
More than anything, Tally wants to belong. Her adolescence has been riddled with painful
loneliness and longing; she believes that once she has the operation, she will finally feel as though
she fits in somewhere. Fear of being a social pariah convinces Tally to work with Special
Circumstances, a secret government agency whose methods go against her personal values.
During her time in the Smoke, she pretends to hold the same rebellious beliefs as the other
Smokies, so she will not stand out. Tally's dearest wish is to feel loved and accepted within a
community, and consequently, by herself.
Body Modification
Everyone in Tally's world must undergo compulsory body modification surgery in order to be
socially accepted. As a result, people are intensely self-critical, believing themselves to be
unlovable and hideous without medical intervention. Though the novel does not take a strong
stance on the issue of cosmetic surgery itself, it does advocate for increased self-acceptance.